Boot Drive Questions

Hi all,
This may be a bit of a newbie question, but I had a question (or questions) regarding the boot drive on a G5. Does the boot sector have to be on a drive connected to a specific SATA port? For example, if I buy a new drive and want to boot from it, does it need to replace the current drive (thereby moving the current drive to the second connector)? Or can I just plug it into the available connector, install OS X, and select it as my boot device?
The corollary to this would be: how difficult is it to move my OS and apps from the one drive to the other? Is there any reason I cannot simply copy the entire contents and reboot?
Alternatively, if there are any good resources to get up to speed on this stuff, I'd appreciate a point in thier direction.
Thanks!

Hi Michael, and a Warm Welcome to Apple Discussions and the Power Mac G5 forum!
You can boot from any drive or partitioned volume of a drive that has a bootable system on it - drive bay A or B or an external drive.
You can set the default boot drive in System Preferences - Startup Disc - and you can select an alternative by holding down the option(alt) key at startup.
To create a new boot drive you would have to either install OS X on the drive or create a clone of your current boot drive with with CCC
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
or SuperDuper
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
copying would not result in a 'bootable' drive.
Please post again if any of this is not clear.

Similar Messages

Zapping boot drive question

Hello guys,
I have heard recently that I should from time to time (maybe once every two weeks) zapp the Boot drive by pressing and holding apple/option/p/r keys. It apparently organizes the files and make Mac to run smoother and faster (kind of de-fragmentation)
But then I have also heard that this is not recommended unless some problems appear and that it only should be used as a troubleshooting tool.
So which version is actually true?
And also, in case that this method is not recommended as maintenance, what is then recommended method for making system run smooth?
Thank you very much.

Obviously you have been talking with a Windows PC.
First, it's not called zapping the hard drive. It's zapping the PRAM, and it won't do a thing to your hard drive let alone organize your files. Only you can organize your files. It does not defragment the hard drive either. What it does is to clear a small area of RAM in which the operating system permanently stores certain information. This area of RAM is protected by a small internal battery - the PRAM battery - that keeps this reserved area of memory powered so the data stored there is not lost when the computer is turned off.
There is rarely any need to zap the PRAM unless you are having a problem associated with the information stored there. See Mac OS X- What's stored in PRAM.
If you wish to maintain your computer then read the following:
Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible. TechTool Pro provides additional repair options including file repair and recovery, system diagnostics, and disk defragmentation. TechTool Pro 4.5.1 or higher are Intel Mac compatible; Drive Genius is similar to TechTool Pro in terms of the various repair services provided. Versions 1.5.1 or later are Intel Mac compatible.
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts had been significantly reduced in Tiger and Leopard.
OS X automatically defrags files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems.
I would also recommend downloading the shareware utility TinkerTool System that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old logfiles and archives, clearing caches, etc.
For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the commandline. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard.
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
The following utilities can also be used for backup, but cannot create bootable clones:
1. Backup (requires a .Mac account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
2. Toast
3. Impression
4. arRSync
Apple's Backup is a full backup tool capable of also backing up across multiple media such as CD/DVD. However, it cannot create bootable backups. It is primarily an "archiving" utility as are the other two.
Impression and Toast are disk image based backups, only. Particularly useful if you need to backup to CD/DVD across multiple media.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.
Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.
Referenced software can be found at www.versiontracker.com and www.macupdate.com.

New boot drive question

I'm looking to replace my 250G boot drive with a 1T; Can I use SuperDuper or CCC to move the OS and applications to a FW drive & boot from that? I'm confused about starting up after replacing the boot drive. Thanks for any confidence you can give me

Hi. You can clone your current boot drive to an external FireWire drive and then boot from it - and then install the new internal drive, and clone the system from the FW drive back to the new internal drive. Or install a new system on the internal, if required.
You should make sure that any other FireWire devices are disconnected during cloning. You should also run Disk Utility > Verify Disk and Repair Permissions on the internal before you clone.
You should check that the boot from the FireWire works a few times.
You can select the boot drive before you Shutdown in System Preferences > Startup Disc - or boot holding down the Option(alt) key and select the Startup drive from those offered. Patience may be required, as it's a bit slow to find the boot drives sometimes.
Good Luck.

USB Storage Boot Drive question

I'm currently in the process of moving my hard drive over to another due to the current one beginning to fail. I can't seem to mount the LION OX system to a dvd, when I try to move the InstallESD.dmg file to burn it it claims the DVD is full when I know that they are empty. I have a blank USB 2 GB drive. Can I use that as a boot disk or would I still need to use a CD?

Your attempt to make a Lion boot drive will require a larger USB thumb drive. Read this:
http://www.macworld.com/article/1165337/create_a_bootable_lion_install_drive_for _newer_macs.html
Ciao.

SSD/boot drive question

Just installed an SSD, cloned my old HD and boot from it, have a Mac Pro so I kept the old boot HD in the machine as well... question- do I have to relink all the programs that I use on my dock so that they pull from the applications on the SSD and not the old HD? Or since I'm booted up with the SSD it autmatically uses the application on that drive?

It will automatically use applications located at /Applications - which is on whichever drive you are currently booted to.

Boot Drive failed to be found - Question Marks ???

I recently used SuperDuper to clone my primary OSX 10.4 Tiger startup disk to a second internal hard drive in my Intel MacPro, and now I am experiencing strange behavior when booting from the Cloned drive...
To start with, let me first say that upoin successfully cloning my main OS onto the secondary internal drive, I removed my primary drive from my machine and replaced it with a cleanly formatted blank drive for data storage...in other words, there is currently only one capable startup disk in my machine at the moment...
So when running my OS from my new Clone OS drive, everything works fine when the OS is running, and things are fine and dandy...When I restart my computer, the machine loads right back up as if everything is totally normal and functioning perfect.
But then I went ahead and shutdown the machine for a short while, and upon returning and attempting to power up again, the startup process brings me to the FLASHING QUESTION MARK icon shortly after hitting the power button (as if for one reason or another, its not seeing my OS)...
The only way I can get the machine to work again, is by force-quitting the flashing question mark screen thereby powering back down; then restarting holding the 'option' key, and choosing my Clone boot drive from the list of startup discs (as it does show up as the only available drive in this list...)...Then my computer loads back up again, and things are working as normal, again, as if there were no problems...I test restarting a few times - no problem...I then re-test shutting down and powering back on again...QUESTIONS MARKS AGAIN!!
Anyone have any idea what the heck is going on, and how I should go about handling this?
any suggestions would be greatly appreciated... Thanks!

Are you sure you have the startup disk set correctly in System Preferences -> Startup Disk?
If so, try zapping the PRAM. Reboot while holding down command-option-p-r. Continue holding them down until after the third startup bong, then release. After the Mac boots, try setting the prefs again and see if it sticks then.
If not, I suspect you might have a dead PRAM battery. Try shutting your Mac down, then disconnect the power cord and the internet. Reconnect the power cord but leave the internet disconnected. Boot the Mac. If your time and date is set to sometime last century, you need a new PRAM battery.

After boot drive replacement questions

My boot drive, on which the Lightroom 5 software was located, failed and I just got the boot drive replaced and downloaded Lightroom 5. Fortunately my Lightroom 5 Catalog Previews, Catalog Preview.Irdata and all important Lightroom Library were located on a separate drive that was not impacted by the boot drive failure. How do I go about linking those files to the Lightroom 5 I just reinstalled?

Apparently the computer repair place saw fit to rename the drives that were not impacted in any way by the boot disk failure. So when I double clicked the catalog I ended up with all questions marks under folders in Lightroom. I have googled looking at "find missing folders" and "synchronize" and found nothing that makes obvious sense to me. When I tried the missing folders option I get a message that "the selected folder or one of its subfolders is already in Lightroom. Do you want to combine these folders" And then gives me the option to merge or cancel. I have chosen cance as this doesn't sound right. Any more help would be appreciated.

Reinstallation questions after boot drive replacement

I joined CC last year. At the time I had Lightroom 5 installed and upgraded via various upgrade discs as well as CS5 which I arrived at via various upgrade discs. When I joined the CC it downloaded the latest versions of both Lightroom and CS.
So now I will be starting over with a new boot drive and fresh reinstalled windows 7 ultimate installation. My lightroom catalog was on another hard drive so it was unaffected. My questions are as follows: Do I need to reinstall Lightroom and CS from my various discs? Or can I simply access CC from the link in my join up email and will it download the latest versions of those programs without me having any previous versions on the hard drive. My final question is once I do have Lightroom downloaded again will it seek out and find my Lightroom catalog on the other hard drive? Or do I manually have to link Lightroom to the catalog and then it will work as it did before? Thanks for any help.

This is mainly a user-to-user forum. And many, many Creative Cloud users never use Lightroom so they're unfamiliar with how it works. That's why you should post product questions in the appropriate product user forums.
once I do have Lightroom downloaded again will it seek out and find my Lightroom catalog on the other hard drive?
Not likely.
Nancy O.

Boot drive died, a question

Dont know if this is the right forum to put this in.
My boot drive in my Mac Pro just died (blue screen of death) But I have it back up and running with a bootable copy that I made of that drive, my question is, I would like to see if I could somehow mount this dead drive to see if I run disk utility on it, When I put it in the drive bay with the bootable copy I have running now, on startup, it just goes back to the blue screen, any tips on how to do this.
Thank you much...in advance.

Press & hold +V (or Option+V depending on the labeling of your keyboard) while you power up the system. This will cause it to boot 'verbosely' -- meaning you'll see all the messages indicating what the computer is doing as it boots. You will see LOTS of messages (normal), but you may see messages that give a clue as to why it's taking extra long to boot (e.g. device failure / retries, etc.) (Note that if you boot 'verbosely' then when you shut down it will also do so verbosely (you'll see more messages as it shuts down.)
It's possible your hard drive is failing and requires several "retries" to successfully read. In which case it can't be trusted and needs to be replaced.
You might also run the "Console" app and check the messages being logged.
Message was edited by: Tim Campbell1

License question: Changing boot drives.

I want to replace my boot drive with one imaged from the old drive.
Do I need to somehow deactivate the license on the old drive before I change? (A few years back I ran out of activations on Acrobat because I kept 'testing' my backup drives to see if they worked. Mistake on my part.)

Since software was distributed on 5 1/4" discs, software developers exploited dozens of tricky ways to identify media to prevent unauthorized copying. Usually without explaining to customers what might invalidate their software. In my case with Acrobat, I could find nothing in my user manuals, help nor advertising material that explained that running a disc restore on a new drive would use up an authorization. But it did. Without telling me. And I had to stop using Acrobat until I bought a new copy.
I have never seen any drive image software that promised a physically/electrically identical copy that could guarantee no authorization problems. Are there some? I pay for my software - but I have abandoned tools that are too hard to keep authenticated. Less common in the last 5 years and there really isn't a decent single source of so many fine tools as Adobe. And hard drives fail so much less often than they did in the 90's.
I was just hoping someone at Adobe could help me carry out a reasonable step that a customer might want to take. Thanks to Jose above for a good suggestion.

Is the spotlight index stored on the boot drive or individual volumes?

Hello!
My questions are pretty simple, and are sumarized here (from the block of text below):
First, if I have several external hard drives, is the Spotlight index file for each drive stored on the external hard drive, or on OS X's boot drive?
Secondly, if it's stored on the boot drive, can I copy these files to another Tiger-running Mac to eliminate the need to re-index the hard drives? Where do I find them?
Third: Leopard's Spotlight has quite a few new features. Even if the Tiger index files are stored on the external drive, will it need to re-index the drive to support the new feature set?
Now for the long explenation:
I have been preparing to upgrade my Powerbook to Leopard within the next month or two, and as such, I bought a new hard drive to dedicate one of my old drives to Leopard and Time Machine. Because I have three extrernal hard drives, I needed to move about 500 GB of data between the thee drives to make room for what was on the now-dedicated drive. Of course, this requires that Spotlight re-index the "new" drives.
Today, I left all of the drives attached to my old G4, running Tiger, while it sits there indexing the three drives, totaling around a terrabyte of external storage. Because Spotlight tends to hog all of the available CPU time, and the G4 should be done indexing the drives, it would save me a lot of time if I could copy the index files over from the G4 to my Powerbook to avoid indexing them all over again. That is, if the index files are not on the external drives already. If they are on the G4's boot drive, where do I find these files?
Finally, I plan to reformat the internal hard drive of my Powerbook when I install Leopard - I make a habit of doing a fresh install for every major upgrade (eg, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, etc). To estimate the amount of time needed to upgrade, I'd be nice to know if Leopard will need to re-index the files on the external drives - even if Tiger's spotlight index is stored on the externals - for Leopard's new Spotlight features. Will it need to re-index? I would assume that until Leopard arrives, most people wouldn't know this, of course.
Thanks a bunch,
-Dan

Each drive's Spotlight index is located on that drive.
(25154)

Internal vs External hard drive question???

I have a very basic question about OSX and its treatment of drives...
If I have an external drive (either firewire or SATA using an Express34 card) and I select it, at boot time, as the boot drive, does OSX really treat this drive as if it were the internal drive or is there some underlying difference?
Is there a difference between an external firewire and an external SATA drive (other than the I/O speed)?
What I'm getting at is this. I want the ability, using the 'opt+cmd' (or whatever the key seq is) option, at boot time, to select either the internal drive or an external drive to be "THE" drive, as far as OSX is concerned.
Asuming that both drives have at least a bootable OSX partition, I'd like for the external drive to have OSX AND maybe another partition for maybe Windows or Linux.
At boot time if I select the external drive as the boot drive will it act like the internal drive and allow me to install a BootCamp partition? Can I manuly repartition it (while its a secondary drive usng iPartition perhaps)? Can I install a boot loader that will allow me to select an OS after initially selecting the external drive with the 'opt+cmd' option?
I'm looking for the ability to basicaly select different drives as the "internal" drive, much like you would using the jumper and/or cable selects in a Mac Pro or even a PC based system.
Is this even possible? id it is, is it possible with firewire or express34 card driven SATA drives?
Sorry if this is confusing, I'm having a hard time articulating exactly what i want to do...
Thanks in dvance,
Peter

Yes. One cool thing to do is create a bootable backup on an external drive, and use it for OS/upgrade testing - think Leopard. To me this is one huge advantage over Windows systems. You can back up the hard drive and prove it works. Also allows for faster recovery of not only data, but installed applications and settings. I always create a fresh backup to my external FW drive before going on trips.
MacBook Pro 17" 2.16GHz / 2GB / 120GB Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Is it possible to use External HD as main boot drive? (Help!)

Hi all
I am about to buy a Seagate FreeAgent Pro (link: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/478636-REG/SeagateST305004FPA1E3_RK_FreeAgent_Pro_500GB_eSATA.html) with 500Gb and FW400/USB2.0/eSATA. I have a Mac Mini, and its internal HD is too small for me (80Gb total for about 70Gb of data).
What I'd like to do is install OS X on the External HD and use it as my main boot drive, and perhaps the Mini's internal HD for data backup. Would that be possible/legal (I only have the install discs that came with it - my first Mac :D)? If it is complicated, could you guys explain me how to do it?
I'd also like to know whether the performance would be better or worse. The Mini's got a 5400 RPM drive, and the external is 7200 RPM and would be connected through FW400 (plus a lot of free space for now).
One last question: if it is indeed possible/legal to use the External HD as my main boot drive, would it be possible to install and boot Windows on the external HD using Boot Camp or Parallels?
Cheers
Daniel
Mac Mini 1.83 GHz Core Duo 1 GB Ram 80 GB HDD Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Performance will be worse because FW400 is considerably slower than the internal bus. For startup I would continue using the internal drive. You can use the external drive for data storage as well as off-loading any music, picture, and movie files to free up space on the internal drive. You can also partition a chunk of the external drive (80 GBs) to use as a backup partition for the internal hard drive. You can clone your internal drive to the external (partition) which will give you a bootable backup. Here's how:
How to Clone Using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (journaled, if available) and click on the Erase button. This step can be skipped if the destination has already been freshly erased.
4. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
5. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the startup or source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
8. Select the destination drive on the Desktop and press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. At the bottom in the Ownership and Permissions section be sure the box labeled "Ignore Permissions on this Volume" is unchecked. Verify the settings for Ownership and Permissions as follows: Owner=system with read/write; Group=admin with read/write; Other with read-only. If they are not correct then reset them.

How do I recover data from a repartioned boot drive?

Hello all, I am hoping someone can help me with my problem. I have a PowerMac G5 1.8 single CPU. OSX 10.5.
Recently my 'B' hard drive dedicated to Time Machine failed. I purchased a replacement drive, and when in disk utility I accidentally repartioned my 'A' drive. So now there is no startup disk. Can I reverse what I did? I am thinking no.
I have Data Rescue by Prosoft, and I scanned it and I can recover all from the A drive (it's about 2 TB for everything). But I don't need to recover the OS since I have the disk. I just want all my data.
So here are my questions:
I don't have a 2TB drive. I could purchase one and recover all the data from the A drive. Then what do I do? I assume I would reload a fresh install of 10.5 onto the new B drive (saving A for now). Then how do I get all of my files and setting backs into the new boot drive? Is there an easy way to reimport?
If I don't buy a 2TB drive, what are my options? Again I assume I would load fresh 10.5 onto B, then try to recover the files I need from the old A drive. I have tons of photos, emails, and some PShop and Illustrator work files.
What happens of I reload 10.5 back onto the A drive? Will it wipe out all of the files I want to save, or is OSX smart enought to keep data and only install the OS?
Are there any other options for me?
Thanks,
Neal

nealfromhillsborough wrote:
Run Data Rescue and cherry pick the data off the original A drive onto the new boot disk B.My fear is that I am not savvy enough to filter through all the files I don't need to find what I do need, and then knowing where on the new drive to put it.
Safer to recover everything that's recoverable, then pick out what you want, and ensure it's usable.
Oh, another question. Let's say I get the new 2TB drive and recover everything, does that mean it become a bootable disk again? Wiil it behave like the original A did? I understand there will be some damage, I'm just not clear (and Data Rescue's literature is not clear) on what happens after a full recover. I guess it will just be folders/files that I need to review for what I need.
No, it won't be bootable; you'll just have a data disc.

What's the best setup for a dedicated boot drive (Lion) with a separate storage drive?

I have a 120GB SSD and 4 x 3TB drives striped together for storage on my hot off the shelf Mac Pro. This may be an elementary question and I'm sure it's like every other post in these forums but what really is the best way to maintain a dedicated OSX Lion boot drive while keeping user profile type stuff on the storage drive? A few thoughts...
1) I know the risks with striping, which is why it will all be backed up online. Yes. Online.
2) I am specifically curious about how to keep pretty much all of the User folder type stuff on the storage drive...at least the big stuff.
Any recommendations? I know Win7 had some big problems with doing this kind of thing. My main goal is to be able to reinstall OS X every day if I wanted and not affect the users or their respective data. Possible?

The desktop is implemented by a folder by the same name in the Home folder for each user.
Before you move it, it will be here:
/Users/<your_shortname>/Desktop
I would first try providing an alias in Finder to replace that Folder.
If that does not work, you may need to use Terminal to create a Symbolic Link.
ln -s <desired location> <where the link should be created>
You can open up terminal and type in man ln to see the other options and how the command works.

Boot Drive Questions

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