Originally Posted By: artie505
So, Harv's external drive may, in fact, be sufficient for the purpose as regards his installation, but he'll have to launch the installer to find out.

To be completely accurate you would have to…
  1. Launch the ProToGo installer
  2. Choose the OS X configuration (most configurations include only a very few of the standard apps and some do not include Finder.
  3. Choose any additional Apple applications desired — note the caveat in item 5
  4. Choose any third party applications desired
  5. NOTE: in the smaller ProToGo OS X configurations amy APIs required by third party applications may not be included.
  6. Select the amont of free space desired on the ProToGo device. It now appears Micromat uses a standard 200MB free space but the user can allow more if desired.

For what it is worth, my opinion of the usefulness of each of the standard ProToGo Profiles in order of estimated usefulness from most to least is…
  • Mac OS X Recovery HD Profile 2.59 GB Includes 200MB Free space — A backup of the Recovery HD. This one is useful because it alone will support reinstalling OS X in the event of a complete drive disaster and provided you have internet connectivity. This is a configuration I would want to have around for any Mac — just in case
  • Minimal Profile 2.85GB — includes TTP 8, Disk Utility, System Information, Terminal, Console, and 200MB additional space, but NOT Finder. Installs on the small devices and provides basic diagnostic and repair tools. An eDrive on a bootable thumb drive. This has the ability to run full diagnostics and make significant repairs well beyond the capability of Disk Utility.
  • Mac OS X Basic Profile 8.37GB including Finder, Preview, Activity Monitor, Console, Disk Utility, System Information, and terminal, as well as the standard 200MB Free space. Because it has Finder this profile can run applications that would not work in the minimal profile. This profile does not include all APIs so not all Apple or third party apps would be able to run.
  • Mac OS X Full Copy Profile 182.44GB including all standard OS X utilities. I cannot tell if this is a full clone or not, but I will test it and get back on that. I will have to test this to find out if it is a clone or a clean install. In my opinion this would be useful only if it were a clean install. I will build one and let you know what I find.

NOTE; All of these profiles can be configured with different apps and free space, but only the Full Copy profile would be guaranteed to have all the APIs and Frameworks to run all applications.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein