iPod "Genius" iPod Software

[Aboo]

I have heard and witnessed myself that the Apple geniuses at the Genius bar have ipods that have some sort of boot software that when connected to a mac without a hard drive or with a bad hard drive, can still startup the machine and run the diagnostics software. I just wanted to ask for some more informaton about these ipods and if there is anyway to get the software that the geniuses use to do the same on on my ipods. It would be a lot more convenient for me, than having to use the diagnostics cd.

Thanks again!

 

[old-wiz]

They have external disks that they use for booting and diagnostics; plugs into USB or firewire.

 

[Consultant]

A mac can boot from optical disks, network volume, firewire disks, and usb disk.

If you set up the iPod to allow data access you can have osx on it for boot. But it's probably better just to get a 16GB thumbdrive, because you are not going to need that bootdrive every day.