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Create a SD card? How about create an SD card?

I am curious - what benefit this has? Are the benchmarks faster? Disk access is better because no moving parts?
Maybe they could post some benchmarks...
Bill Teeple
San Jose, CA

WHY?
oh please, tell me WHY!
Just because you can?
Inquiring minds want to know!!!

VoxLocus said:

You've got a Mac that won't boot from the hard drive. You create this bootable SD card and place on it copies of TechTool Pro, Disk Warrior, and Drive Genius. With one or a combination of them you bring the Mac back to life.

Can you use an external sd card reader to do the same thing? Seems good to carry for travel etc, if mac goes down.

Yep, this worked fine. Even on my '08 MBP 2.53 using a SD card reader. A 16GB card is enough space to hold all the utilities: Disk Warrior, TechTool Pro etc.

Thing is.. you could have done this if they had kept the express slot. Express slot Express slot card reader adapter SD card = same result plus the ability to use more peripherals. What would have been nice is for Apple to have included an adapter that fits in to the Express card. Then we could've had our cake and eaten it too. Oh well.. so much for wishful thinking.

goldsteinm1 said:

That is exactly the point. It is an EMERGENCY disk, not a general use disk. Great for taking with you on vacation. A tiny SD card is far better than taking a DVD and risk losing it while on a trip. Nothing worse than having your Mac go down on vacation and no boot disk to repair it. Most of the others just don't get it.

You create this bootable SD card and place on it copies of TechTool Pro, Disk Warrior, and Drive Genius. With one or a combination of them you bring the Mac back to life.
house episode

Thing is.. you could have done this if they had kept the express slot. Express slot Express slot card reader adapter
SD card = same result plus the ability to use more peripherals. What
would have been nice is for Apple to have included an adapter that fits
in to the Express card. Then we could've had our cake and eaten it too.
Oh well.. so much for wishful thinking.



About me

House episodes

Does the new Macbook pro still boot from firewire? If it still does, why not just use the firewire external HD?

I only alf of my comment responded to. Will it work from an external usb card reader or is that too low powered?



If so could it be put on a usb flash drive?

I'm pretty sure this will work fine on a USB flash drive. Flash drives are great for OS install/recovery - I routinely use them to install and recover Linux machines.
I also have a Patriot USB 2 flash drive that can take any SD/SDHC card, giving you similar capabilities on any Mac that can boot from USB.
I'd be interested in a comparison of OS X boot time, application startup time, read/write time, etc., from various SD cards - the card used in the article is expensive, but I've seen much cheaper cards (e.g. 32 GB for < $40) at Fry's.
The SD card slot in the new MacBooks is Apple's handwriting is on the wall for SD card-based software installation, system recovery, Time Machine backups, etc..
Wouldn't it be nice to have Snow Leopard on a (write-protected?) SD card rather than a bulky, scratchable DVD?