Cloned startup disk question

This past June I cloned my startup hard drive, the original 320GB HDD that came with my Mac Pro new in March 2008. I used Disk Utility's Restore and erased the new drive first, selecting Mac OS Extended, Journaled. This drive, a WD 1TB Caviar Black, is recognized when I boot from another drive because it shows up as a choice using System Preferences > Startup Disk.
The question I have is that a second, more recent 1TB drive, a Hitachi 1TB drive, was sent through the same process. My Mac Pro will start up fine using this drive, but when I look at System Preferences > Startup Disk, this newly-cloned drive is not an option. The first cloned drive that I mentioned above is showing, and a second option shows, Network Startup. Why does the Hitachi drive I cloned a couple of days ago not show up in System Preferences > Startup Disk even though my system is booted from this drive?
The drives were cloned using an eSata dock, and no errors were reported during the 2 to 3 hour process.

Since I see no way to edit this question, I am adding some more info.
When I restart my Mac and hold down the option key, both cloned drives (mentioned above) are shown as options for startup - the Hitachi and the WD drives, both clones of the original 320GB drive. Also, a third option is Windows. Since I chose the Hitachi drive as my startup drive, the Mount Point shows it is the primary drive.
When I select System Preferences > Startup Disk, the Hitachi drive still does not show up as an option.
One more observation is that when I used About This Mac > More Info, this Hitachi drive has
Partition Map Type: MBR (Master Boot Record)
even though I selected Mac OS Extended (Journaled) when I erased the new drive.
All the other drives (four of them) show
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
Do I need to re-format the drive to ensure it is partitioned as GPT?
Message was edited by: Leon Smith

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Time machine no longer backs up after cloning startup disk

I cloned my startup disk (250 mb) in April 2013 to a 500 mb disk and replaced it with the cloned disk. Before the clone, Time Machine was backing up properly to the 6tb external drive designated for backup. Since installing the clone Time Machine has not backed up anything. Everything (all the apps) is working properly on the cloned disk except, apparently, Time Machine. In fact, I cannot get Time Machine to allow me to make any adjustments to the settings. I went on the Apple Support website to see if I can reinstall Time Machine, but could not find anything. Any suggestions?
Model Name:          Mac Pro
Model Identifier:          MacPro1,1
Processor Name:          Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed:          2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors:          2
Total Number Of Cores:          4
L2 Cache (per processor):          4 MB
Memory:          12 GB
Bus Speed:          1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version:          MP11.005C.B08
SMC Version (system):          1.7f10

If only the system was cloned with CCC it should work, though if you change names who knows.
Delete the plist and turn off and on.
they don't make 6TB so you're using some kind of array or JBOD.
http://www.apple.com/support/timemachine
subsection in Mac OS X forum.
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Time Machine and a Cloned StartUp Disk

I have a BootCamp partition on my startup disk that is painfully too small. In the next couple of hours I will have a 2 TB drive delivered to replace it. Splitting it in half between Mountain Lion and BootCamp/Windows, I have addressed any issues I thought would arise. I plan to clone the Mac partition of my current drive onto the new and just do a clean install of the BootCamp/Windows partition. Backups done, preparations taken care of, my final concern has come to mind...
Will Time Machine continue its incremental updating from a cloned drive?
In the past, any time I've changed computers the backup wasn't available. Other forums I've checked says that Time Machine allies itself with the MAC address of the computer it backs up. Some hinted that there's a paring with the drive it backs up as well. Is this true? I'm not changing Macs, I'm not even changing the data; I'm just changing the drive its on.
It's not a big deal if I lose the backup though I'd prefer not having to go through that initialization again. It just seems logical that Time Machine would view the clone same as the original. Any feedback?

I personally only have the Time Machine backup. The main advantage of the Time Machine backup is that it happens automatically every hour that the Mac is active, incrementally backing up files that changed. With a clone, it is only as up to date as the last time you performed a cloning run. The second advantage of Time Machine is that you can +go back in time+ to an earlier state, not just restore to the latest state. With a clone, all you have is the last backup.
The advantage of a clone is that you can boot from it. So if your hard drive fails, you can still use your iMac to wrap up necessary work before sending your iMac in for repair.
It you have two external hard drives, there would be nothing wrong with doing both. Make a clone about once a month and let Time Machine handle the up-to-the-last-hour backups.
If you had to choose one, I would use Time Machine.
It is remotely possible that your primary storage drive and your Time Machine drive will fail at the same time. So I do keep my most critical files (just the files) backed up to second separate storage location. I do that manually.

Startup disk question/problem

Should the startup disk always be at the top of the list of disks upon startup? Or is it now the case, with 10.5 on a MacBook, that the internal disk is at the top of the list whether or not it is the startup disk?
Situation: New MacBook Mac OS 10.5.8, new Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD3200BEVT 320GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive in an external MacAlly SATA FW/USB case. I erased (formated) the external drive, and, using Restore in Disk Utility, made what I expected to be a clone of the MacBook's internal drive.
Problem: After repairing permissions, using Start Up Disk preferences I selected the new drive as the start up drive. Upon restart I get mixed signals as to which is the startup drive. The original (internal) drive is at the top of the list on the right of desktop but, in the Start Up Disk Preferences list, the new drive is highlighted. (Further: I am able, after right clicking on the internal disk, to select it, to eject it.)
Questions: Have I bought a drive that won't work as a start up drive or doesn't Disk Utility Restore in 10.5.8 create a bootable drive as in 10.4 or does the internal disk always show up at the top of the list on the desktop in 10.5.8? When I swap the drives, putting the new drive in the MacBook, will it boot?
This procedure for swapping new drives has always worked with my Macs thru Mac OS 10.4.11.

Check with Western Digital (the FAQs on their website) whether that hard drive is bootable on your Mac. Not all of them are.
Quote from a Western Digital FAQ:
While it may be possible to boot your computer to an external hard drive, Western Digital does not provide technical support for booting your computer using an external hard drive. If you intend to make a copy of your boot drive, or install your operating system, please use a second internal drive (EIDE or Serial ATA), rather than an external drive.
And their list of bootable drives:
The following external hard drives are bootable on Intel-based Macintosh computers systems through USB:
• My Book Essential Edition
• My Book Essential Edition 2.0
• My Book Home Edition
• My Book Mirror Edition
• My Book Office Edition
• My Book Premium Edition
• My Book Premium Edition II
• My Book Premium ES Edition
• My Book Pro Edition
• My Book Pro Edition II
• My Book Studio Edition
• My Book Studio Edition II
• My Passport Studio
The following external hard drives are bootable on Intel-based Macintosh computers systems through FireWire (1394a/b):
• My Book Home Edition
• My Book Mirror Edition
• My Book Office Edition
• My Book Premium Edition
• My Book Premium Edition II
• My Book Pro Edition
• My Book Pro Edition II
• My Book Studio Edition
• My Book Studio Edition II
• My Passport Studio
The following external hard drives are bootable on Power PC based Macintosh computers systems through FireWire (1394a/b):
• WD My Book Premium Edition
• WD My Book Pro Edition
The following external hard drives are not bootable on Power PC based Macintosh computers systems through USB/FireWire 1394(a/b):
• My Book Essential Edition
• My Book Essential Edition 2.0
• My Book Home Edition
• My Book Mirror Edition
• My Book Office Edition
• My Book Premium Edition II
• My Book Pro Edition II
• My Book Studio Edition
• My Book Studio Edition II
• My Passport Studio
• My Passport Elite
• My Passport Essential
• WD Passport
• WD Passport (Silver)
You will find a more up to date list on their website.

Can't write to external disk after cloning startup disk to it

After cloning my PowerBook Pro's startup disk to an external Thunderbolt drive, and temporarily using that drive to boot-up, the Thunderbolt drive is locked into Read Only mode. How do I enable it to write again? The INFO pane says the following: System privilege: "Read & Write"; wheel: "Read Only"; everyone: "Read Only". The basis for my cloning was to deal with a very full startup disk that I did a lot of video editing on (very processor intensive). The disk had become fragmented to the point that it couldn't access sectors fast enough for editing, so I cloned it over to a G-Tech Thunderbolt drive (using Carbon Copy Cloner), reformatted the MacBook startup disk, then reverse-cloned the copied files back over from the Thunderbolt, the idea being that they'd be re-written nice 'n neat in unfragmented order into their proper sectors. I then ceased booting-up from Thunderbolt, but now the system seems to think that Thunderbolt is still special in some way like a gossling bonded to a surrogate human mother, and it won't let me write to it. Can anybody help me with this?

Have you verified and if necessary, repaired the disk(s) using Disk Utility on your Mac?

Startup Disk Question

I decided to make the move from PC to mac today, and purchased a MacBook. I just have a quick question regarding the startup disk menu. When it asks me to "select the system you want to use to start up your computer", I should be selecting the "Mac OS X, 10.6.1 on Macintosh HD" option, correct? I just want to make sure. Thanks.

Hi pp1987, welcome to Apple Discussions!
Yes that is correct!
Dennis

Cloning ASM disks question?

I have a customer who has been running oracle 10.2.0.4 two node rac on HPUX Itanium platform and using raw devices for the datafile locations. They use EMC clraion for the storage platfom.
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Just wanting to know if anyone has some experience on cloning ASM disk or disk groups between different hosts and maybe some supporting documentation to go along with it.
Thanks.

YOU CAN. You can use the same EMC copy for the ASM Lun, attach it to another server and can start the ASM instance up. It is quiet same as you were doing it with raw devices.
ASM files has ASM headers on it. When you copy the disks over, asm instance can recognize those headers and be able to come online. ASm instance can identify the copied disks from their disk headers.

Startup Disk Question Mark

I have a weird problem. Well I guess its not really a problem. I reinstalled a new hard drive into my Macbook Pro and I installed everything and everything works beautifully. However I noticed that in the preference panel that there is a question mark on the startup icon.
http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/4059/picture1dm7.png
When I reboot I see NO folder with a question mark or anything of that sort. I had tried to select the hard drive as a start up disk and restarted but the icon does not change. I do NOT have boot camp for it is a fresh install.
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Its always been like that? Weird. I've had leopard for over 6 months now and I could have sworn that it never had a question mark. O well. So then everything is normal!! Great!
I guess the thread may be closed now.

Bone head question:reformatting startup disk

I know it a bone head question but I need to reformate my current startup disk.
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cheers&aloha
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If you have a spare drive which doesn't currently have Mac OS X installed, use an application such as this one to clone your current drive to it, restart from the clone or another drive, and erase the startup disk.
If not or if you don't want to clone the whole drive, copy anything off of it you want, erase the current drive, and then copy your data back after setting it up again.
(16250)

Cloning an OSX 10.3.9 Server startup disk

Hello,
I'm having some problems with an XServe startup disk running out of disk space for no apparent reason. I'm going to do a clean install of OSX Server 10.3, but before I do I'd like to know if cloning the current startup disk to another, blank but larger drive within the XServe and then booting from that will have any affect on the system as a whole, or should it just work as normal? The startup disk is just that, and runs the applications. Otherwise it's an AxusYota RAID where all of the share points, backups etc. are kept/go to. The main applications running are Kerio Mail Server, Meeting Maker Calendar and FileMaker Pro Server.
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Dan.

If I clear out the swap I still only get about 450MB of free space each time I restart. I've tried so many ways of discovering what's taking up the space, but no luck as yet. That's why I'd like to install from scratch. I'll be cloning to a much larger drive, so I'm not worried about the disk space issue on the new drive. Am just curious as to how the whole setup will run off the clone...

Initial startup with question marked folder with a disk already inside

Initial startup with question marked folder with a disk already inside

Reinstalling Lion/Mountain Lion Without Erasing the Drive
Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
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Startup issues question mark and disk appearing at startup.

Ok,
Here's my situation...Like a bone head I changed the startup disk from my Tiger to OS9...don't know why...well it's apperently missing so I only get the ?/disk icon. How do I get back to OS10 system preferences to undo this ****? This used for my music with iPod only.
Any assistance would be appreciated.
thanks

If your computer supports OPTION booting then restart and hold down the OPTION key after the chime until the boot manager screen appears. Select your OS X volume and click on the large right arrow button. After you startup into OS X open Startup Disk preference and set your OS X volume as the default and click on the Restart button.
If the computer doesn't support OPTION booting then restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the "X" key until the computer starts up in OS X. Then reset default with Startup Disk per above.
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Question mark folder, but can use it as startup disk for other machines

I have an old iBook G3 which I have put a new hard drive in, reformatted and installed Tiger. I installed Tiger off another iBook as the combo drive in this book is currently broken. When I attempt to boot the computer I get the folder with the alternating question mark and finder face. However, if I put my iBook in Target Mode, I can use it to boot my other iBook and a PowerMac G4 no problem.
I have tried resetting the PRAM, tried holding down the X key, tried holding down the option key (the boot volume does show up, but when I choose it nothing happens).
I'm completely lost as to what to do. I don't really need this computer, but I was going to keep it around for my friends' kids to use when they come over. Any help would be hugely appreciated.
Thanks!

Oh yes, I know, I did that too. Let me recap:
I have put the iBook G3 in Target mode, put the Tiger disc in my G4, installed Tiger to the G3. The computer completes the install and setup just fine and enters into the OS without issue. I then shut it all down, disconnect the firewire cable and reboot and G3 gives me the flashing folder/question mark.
I have put the G4 in Target mode with the Tiger disc in the drive and attempted to install to G3. No joy there either. And, actually, now that I think about it, I can't remember if I could ever get it to choose the install disc as a boot option...
If I hold down the option key, my drive shows up as a boot volume, but it will not boot. I can click on the drive, but nothing happens.
I have zapped the pram, as well as following all the other advice given on the Apple site, and still nothing.
If I put the ibook in Target mode, connect it to another computer and hold down the option key on the other computer, the iBook's startup disk shows as an option and, if chosen, successfully boots the other computer (so clearly the issue is not with the hd or with any physical connections within the computer).
This is making me insane! I appreciate any and all help on this.
Thanks!

Why is there a question mark on my startup disk.

When I go to apple system preferences, there is a question mark on my startup disk. Why? and what should I do to resolve it.
I don't have any problem starting my ocmputer and using it.

in the system pref.
the top line ... "Show all, Display, Sound, Network,
Startup disk
my 'startup disk' has a question mark!
Right. That's fine. It's just telling you that you can click that icon to choose a different Startup Disk. That question mark is part of the icon for that preference pane.
I click on it and I get a"select the system.."
It shows my Mac OS 10.3.9 and Network Startup which
has a question mark
I do have OS selected.
and question mark on Network.
Is that correct?
Correct.
Now, where do I go to see my startup items?
Click on "Show All" in the System Preferences. Then Accounts down in the System section. Choose your account in the list at the left hand side, then choose the "Startup Items" tab on the right.
To remove an app from that list, select it and use the "-" button below. Unchecking it just means that if the application has a window, it'll be hidden at startup.
Thanks for all your help.
You're welcome.
cheers,
charlie

Question mark on startup disk in System Preferences

There is question mark sign on startup disk in System Preferences on Mavericks of Macbook air 13inch (Early 2014). I can't find any solution for this. Could someone please help me find the solution. I know that something went wrong and I don't know how to fix it.

I think I now understand your concern. This is from my MBP System preferences display:
Click on it and should show what startup disk option(s) you have. This is normal.
Ciao.

Cloned startup disk question

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