Another annoying "won't boot off firewire" thread

OK, I work at a small charter school with only a single Intel Xserve ("late 2006" model 1,1).
We have an external GRaid firewire 800 hard drive (this has RAID 0 internally, but appears to the computer to be a single drive). This boots the Xserve just fine when hooked to USB, but won't boot the Xserve when attached via firewire (either 800 or 400). I'm at a loss here, because the drive is supposedly firewire bootable. I do have the drive partitioned, it is GUID, and I've created and booted from many partitioned external drives in the past (although I have never booted this Xserve from external firewire - this is the first time I've tried it with this machine).
I have a keyboard and monitor actually hooked to the Xserve for now, so I can easily select the "option" key at bootup method and simply select my boot disc. This drive does not show up when hooked up to firewire, but shows up immediately when hooked to USB (but this is far too slow for our purposes).
What am I missing? (besides my brain, that is...)
Thanks.

Turns out the drive manufacturer was simply lying. I called them directly and they tried to give me the runaround about them "not supporting the Xserve" and that I would have to call Apple. At any rate, their attitude demonstrated quite quickly that they knew perfectly well the drive wasn't actually firewire bootable. Too bad as the device was nicely made and very fast on firewire 800. It has been exchanged at the place of purchase for a different firewire 800 drive which is bootable and works perfectly.
Thanks for trying to help out.
(And yes, I'm familiar with all popular RAID configurations. The purpose of fast drive was specifically to maintain a high-speed bootable clone, so when one of the drives in the raid 0 fails I can quickly switch over to booting from the external device. We also maintain both on-site and off-site backups. Would love to set them up with a RAID 5 or high-capacity mirrored array on 10k drives, but when working in the education environment, one often has to make due as best as possible with limited funding.)

Similar Messages

MacBook won't boot off Firewire drives

i just got a MacBook and couldn't be more pleased but i just tried to use the Firewire drive to boot from but it doesn't show up as option for restart. the drives( i tried two) are loaded with 10.4.10 and show up on the desktop and work fine but it's odd the Mac won't boot from them. had no issue connecting to my Pismo. both show up as start up discs. i looked in the forums but didn't see this issue brought up. a little help please.

Paul Roese1 wrote:
Does this mean i have to (can i?) install Tiger from my MB's discs on to a connected firewire drive and it can then be used as a start up drive for the unit? Thanks much.
Yup. Alternatively, you can 'clone' the MB's internal hd to the external firewire hd. Two of the most widely used methods of achieving this are:
1. Carbon Copy Cloner - http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
2. SuperDuper! - http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
Kryten

My G4 won't boot off a firewire drive cloned from properly-booting drive

I've got a G4 that normally boots 10.3.9 off an external firewire drive. I cloned the drive onto a WesternDigital "MyBook" external hard drive, and connected it via firewire 400. I cloned the 10.3.9 boot drive using SuperDuper to a partition on this drive. But, the G4 refuses to boot off it when I choose it as a startup disk. I see (very briefly) the following
....couldn't read it.... @d/mac-io@7/ata-4@1f000/disk@0:5,\\:tbxi
anyone know what this is, why it won't boot off the clone, and how I can check whether the drive contains a proper 10.3.9 system and is set to be bootable?
Mike

Hi Mike-
How did you know?
I "Googled" it. It's been reported many times, and is included in a couple of reviews.
Problem is, "bootable" can be claimed in Mac's, as it will boot with Intel machines.......
Don't ya' just hate that?????
This review is from a writer for Mac-Centric.

Old G4 won't boot from firewire drive

I have an older 400 MHz G4 running 10.3.9 and 10.1.5 which will not boot from a firewire system volume. Two system volumes (10.4) on the external drive appear as start up disk choices in the system preferences, but when selected the system displays a folder w/? upon restart and then the system boots from an OS 9 partition on one of the machines internal drives. This happens when the system is restarted from either of the computers boot partitions (10.3.9, 10.1.5). Don't know if this is a software or a hardware problem. Holding down the option key upon restart, even without the external OS 10.4 drive, produces same behavior. System info identifies the machine as a G3 but processor type as G4. It is one of the graphite colored Power Macs.
Any insights appreciated.

The G4 PCI graphics PowerMac can not boot off a Firewire hard drive. Check which G4 model you have here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58418
The G4 AGP and the iMac DV were the first Macs to be able to boot off Firewire.
It is interesting your Mac identifies itself as a G3. Now it is true that the early G4s were basically a G3 with a slightly modified logicboard and front and side panels (as well as the omission of the ADB port). But there are G4s inserted in some old Blue and White G3s by adventurous upgraders. The Blue and White G3 pictured here can't boot off Firewire either:
That Mac also can't boot off Firewire.

K8n won't boot off ATA drive

So with all this talk of unlocked SATA busses limiting o/c, and my frustration getting the bus over 240 with 5:6 (or even 2:3), or 225 with 1:1 I thought I'd give using an old ATA drive a shot.
But the board won't boot off it.
I've tried several installs of XP, formated clean for fat or ntfs, clean or quick, each time after windows copies over all the files and does it's first reboot, the board can't find the OS on the HD.
NTFS and FAT give slightly different error messages but the error is something like can't find operating system, or bad operating system.
Not your can't find ntldr or anything that would look software related.
I even moved the hd from the computer back to my main rig after one of these installs, and it went right into the install program where it shoulld have been.
!!

Quote
Originally posted by sotti
yeah I ain't no newb.
wasn't ment personally, it's just that you can never tell for certain on forums
Quote
Originally posted by sotti
I'm on primary master in this box, I rejumpered the drive for my main box as it's a secondary slave there.
2nd boot device is set to HD (after floppy #1) and in the HD boot order menu it shows only this drive and external card.
It's completely bizarre
well it seems more people have these problems. Since I haven't tried yet I wouldn't know what's the trick behind this. Will let ye know more in 2 weeks orso when my exams are past tense

MacBook Pro won't boot off Tiger CD

I installed a larger drive into my MacBook Pro. I inserted the Tiger OS X cd, and pressed the 'C' ket to boot off the cd. It doesn't recognize the start-up disk and goes to the "? Folder".
I zapped the PRAM, etc. with no change.
I can boot off an external drive with OS X installed by holding down the "option key" at power up, and selecting that external drive, BUT it doesn't recognize the OS X CD in this mode either.
If I use the external drive to boot from and insert the Tiger CD, I can only go so far in the installation process before I get a window that says "You can not install OS X on this computer". I've only seen this window when trying to install a lower version of os x onto a drive that has a higher version installed. As my new drive is blank (OS extended), it seems I should be able to install Tiger on the empty drive. Right?
Any suggestions?

The MBP is an Intel based computer vs. the PPC based G4 or G5 or anything earlier. They started being produced in 2006 (which for me is new, with my 2000 model ). Texas Mac Man provides some history as to the OS versions, but all the early ones came with their own version of Tiger. You can't even use a retail installer version of Tiger since it wasn't considered necessary to provide a retail version of Tiger for a computer series that came with it anyway.
If you are using a G4 installer it is definitely the wrong disc and you're getting exactly the message we'd expect. Sometimes it won't even get that far.
If you can't find the discs it may be possible to clone your old drive to the new drive. This is assuming the old drive is still viable and you have an enclosure in which to put the new drive while attached to the computer with the old drive inside. If you use a tool such as Carbon Copy Cloner it will place a bootable complete duplicate of your one drive onto another.
Message was edited by: Limnos
Message was edited by: Limnos

MBP upgraded to Mavericks won't boot off of external drive

Now that I have upgraded my MBP to Mavericks I can not longer boot off of extrenal drives like I has in the past. I hold down the option key at boot up and it display the external drive as a bootable option but once clicked....it just hangs.
Has anyone else experienced this?
Thanks,
D

Well, want to rule out drive case,, as those do come up with EVERY new OS, just hit Lion 10.7 forum when it came out, or when 10.6.0 came out 3 yrs ago.
Maybe the power adapter is the weak link.
As I said, and goes back yrs, not a fan of FW/USB/eSATA case from major vendors (LaCie, WD, Seagate etc).
And you could try another case. Be sure to buy a case that lets you swap in your own hard drives though.
http://www.macsales.com/firewire - look for bare drive case "0" capacity hard drive

Lombard won't boot off System disc

Hi,
I have a problem that I wonder if any of you mac experts can help me with.
My problem is the computer will not boot from a system disc (any system disc) from the CD drive.
I have a Lombard Powerbook that has been running OS 8.6 (I know, I am way behind !) 192 mg RAM (64 in the lower, 128 in the upper from OWC), 4 Gb Hard drive.
The computer runs great in 8.6 - seldom crashes - however, all I have been mainly using it for is word processing.
When I try to load from any OS system disc (not the original Lombard disc, but any OS disc - 8.5, 9.2, Panther) holding down the C key, the CD drive runs for approximately 20 seconds, then stops, and on the screen I get a picture of a blank folder with a question mark - the Lombard is not reading the CD drive for some reason and won't boot from it. After a short wait OS 8.6 loads from the Hard drive.
I bought the computer on e-bay 4 years ago, and this has always been a problem - I just have been to busy in the past to deal with it.
Is there a simple command other than holding down the C key when restarting that will safely (remember I am a novice) allow me to bypass the hard drive and boot from the CD drive ?
I have done the following, which have all been unsuccessful at resolving this problem, and am out of ideas.
I have taken out all virus software from the system folder, cancelled all non-OS extensions and made sure the password extension is turned off.
I have zapped the PRAM.
I have taken out the (upper) RAM chip to be sure that it wasn't the problem - no difference.
Chosen the CD drive in the Startup Control Panel.
Checked to see if the system and finder are locked - they're not.
The CD drive may be the problem, but it runs software CDs fine, and it is the correct drive for the Lombard.
Any suggestions ? I would appreciate any ideas that people have.
Thanks.
Steve
Powerbook Lombard Mac OS 8.6 or Earlier

Steve,
You have performed a lot of troubleshooting which is helpful. There are several causes for a no-boot to CD...
1. Corrupted PRAM: You have addressed that.
2. Peripheral/external device preventing boot: Disconnect ALL peripherals.
3. Damaged or incorrect CD: The Lombard will not boot any CD earlier than OS 8.6, so the original Powerbook G3 Series Bronze Keyboard CD (has OS 8.6) or a retail MacOS 8.6 CD or newer will boot the Lombard. If you have a machine-specific OS 8.6 > 9.2.1 CD that has a computer name on it like iMac, iBook, Power Mac, etc, it will not boot your Lombard (there are a few exceptions.
Assuming you have no other problems, the Panther/10.3.x CD should boot unless you tried with only 64MB in the lower slot...then it may not boot...a Jaguar CD will, but not sure about Panther.
4. Bad drive: I don't know if an optical drive that performs normally when running an OS from the HD can also have the problem of not booting a CD. If you can find another Lombard or Pismo, swap drives and test.
5. The options for booting to a CD on the Lombard are the 'c' key, selecting the volume in the Startup Disk control panel, or the 'delete-option-command-shift' keys on restart...this forces a bypass of the HD.
6. It doesn't matter what is on the HD when trying to boot a CD; it can have a working OS or it can be empty.
Try this: If you have a supported CD, put the CD in the drive and shut down (not restart). Now press the power button and hold down the four keys for a PRAM reset...command-option-R-P...wait for two startup chimes, release the keys and immediately press the 'c' key.

IMac won't boot from Firewire?

Hey gang-
I wanted to post this to save anyone else pulling out their hair if they have a Mac that won't boot from a Western Digital (WD) external Firewire drive. I recently purchased a Western Digital My Book Studio 2 TB FireWire 800 External Hard Drive.
I bought this drive intending to partition it into two 1TB partitions- one for a bootable backup and one for a Time Machine backup. I do my bootable backups with the application SuperDuper, which is outstanding for this purpose. I have used it to create bootable backups on 3 different Maxtor external Firewire drives, and they have all flawlessly booted all my Macs. I expected no different from this new Western Digital (WD) 2TB drive.
Unfortunately, the WD would not boot 2 out of my 3 Macs when connected via Firewire. It would NOT boot an Intel MacBook (Late 2007 edition) or an Intel iMac (Mid 2007 edition). It does boot our Intel iMac (Mid-2010 edition). Strangely, the WD booted all 3 Macs when connected via USB, though needless to say very slowly in all cases. If you need additional technical information, read on.
Technical Info: The following tests were done with the WD connected via Firewire. The WD is correctly formatted for booting Intel Macs with GPT GUID formatting. Note that the WD appears as a bootable drive in System Preferences->Startup Disk on all 3 of my Macs. But when attempting to boot via Firewire, I get only a grey screen on the Intel MacBook (Late 2007 edition) and the Intel iMac (Mid 2007 edition). The Intel iMac (Mid-2010 edition) boots normally. When booting with the Option Key held down, Startup Manager does NOT see the WD as a bootable drive on the Intel MacBook (Late 2007 edition) and the Intel iMac (Mid 2007 edition). It does appear as a bootable drive on the Intel iMac (Mid-2010 edition).
When connected via USB, the WD boots all three of my Macs, but very slowly compared to the internal drive.
It's probably worth noting that the Late-2007 MacBook and the Mid-2007 iMac all share the then-new Santa Rosa architecture. So I'm guessing that they may share the same Firewire chipset. And for whatever reason, that chipset does not play nice with the WD chipset.
So, bottom line is that if you need a Firewire bootable backup, be sure to test the drive right away so that you don't think you have a bootable backup when in fact you don't.
On the good side, the drive is amazingly quiet. At this point, I need to decide whether to keep the drive, knowing that I have only USB as a bootable option on 2 out my 3 Macs, or return it. But in any case, wanted to pass this on to anyone else having problems booting from an external Firewire drive.

baltwo wrote:
FWIW, many WD HDs won't boot Macs and booting Macs isn't supported. Details at their site. That's the main reason I never recommend their crappy HDs.
Actually I'm very familiar with that list- spent a lot of time looking at this past week!
Ironically, the majority of that page is a list of drives which they claim WILL boot Macs. In fact, the list is entitled "List of Mac-bootable WD external drives..."
And yep, mine is on there...on the list that reads "The following external hard drives should be bootable on Intel-based Mac computers systems through FireWire (1394a/b)" is "MyBook Studio" as well as my drive model number.
But that's all beside the point. Like you, I couldn't recommend their drives at this point. At least make sure if you buy one that the vendor has a good return policy.
Dave

Mac Pro won't boot if firewire drives attached

New Mac Pro (OS X 10.4.8) won't boot if my two daisy-chained LaCie hard drives are attached (firewire 800).
I can upnplug 'em and the computer cranks right up; can then plug the drive back in and everything's fine. Wazzup?
Thanks, Bob
Mac Pro 2.66 Mac OS X (10.4.8) User since Apple IIe

Similar problem with iMacG5 - if two firewire drives on bus wouldn't boot. Worked with one but erratic, also long delays opening files, finder erratic and hanging. Decided it was probably a chipset problem with the firewire bus. Since upgrading firewire enclosures problem gone away (I hope). How old are the drive enclosures. Oxford911 firewire bus has some problems with newer macs and OS. May get information on bus in "about this mac/moreinfo/firewire", or in disk utility window ("applications/utilities/disk Utility") WHEN computer is booted up with drives running.
OK, a Plug for Macpower's IceCube enclosures, bloody expensive but since I upgraded no problems. Also wiebetech.com have some cool stuff including internal SATA adaptors/cages etc.for older G5's and dual cores

Xserve G5 won't boot off Hardware RAID partition

I'm running an Xserve G5, 2.0 GHz single processor, OS X Server 10.4.5 with an Apple Hardware RAID card with 3 500GB drive modules in a RAID 5. The RAID is partitioned into two partitions, one for the system and one for data. After installing a video card, the Xserve will not boot off of the system partition on the RAID. It will boot just fine off a clone of that exact partition on a firewire drive, which is how I have it functioning at the moment. I have tried erasing the system partition on the RAID and re-installing the Server software but whenever I try to boot it it gives me the flashing folder Icon. I have tried resetting the NVRAM as well as restoring the functional backup of the system to no avail.
Any ideas? (I have run disk utility, DiskWarrior, repaired permissions etc.) I also checked the status of the RAID and it is in optimal condition. The data partition seems to be just fine and the system partition seems normal when booted from the external drive.
Xserve, Dual 2.7 G5, G4 Powerbook, many others Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Harry, I just saw your post. I went through the same pain last fall, and it WAS resolved through Apple Support, but you aren't going to like the solution. Simply as background, during the pre-deployment testing of our Xserve, we were having problems with the Apple BTO SCSI card (really, an LSI Logic 22320) and swapped it out with an ATTO UL4D. Something in the card removal/replacement caused our Apple Hardware RAID card to go into the same mode as yours, where it would work fine as a RAID 5 (two LUNs, 50 GB and 417 GB, over 3x250 GB ADMs) but would not boot. Apple Support and I concluded that something had become corrupted in the firmware or boot code on the Apple Hardware RAID card, but they did not have a file to use to flash it, so they swapped out the card under our support contract, and that fixed it. I still believe that, if I had had a file to flash the card with using the megaraid command, that the original card would have been fixed. FYI the new card has Firmware Version: A131, BIOS Version G117, the old card had Firmware Version: A130, BIOS Version G117. Completely unrelated to this, I've had a RADAR bug report (RADAR #4350243) open since last November that the Apple Hardware RAID card fails to fully flush its write caches on graceful power down. I've got a test case that is 100% reproducible, causes mystery garbage blocks from space. I'd suggest that you turn the write caches off on all LUNs on your Apple Hardware RAID card as a workaround until this is fixed. LSI Logic (the Apple Hardware RAID card is a rebranded LSI Logic card) found and fixed this bug on a later firmware rev from Apple's version. No update is available yet from Apple.
Xserve G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)
Xserve G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Xserve G4 Won't Boot Off Tiger CD; Other OSXS G4 Boot Drive

The CD part is probably because the optical drive is bad, but I installed Tiger server onto a known-good drive module and it will boot another Xserve, but not the one with the bad optical. It will, however, boot off of a drive with Panther Server. I can also not boot the bad Xserve with a boot drive from another Xserve of the same model.
Any ideas?

Apparently, you can run a G4 Xserve without a video card under Server 10.3; you can't run it without one under 10.4... Threw a video card in and it booted just fine. I had no idea that it wouldn't boot without it!
Why was there no video? The other server in the office is a G5 Xserve which was built sans video. The guy that set it up couldn't do it headless so he pulled the card from a G4 Xserve and never put it back.

Xserve Crash - Now won't boot off either SAS Drive

Hi all,
My Xserve (2008) just crashed about an hour ago - turning on the screen connected to the Xserve showed the entire thing had ground to a halt, meaning I had to hold the power button down, thinking it just needed a reboot.
Upon re-booting, it just started flashing the "No OS" ?-inside-a-folder icon.
Booting off the system DVD doesn't seem to work, it loads as far as the first blue screen and gets stuck.
I've successfully managed to boot off a MacBook Pro via Target Disk Mode, and upon startup was presented with two dialogue boxes saying the disks I had inserted were unreadable by the system.
Can it really be true that BOTH my SAS drives have failed at the same time?
One was the boot drive, the other a cloned backup updated every other day.
Unfortunately I don't have a backup of the backup, though somewhat luckily this is just the OS. All the 'data' is stored in RAID5 arrays.
Any ideas what might be happening? Something inside the Xserve itself?
I'm currently installing Snow Leopard Server onto a LaCie FW800 drive through a Mac Mini, should be done in about 25 minutes. I'll then plug that into the Xserve and try to alt-boot off that, see if I can get to DiskWarrior.
Any help is appreciated,
-Robert

Nicolas, welcome, did you boot from OS 9.1 or 9.2 for the firmware update. And exactly what happens when you attempt to boot from the external.
Joe
Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Mac Mini (PPC) won't boot off install DVD

I'm having a major issue with my 1.24GHZ G4 Mac Mini. What I want to do is reformat the HD and reinstall OSX. But for some bizarre reason the machine refuses to boot off any OSX install DVD I throw at. I've tried Jaguar and Panther as well. If I hold down the C key during reboot and wait for the Apple logo to come up, I get that but it goes no farther. I can hear the drive being accessed (and I know it's not fault because it works fine under OSX) and yet I end up getting stuck at that logo screen. I can reboot the system normally into OSX Tiger.
I also strangely cannot partition the hard drive from within Disk Utility.
Can anyone give advice?

Possible options/questions...
a) Have you tried using the original Install DVD that came with it?
b) Have you tried booting into Single user mode and checked the drive? (Hold down Apple-S until it boots into text mode and when you finally get the prompt type 'fsck -fy' without the quotes).
c) Also, you may wish to try resetting the PRAM immediately before booting from CD. Let it reset THREE times (hold down Apple-Option-P-R or WinKey-Alt-P-R until it has chimed 4 times) and then hold down the C key to boot from your Install DVD.

IMac G4 won't boot from FireWire HDD

Hi everyone, I recently got a 1st generation iMac G4 with OS 9.2. I updated RAM to 768 mb and now I'd like to install Tiger on it. I found my old Tiger DVD but it looks like the DVD drive in to the iMac doesn't work properly. When I put in the DVD, it spins a little bit and than is expelled. After a few attempts, I was able to make the iMac read it, and open the installer, but when I pressed the Restart button I got an error saying that the CD (??) could not be set as startup device. It was indeed grayed out in the Startup Disk Control Panel. I don't know whether the problem is the DVD drive or the disk itself (which looks a bit scratchy).
On the Internet I found out that I could try to boot via FireWire on an external HDD. I had the .dmg of the Tiger DVD I did when I bought the original disk, and with the Restore option I put the image on the drive (1 TB, FW400 MyBook, previously formatted in a single partition using Apple Partition Map) so that it can be recognized by OS9 as a bootable DVD. And indeed it is. The problem is that, again, when I press the restart button in the Install Mac OS X program I get the same error massage saying: "Startup Disk was unable to select the install CD as the startup disk (-2)". This time, though, I can manage to manually set the external drive as the startup disk, but when I reboot I get the "question mark icon" (which usually means that the Mac is unable read the partition selected), and then it reboots in OS9. I cannot understand if the partition I created is not bootable, or if the drive is not read by the open firmware on boot. If I boot with the option key depressed, the only boot option I get is the internal HDD, and I can't manage to see the external HDD: I tried to change cable, change ports, press refresh button multiple times, but it doesn't see the FireWire drive. I also tried to reset NVRAM (which brought back to life the internal speaker), open firmware and PMU, in this order, but this didn't solve the problem.
So what else can I do? Thank you for your help, I hope my English was good enough for you to understand the problem :)
Dario

Unfortunately, it didn't work :( so the situation now is as follows: I bought a FW400-to-FW800 adapter on eBay, and it perfectly works; my mid-2010 MacBookPro (Snow Leopard) has a perfectly working SuperDrive; I have a copy of Tiger's retail DVD with some scratches and a copy of the same DVD I made from a disk image of Tiger that I made when I bought the disk some years ago.
So I connected the 2 Macs via the FireWire cable+adapter, I booted the MacBook in Target Disk Mode and put the DVD (I tried with both of them) in the SuperDrive, and then turned on the iMac on OS 9.2, but nothing appears on it's desktop. On the System Profiler, in the Devices&Volumes tab, in the FireWire section I only see a kind of code that I also see when there's nothing plugged in. I tried to change FireWire ports but nothing happens, apart from the iMac freezing sometimes. Am I doing something wrong? Or is it the case my MacBook is not suitable to do this job?
Thanks again

Another annoying "won't boot off firewire" thread

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