Can't boot from internal hard drive.

I just replaced my internal hard drive and copied the back-up from the old drive onto the new one.  The new drive appears to be properly formatted and to contain all the data I copied to it, but I am unable to boot from it.  Any advice?  Thanks!

Thanks, Courcoul.  I went back and formatted the drive again, this time booting from the OSX installation CD. (Last time I booted from the back-up drive from which I was copying.)  I don't know if it was booting from the CD and not the drive, or that I didn't format it properly the first time, but this did the trick.  Working perfectly.

Similar Messages

  • HP Pavilion 500-210 QE Can't boot from any hard drive.

    Good Evening. As you can see from the subject, my computer just can't boot from any hard drive that I put on it. I tried swapping the power supply, the SATA cable, resetting the BIOS, enabling legacy boot, changing from AHCI to IDE and RAID... 
    When I get to the BIOS setup, I can see the hard drive and its specifications, but it just won't boot or show up when I'm trying to install a new OS. I'm not an expert, but I think the problem might be in the motherboard SATA ports, but I'm not sure. Just to make sure, I did try another hard drive and it didn't work aswell. 
    I was also thinking about buying an external hard drive and instaling my OS on that, but I don't even know if that's possible and I would really like to have my computer working again.
    Thank you for your attention!
    This question was solved.
    View Solution.

    What is the installed operating system?
    Did you make a recovery disk set?
    Did you happen to make a  Windows 8.1 startup disk or USB recovery thumbdrive?
    Have you tested the hard disk?
    Press the power button and then immediately tap the Esc key. In the Startup menu, choose F2 for Diagnostics. In the HP Basic System Diagnostics menu choose hard disk. Run the test and post the results here.
    The issue you are facing has nothing to do with the SATA ports. It is a configuration issue. Your PC is a modern one and its BIOS (UEFI) is far more advanced than what you may have seen before.
    If you want to install a different operating system then you will have to make a few changes in the BIOS configuration. Secure Boot is turned on by default for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. If you try installing a different OS without turning this off then your system won't boot up. You may be running into this if you are trying to install another operating system.
    The image below is  what will be seen in the BIOS of your PC in the security tab --> . In the secure boot configuration options do not clear the secure boot keys! Those keys are your operating system license activation keys.
    ****Please click on Accept As Solution if a suggestion solves your problem. It helps others facing the same problem to find a solution easily****
    2015 Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience Consumer

  • Snow leopard installation disc won't boot. Can I reset computer to boot from internal hard drive at startup?

    I recently installed snow leopard on my macbook (mid 2006). I used system preferences to set the snow leopard boot disc as the install disc, and now my computer won't boot. It stalls at the apple icon with the grey screen. Is there any way I can set my computer to reboot from my internal hard drive at startup without having access to system prefernces (a keyboard code or something)?

    Thank you so much for responding.  I actually just pushed the trackpad button at startup.  It ejected the install disc and automatically booted from the internal.  I am sure your method would have worked as well.  Thanks again!

  • Can I boot an internal hard drive through USB?

    I have an old 2008 Mac Pro running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 that just quit on me. When I boot up, I get to the apple logo and then the screen turns white and stays that way until I power off my machine. I have a few hard drives with operating systems installed and a boot partition. When I hold option on start up, I'm able to pick a hard drive to boot from, but I get the same problem. This leads me to believe that the issue lies with my computer, not the disks.
    I've also tried booting in safe mode and get the same problem.
    So I'm looking at purchasing one of these bad boys:
    http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0099TX7O4/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&coli d=169XE2BWHBJ2P&coliid=I1JKOUV0BWEUFR
    So here's my question:
    I have an early 2013 Macbook Pro running Yosemite 10.10 that I want to use to boot my Mac Pro internal hard drives from. Is it possible to do so? I figure I can access it through pressing the option key during start up.
    Thanks!
    Jon

    I'm sorry, but that won't work because your MP only has Firewire ports and no Thunderbolt ports while your new MBP has Thunderbolt ports but no Firewire ports. Therefore, you cannot connect the two together except using Ethernet or Wi-Fi from which neither can be booted. If you use the device from Amazon, then you need to remove one of the drives to insert in it. Then you could boot from it provided the drive is actually bootable in the other machine. Snow Leopard is not capable of booting a 2013 MBP.

  • Can't boot from IDE hard drives

    Just purchased a barebones system with a KEN NEO Platinum board running an AMD 64 3400+. Tried to install old Maxtor hard drive (40 gb) into new system and a blue screen pops up for less than one second and reboots PC. I can’t read the blue screen but I believe it is saying there is a hardware conflict.
    What is causing this. The CMOS recognizes the HD but it can't boot from it. I’ve got two of these units and both have the same problems. I put the drive back into the original PC and it works fine.
    Need help desperately.

    When I connect the cables, they show which is the slave and which is the master. In the CMOS, everything looks fine. I've noticed alot of people are having difficulty installing used and new hard drives. I've been working with PC's for quite a while and I've never had this much trouble. I was hoping there was something I missed in the CMOS settings.

  • Won't Boot from Internal Hard Drive

    I received the "Startup Disk is Full" message and neglected to do anything about it before my Mac stopped booting. To remedy this, I installed and booted from Snow Leopard (10.6) on an external hard drive, found what was eating my space on my internal hard drive (currently Mac OS 10.5.8) and freed up about 35 GB of space.
    I then went to my System Preferences to change the default Startup Disk back to the internal drive. It's not booting past the gray screen.
    Any ideas on how to fix this? Do I now need to update my internal hard drive to Snow Leopard? If so, will this erase anything on my internal drive?

    Hmm.
    Do you have your external drive connected?
    Try booting with the ALT key held down. Is your internal drive an option here? Choose it, then give the computer 5~10 minutes to boot.
    If that doesn't work, try holding the Shift key and starting up in Safe Mode, which will take 5~10 minutes.
    Do you have your OS X install discs for 10.5?
    ~Lyssa

  • X86 install was successful, but now I can't boot from the hard drive

    I have successfully installed Solaris 10 for x86 from the bootable CD ROMs. However, now, after removing the CD-ROM from the drive and booting from the hard disk I am having problems.
    The system attempts to boot. It displays the Solaris Primary Boot Subsytem v2.0 screen...pauses for 15 seconds...then reboots itself. And it continues this process.
    However, if I boot to CD-ROM first, then boot to the Hard Drive, I have no problems. The CDE comes up fine.
    We are running a 64 bit OS with a SATA drive that is supported. And as I mentioned, the install successfully completed.
    Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

    is your hard drive connected as IDE0 - primary master? if not try doing so.

  • Can't boot from external hard drive

    I have a 250 GB OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Firewire drive that I use for backups for my MacBook Pro (running 10.4.8) and iBook G4 (running 10.3.9). The drive is partitioned into four parts, two of which I use for bootable clones of the MBP and iBook. I've been able to boot from the MBP clone, but whenever I try to boot from the iBook clone, after a few seconds of the gray screen with the Apple logo on it and the spinning circle, the Apple logo turns into a gray circle with a diagonal line through it, and the spinning thing keeps spinning, and it never boots up. (For lack of a better description, the circle with the line through it is a gray version of the symbol you see, for instance, in the Ghostbusters logo.)
    Here's a few things that aren't (or don't seem to be) the problem:
    - I'm not trying to boot from the wrong machine--i.e., I'm not trying to boot the iBook clone from the MBP
    - Since I've tried creating the clone with both EMC Retrospect Express and SuperDuper and get the same result with both, it doesn't seem to be the backup software
    - I've tried completely erasing the partition (including erasing the free space) from both the MBP and the iBook before creating the clone
    - Just for good voodoo, I've also repaired permissions, reset the NVRAM, and run a disk repair on both the internal iBook disk and the clone
    - The iBook definitely recognizes it as a bootable drive, since it shows up when I hold down the option key during boot, and also in the Startup Disk section of System Preferences
    I'm a little stymied at this point. The only other things I can think of would be that (a) I need to completely reformat and repartition the drive (which I don't really want to do, since I also have other backups and data on there), or (b) for some reason the fact that I initially created the partitions on the MBP is preventing the iBook from using those partitions (i.e., I can only create Intel-only or PPC-only partitions, which I hope isn't the problem, since that would mean I'd need a whole separate drive just to back up the iBook).
    Anyone have any idea what's going on?

    The MBP and iBook require different partition schemes to be bootable. You won't be able to boot both computers from the same drive.
    I can't install Mac OS X on a hard drive
    If the installer won't let you install Mac OS X on a hard drive and gives as the reason "Mac OS X cannot start up from this volume," the drive may not have the partition scheme that the Installer requires. The needed partition scheme depends on the type of processor in your Mac. The installer installs Mac OS X for Intel-based Macintosh computers only on drives with the GUID partition scheme. It installs Mac OS X for PowerPC-based Macintosh computers only on drives with the Apple partition scheme.
    To check the external drive's partition scheme, open Disk Utility, select the drive in the list, choose File > Get Info, and look for the "Partition Type." If you can't see the "Partition Type," you may have selected the volume instead of the disk. (Drives are flush left, with their volumes indented to the right below them.)
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh2315.html
    John

  • Can I boot an internal hard drive with snow leopard?

    Hi, I Have an Mid 07 macbook which i'm in the process of upgrading. I have a hard drive that i am up grading from 160gb to 500gb. my problem is i dont have a boot disc, because it's ethier been lost or didn't come with one. my question is can i just format the new hard drive with a copy of snow leopard?

    Clean Install of Snow Leopard
         1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc.  Insert the disc into the
             optical drive and restart the computer.  After the chime press and hold down the
             "C" key.  Release the key when you see a small spinning gear appear below the
             dark gray Apple logo.
         2. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue
             button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
             After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive
             size.)  Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.  Set the number of
             partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, set the format type to Mac
             OS Extended (Journaled, if supported), then click on the Partition button.
         3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer.  Proceed
             with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.
         4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup
             Assistant. Be sure you configure your initial admin account with the exact same
             username and password that you used on your old drive. After you finish Setup
             Assistant will complete the installation after which you will be running a fresh
             install of OS X.  You can now begin the update process by opening Software
             Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your installation current.

  • Can't boot from external hard drive with Snow Leopard

    I bought a new Macbook Air with Lion. I have my old Snow Leopard installation cloned onto an external hard drive, and I want to boot from it. I can choose my external hard drive during boot, it shows the Apple logo, but after that the screen goes black and nothing happens. Is there a way to fix this?

    Can't be done.  Snow Leopard does not contain necessary drivers and perhaps other items required for OS X on the 2011 MBA.  In fact, the version of Lion on the App store won't install on the 2011 MBA.
    This is totally normal in Apple's world.  A new version of MAC hardware that comes with a new version of OS X installed usually will not operate correctly with previous versions of OS X.

  • Can't Boot from Second Hard Drive

    I put a second SSD hard drive into the bay for a second hard drive but I'm unable to boot from it even after making it the primary drive in the computer settings.
    Both hard drive are running Windows 8 if that makes a difference.
    Any ideas?

    Do you have an Intel version of OS X installed on the external drive and did you partition the external drive using the GUID partition scheme? If not then that's your problem. Also, depending upon which model MBP you have you may require a later version of OS X. According to my information the C2D 17" MBP requires at least 10.4.8 (the build that came on the OS X Installer discs that came with the computer.) 10.4.6 will not boot that model.

  • How to migrate from internal hard drive to SSD (Solid State Drive)?

    I just bought 128GB SSD. I want to replace my internal hard drive with SSD on MacBook Pro. My internal drive has only Mac OS installed (no dual boot with Windows/Linux). Going forward I want to boot my Mac OS from SSD and use internal drive for backup purposes only. I read many forums regarding this here, but each one talks about different methods of doing it.
    * Carbon Copy Cloner for the Mac side (free)
    * Casper 6.0 for the Windows side (not free)
    * SuperDuper
    Can some one provide me with simple steps to migrate Mac OS along with my personal data from internal hard drive to SSD?

    Because Windows is not involved, you don't need Casper or anything else Windows-related.
    Use Disk Utility to repair permissions and repair the directory on your internal hard drive. Buy an external SATA hard drive enclosure* and mount your SSD in it. Connect it to the MBP and use Disk Utility to create a single GUID partition on it, formatting the partition Mac OS Extended. Use SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner, it doesn't matter which, to make a bootable clone of the internal hard drive on the SSD in the external enclosure. Restart the computer holding down the Option key, and select the SSD to start up from; the purpose here is to verify that the SSD really is bootable. If that works OK, shut down, disconnect the external enclosure, and exchange the drives.
    *I recommend a FireWire 800 enclosure, but they are much more expensive than USB-only enclosures, which will work OK — USB is just slow.

  • Can I boot from an external drive with a "Virtual CD"

    I just purchased a Hitachi LifeStudio external hard drive for use as my Time Machine backup. When I plugged it in to my MacBook running 10.6.4, I realized that it had one of those "Virtual CDs" that contained the manufacturers crapware, similar to Western Digital's MyWare or whatever its called. It shows up in disk utility as an actual separate disk and not just another partition that can be wiped.
    I reformatted the drive using GUID and and created 3 HFS+ Journaled partitions. One was going to be for the 10.6 installer, one for the 10.6 boot, and one for my time machine backup. I restored a 10.6 install dvd disk image I created using disk utility to the 10.6 installer partition (with erase destination checked) then option booted my mac and the partitions did not show up. The only thing I could see was my internal hard drive.
    I have done this many times before and it has always worked so Im trying to figure out what Im doing wrong. The only thing I can think of is that the "Virtual CD" that Hitachi put on this external drive is stopping the Mac from seeing the bootable partitions I created. I even went into system preferences>startup disk and blessed the 10.6 install partition. That didn't work either, the computer just booted to my internal drive.
    So my questions are. Is it because of this "Virtual CD" that I can't boot from my external drive? If so, is there a way around it? I already searched their web site and emailed their tech support asking for a firmware update to remove the virtual cd.
    Thanks in advance.

    Yes, it's a known issue. You've already referred to the issue with WD systems. WD has a long list of products that are either not compatible with Macs or won't boot a Mac.
    There are practically no problems with bare drives, but once installed in an enclosure there is no guarantee that the package will function as a bootable device. This is especially the case if the manufacturer uses some sort of "virtual" scheme intended for using the device as a sort of one button backup device.
    External drives don't have to specifically say anything about being Mac bootable or compatible. It's up to the consumer to verify compatibility and usability.

  • Can I install an internal hard drive in i-mac intel 17" ?

    Where can I get an internal hard drive compatible for intel i-mac? I need a larger hard drive, like 250gb or something. Can I install it myself?

    You can go to a apple service center like CompUSA and have them install one for you. If you buy the drive from them, they will install it for free, otherwise it is like a 40 dollar charge. DO NOT attempt to install it yourself, not only will you void your warranty, the intel iMac is very difficult to open and work on and you will probably break something.
    Glor

  • Why won't my iMac 27" boot from external hard drive?

    I have a new 27in Intel i5 dual core 3.6GHz iMac. It works wonderfully.
    My question is this. I have a Pleides Ice Cube external hard drive with a USB 2.0/Firewire enclosure with a 500GB hard drive. I used diskutility to format the hard drive as a GUID Partition Table. I then used SuperDuper to clone the iMac OS 10.6.7 and Apps over to it.
    I can select the external drive in System Preferences/Startup Disk to boot from, but when booting the iMac gets as far as the white screen then just stops loading.
    I have tried both the USB connection and the Firewire connection (with a Firewire 800 to 400 cable).
    I have run Disk Utility and repaired the disk and the preferences.
    I have used Disk Warrior to rebuild the directory as well, but the iMac will not boot from the drive.
    It does boot from the original DVD's and its own hard drive.
    My old 24" iMac had no trouble booting from this hard drive or any of the others I have collected over the years, so I am reluctant to think it is the external drive. It is something to do with this particular processor Snow Leopard and external drives.

    It sounds like something in the SuperDuper clone might not have copied well. To get the full answer on that I would check with Apple or SuperDuper to see if they support each other.
    As a quick test, if you restart and immediately press and hold "option" on your keyboard do you see your external HD as an option to boot from? If so, click it and see if the boot runs any differently, but if you don't see it at all that could show that the problem is more deep rooted.
    Personally, if looking in to either of those didn't give me any other info to go on, I would reformat and start the clone again. BTW, do you know for sure GUID Partition is the format you'd want to do this on? Generally macs use "Mac OS Extended" and some external HDs can use "FAT32" (if you want them to work well with Windows)
    Hope that gives a little direction
    Alex

Maybe you are looking for