Can I boot a laptop from a clone of an iMac?

[FMiguelez]

Hello.

I'll take a few days off, and I was wondering if I could borrow my wife's laptop (running Mavericks) to boot a clone I did from my office iMac. This clone has Yosemite, done with CCC, with a boot key partition and everything. It is encrypted.

Her laptop is relatively recent, from last year.

I'm almost positive I read somewhere that it was not possible and it might damage the laptop (or the clone file system).

Is this still so, or can I safely boot from this clone, which is in an external USB2 case, and work from it normally, as if I were at my studio???

Thanks!

[cuttime]

I'm not sure about the inter-machine cross booting, but even if you could, some, or probably most of your authorizations wouldn't work.

[bayswater]

I've done it, but installed a new OS copy soon afterwards. It was a MacBook into a somewhat newer MacBook. Worked OK, but there were no apps involved that needed authorizations.

[mikehalloran]

Probably. You won't harm anything by trying. USB or Target (Option T) via firewire or Thunderbolt.

With USB, you can try an Option Boot and see if the hard drive on the other machine appears. This is what I would try first. Have the target machine connected and on before you option boot the other Mac.

As has been pointed out, there may (probably will) be authorization issues but not with DP—if you get the screen, just type in your registration info exactly the way that MOTU has it in your account.

I just found this:

http://www.tekrevue.com/tip/mac-startup-options/