[Macpartners] Non-bootable firewire drives

[David M Rosenberg]

I recently was shopping at the GovConnection web site for a
Macintosh-compatible firewire external disk drive. I selected the
IOGear GHD135C200 - a combination Firewire (400), USB 2.0, and USB 1.1
external drive. (The "GHD135C" part of the product code describes the
enclosure and combination firewire and USB controller. The "200" part
of the product code describes the disk capacity.)

I found that I could partition in the disk and read and write from
files, but that I couldn't boot from it. IOGear tech support sent me a
message saying "The only drive we sell that is bootable is the GHD335
series." GovConnection is being very cooperative and allowing me to
exchange the IOGear GHD135C200 for an IOGear GHD335C200.

My "heads up" to other Mac users is that Macintosh-compatible doesn't
necessarily mean Macintosh-bootable. Neither the GovConnection web
pages nor the IOGear web pages state which drives are or aren't
bootable. The GovConnection tech support people (mistakenly) believed
that the IOGear GHD135C200 was bootable. I guess my suggestion is that
if you don't see a statement in writing that a firewire drive is
bootable (and it matters to you), confirm that feature with the
manufacturer.