Concerning a MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard. As you know when pressing alt during startup there is the possibility of selecting which disc/drive/memory you want to boot from. For example if you have a CD/DVD inserted in the computer or Bootcamp Windows installed they can be selectable to boot from.
Here's what I want to do: I want that when I have a USB stick inserted to the computer, I want to be able to boot from that in the same manner as can be done with e.g. a DVD.
The problem is that when I have a USB stick connected to the computer during startup and press alt, the USB is not selectable to boot from. So the question is: How can I enable the computer to (during startup) select a connected USB stick to boot from?
I have tried a program called rEFit, which gives you another menu during startup, where you can for example select if you want to boot from any partition that you created. Unfortunately it still doesn't enable booting from a connected USB stick, at least not automatically. So I wonder how to enable booting from a USB stick, either in this program, or otherwise.
If you have done this yourself, or if you have any good ideas on how to enable it, please share.
Best Answer
USB thumb drives behave much like internal hard drives in terms of booting from it on a Mac. Therefore, it depends on what you have on those drives. If there is "just data" on the USB stick, it will, very much like "data" hard drives, not show up at the boot picker.
As a test, you can try to install a for your system supported version of Mac OS X onto the USB stick and then see whether it shows or not (I would understand that it will show thereafter as all Intel Macs can boot from USB).
NOTE: For obvious reasons, you should back up whatever you have on the USB stick before attempting this.