Installers on hard disks

[LarBob]

Hi, I was wondering if there was a way to put OS 9/8/OS X DP installers on hard drives. It would be convenient for installing operating systems faster on classic Macs. I am talking about IDE hard disks. I'm guessing you could just have different partitions with the blessed OS install System Folders?

 

[Elfen]

No.... but the closest best option would be to put them on CF Cards and use SCSI2CF and then swap out the CFs to what system needs it.

I do something similar with CF <-> PCMCIA Adapters for PowerBooks and it works well.from the 190 to the G4s PowerBooks that have PCMCIA.

By "No..." You can but having a hard drive sit around in storage, it will die when the lube craps out in a short amount of time. Solid State is a more permanent solution that lasts reliably in storage.

 

[LarBob]

it's an IDE drive, easily replaceable 

 

[Elfen]

Sorry, I misread it. I thought you meant you were using SCSI Drives.

 

[resx]

Years ago I remember seeing a tech who carried around a couple installers on a Jaz disk. There was one partition with a System 7 install, and a number of disk images that could be mounted for different Macintosh install media.

Maybe something like that could work?

 

[olePigeon]

You could do two partitions, one for Classic and one for OS X, but I don't know about having multiple partitions for Classic with different OSes on them, all blessed.

You might be able to find an OS (such as OS 9) that'll run on all your machines, then just include the OS 8, 9, and Beta installers on that one.  Beta might need its own partition, though, but that's not a problem.

 

[waynestewart]

Years ago I had to install MacOS on a bunch of machines and tried copying the installer disk over to a firewire hard drive. It worked great, installed the software in less than half the time an optical drive did.

 

[LarBob]

Did you just put the stuff on the drive and bless the system folder?

 

[waynestewart]

It was 8-9 years ago but I believe that's what I did.

 

[LarBob]

Cool, thanks.

 

[CelGen]

When target disk mode fails, I just slave install using a SCSI cable and a powerbook.