Booting issues from an external drive

[dannster]

Hi all,

Having an issue with booting the latest version of Mountain Lion from an external hard drive.

Work gave me a Mac Mini which hasn't been updated in a while (currently has 10.6.6), and it doesn't have enough space on the hard drive to update. So I have downloaded Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store, installed it on a partition of an external hard drive and when I go to boot from it (pressing down the option key when I restart the mac mini), I get the grey screen with a circle and a line through it.

I'm a little confused! Is there something I need to do on the mac mini to resolve this and successfully boot Mountain Lion from my external hard drive?

 

[justperry]

How did you download it, how did you install it.

Normally the recovery way would be the easiest one but it is also possible to make a bootable Installer stick.

 

[dannster]

I downloaded it from the Mac App Store then during the installation process I selected 'show all disks', selected the partition on my external hard drive and installed it there. Afterwards, it booted fine from my own MacBook Air which is running the latest version of Mountain Lion. I got to work, plugged the external hard drive in to the mac mini running 10.6.6 and it didn't work :/

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I copied the Mountain Lion installation file to another partition on the external hard drive incase I needed to re-install at work. I tried to access it on the mac mini running 10.6.6 but it said I needed to be running 10.6.8 to install it!

Now that the mac mini is running 10.6.8, should I try another clean install on the external hard drive?

 

[dannster]

I just discovered the mac mini is 2,1 so isn't a supported mac for Mountain Lion! Oh well!

 

[justperry]

I just discovered the mac mini is 2,1 so isn't a supported mac for Mountain Lion! Oh well!

I know there is a hack to install ML on unsupported Hardware, I don't have the link but I know that a User here called simsaladimbamba knows the link, hopefully he sees this, or you could search here on MR.
Otherwise you threw money away.

[GUIDE] SUCCESS! Install 10.8 on OLD unsupported Mac ...

And, there are more links like that if you search on this Link with Install Mountain Lion 10.8 on unsupported

MRoogle

 

[dannster]

I know there is a hack to install ML on unsupported Hardware, I don't have the link but I know that a User here called simsaladimbamba knows the link, hopefully he sees this, or you could search here on MR.
Otherwise you threw money away.

[GUIDE] SUCCESS! Install 10.8 on OLD unsupported Mac ...

And, there are more links like that if you search on this Link with Install Mountain Lion 10.8 on unsupported

MRoogle

Cheers I followed all the steps but when I go to boot up for the first time, it fails! I still get the grey screen with a circle and a line through it :/

 

[justperry]

Cheers I followed all the steps but when I go to boot up for the first time, it fails! I still get the grey screen with a circle and a line through it :/

Bummer.
Well, at least you tried it.