installing El Capitan on external drive

[garmp]

Installed El Capitan on an external Firewire drive, but my iMac (10.6.8) will not see it as a startup disk.
What's wrong? Google search said Firewire is acceptable to boot from.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

-Which model Mac?
-How much RAM?
-Did you install El Capitan to the external using the Mac you are attempting to startup from with the external?
-How are you attempting the external startup - Option-boot, selecting in Startup Disk preference pane, etc.?

C

 

[garmp]

What I wanted to do is update to 10.11.6 which is not compatible with some of the older games and software that I prefer and use often. My local Mac Guru told me that if I install El Capitan on my hard drive I MIGHT not be able to boot off an older OS external drive to use my old software. So then I decided to update the external drive and run off that, being able to boot off the main drive at will. The main drive 10.6.8 will not see the firewire 10.11.6 drive unless you hold down the option key so rebooting is cumbersome at best. Also just found that 10.11.6 on an external is s l o w. I am running 10.11.6 now and trying to set it up. Sort of putting it through it's paces and deciding if I should just get a Mac Mini for El Capitan and attach to my extra monitor and not worry about it or meet the challenge head on. So far not to bad. But start ups are brutal.

thanks

 

[Cory Cooper]

Option-boot is the way to select the drive at startup, unless you select it in System Preferences... > Startup Disk, which will set it as the default until you change it.

Starting up from a FireWire HD shouldn't be painfully slow, as I do it all the time. Of course, it is VERY slow compared to the internal SSD in my MacBook Pro, but not unusable. Maybe there is something else going on there?

C

 

[garmp]

I'm still setting up and gathering all the updates. I think this will work fine. Just that it's hard for me to do something I'm not very well versed at and contend with family issues at the same time. Too much going on in this little head of mine. Thanks. If there are issues I will post back.

 

[Cory Cooper]

No worries...let us know how it goes...

C