Boot from second optical drive

Hello,
My Mac Pro has two optical drives. The top tray (drive 1) is not working. I need to boot from the Install CD in the second, or lower, disk tray. When I hold down the C key at startup, it does not seem to recognize the CD in drive 2. Do I have to specifically point to that drive (option key?), or should it automatically go to the loaded tray? Please help. Thanks!

Sorry for broken link...:-(
Startup manager: How to select startup volume;
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1310?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
-- kaz-k

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Can "Refit" Be Used for USB Boot From External Optical Drive?

Since the new Mac Mini 2011 has no optical drive, how would one make a generic USB 2.0 optical drive act as a boot device? I have heard that a utility called "Refit" can alter the boot loading order and device choices in Macs. I suppose it is also possible that the new Mini may already be set up to boot first from USB. I would appreciate any comments. It would be nice to have some kind of optical drive boot option for Windows installation and other possible utilities that need to boot before the OS in order to work. Maybe I will have to take my external optical drive to an Apple store to find out. Hope not. I also suspect that a USB keyboard will be mandatory for "Refit" and the boot drive to be used before Mac OS X is loaded.

No utility should be needed.
You can hold the Option key down during the boot process to select which drive you wish to use as a boot device.
Also pressing and holding C boots to the optical drive.
There is reportedly a pretty broad number of USB optical drives that people have been able to use as a boot device, as inexpensively as $30. I don't know that there is a specific list though. I would research whichever model you wish to buy with a quick google search or searching that model here in the forum.
Or maybe somebody will have a recommendation which one they have.

I purchased an unclaimed luggage at the airport that had a mid 2010 13" MB-Pro -- It comes up to a boot screen with snow leopard or Windows -- I tried to boot from Optical with Lion install -- it woon't won't boot from the optical drive, help

It won't go to taget disk mode -- I took the drive out and used disk utility to re-partition and format - now I get the folder with a question mark and it still won't boot from optical or usb or go to target disk mode -- I haven't tried installing lion on the disk while it is out and then putting it back in the machine --
according to the serial number, it is still under apple care but since I don't know the person that used to own it I can't get it transferred to me -- or will apple do that since I bought it in an auction?

Ok so I've done what you said and this is what it's come back ....
I don't know that these are the errors , but they're the things which don't look right ...
Throughout the shut down there is a recurring line ;
It says ;
Com.apple.launchd 1 0x100600e70.anonymous.unmount 301 PID still valid
Then there are 2 more which I think are related ;
Com.apple.securityd 29 PID job has I overstayed its welcome , forcing removal.
Then the same with fseventd 48 and diskarbitrationd 13
Oh and on Launchd1 : System : stray anonymous job at shut down : PID 301 PPID13 PGID 13 unmount...
Then the last process says "about to call: reboot (RB_AUTOBOOT).
Continuing...
And stops ...
Hope this means something to you ... Thanks again for your help so far :-)

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.

Booting from second hard drive

I have a T510 (4349-2PU) on which I would like to install a second hard drive using the ultrabay adapter. The primary purpose of this would be to run an alternative OS. I wonder if someone could please confirm whether or not this is likely to work, and if I would need to make any changes to the Bios settings? Also, would it matter which drive has the boot manager installed?
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they would both need boot manager installed you would need to set the one you want to boot to first in the BIOs if you want the ultrabay HDD to boot it has to be listed first in the boot order
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Thinkpad R61 7733-1GU
Thinkpad X61T 7762-54U
Thinkpad X60T 6363-4GU
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How to boot from second hard drive in Ultra Bay

Hi all!
I recently installed a SSD drive as my primary disk and mounted my old hard drive in the Ultrabay. It still has all its original partitions, which are:
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TIA
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Hit F12 to pull up the boot menu when you turn the machine on. Select the drive in the Ultrabay. Beware that the drive you boot off of will become the C: drive until you boot off the other drive again. One thing you should do if you haven't already done it is put the stock drive back in the main drive bay, boot into Windows, and burn a recovery disc set. You may need this in the future and it is a good thing to have should you decide to sell the system later since you sill be able to restore it to factory condidtion.
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Boot from second hard drive with ZFS in Solaris 10 x86

Hi,
The usual menu.lst to boot Solaris10 x86 with a boot environment that contains a ZFS boot loader is this one
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Groucho_fr wrote:
Thanks for your answer Alan,
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has an example to follow of using -B.
And moreover, the installgrub does not working for me :
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pool: rpool
state: ONLINE
scrub: resilver completed after 0h2m with 0 errors on Thu Mar 26 10:56:24 2009
config:
NAME          STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
rpool         ONLINE       0     0     0
mirror      ONLINE       0     0     0
c5t0d0s0 ONLINE       0     0     0
c5t4d0s0 ONLINE       0     0     0
errors: No known data errors
root@mac1 # installgrub /boot/grub/stage1 /boot/grub/stage2 /dev/rdsk/c5t4d0s0
cannot open/stat device /dev/rdsk/c5t4d0s2
You shouldn't need to do an installgrub if you installed Solaris. Try c5t4d0s0 not s2.
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W540 - boot from second hard drive?

Morning,
I've recently got an ultrabay adapter and wanted to know if I could run two separate OSs, one from each hard disc.
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Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hello.
To run a dual OS setup, you have to turn off Secure Boot and set your boot options to both UEFI and Legacy.
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In BIOS go to Security - Secure Boot - Set to Disabled.
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A little further down, set Boot device list F12 Option to Enabled and then you can press F12 during Post
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Cheers!
ThinkPad W540 (20BG) - i7-4800MQ/24GB // ThinkPad T440s (20AQ) - i7-4600U/12GB
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Hello, all. I have an iMac G5 iSight with a busted optical drive. Every six months or so, OS 10.4 eats itself (directory structure goes corrupt), and I need to reinstall.
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Okay, sorry this took so long . . .
Reset the SMU, NVRAM, and PRAM, no luck. Tried different FireWire port on the iMac, no luck. Tried different FireWire port on optical drive--LUCK.
Ah.
Wipe and reinstall got underway, and finished the first part. Unfortunately, my OS 10.4 Disc 2 turned out to be scratched, and wiping the hard drive didn't get rid of the logic board error either.
Took it to Apple retail store, and it was BOA (bricked on arrival). Astoundingly, it would not power, POST, turn on the fans, nothing. They then replaced the power supply, so they could troubleshoot the hard drive/fan/whatever issue.
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Now, it's still at the store, and I'm eagerly awaiting word on what might REALLY be wrong. Thanks for your help so far!

Help please. Can't boot my iMac from the optical drive.

17" flat panel, 1GHz iMac, running OS 10.2.8.
I've been trying to do some disk maintenance and would like to be able to repair my boot disk. I've tried to boot from the optical drive, using Norton SystemWorks CD-ROM and also my iMac software install and repair DVD, holding down the C key while attempting to boot. After trying for a few seconds, a gray veil drops down and a text box telling me that I have to shut down by holding the power key for many seconds shows up. (Is this a Kernel panic?)
I've also run Repair Permissions. That program seems to stall right at the end, as the status bar is 99% full, and never completes its run.
Any suggestions?

Hi MacGeezer,
DO NOT USE NORTON SYSTEMWORKS
Norton Utilities and Disk Doctor were discontinued almost 2 years ago (for some very good reasons!). It caused much more trouble than it solved.
Here are the articles:
Symantec discontinues Mac Norton Utilities, SystemWorks
Norton Utilities, SystemWorks development halted
TMO Scoop - Symantec Confirms Norton Utilities & SystemWorks' Demise [Updated]
Tech Tool Pro and DiskWarrior are presently the most reliable utilities. For more information on regular housekeeping read this: MacOS X 10.3/10.4: System maintenance

Hard drive dead/Boot from external hard drive?

My hard drive failed and I need a new one. For the time being, I'd prefer not to open up my iMac and replace the internal hard drive. I have an external USB hard drive and I cannot install OSX onto this drive (strangely, it takes the first disc but not the second).
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It is very easy to boot an iMac from an external drive, but the drive should be a Firewire drive. Get one, then get SuperDuper!, which will enable you to clone your data and system to it. You can then choose the external firewire as your boot drive and operate without any problems.
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Booting From An External Drive in OS 9.2?

I have a G4 with a bad internal ROM drive. I am currently running OS 9.2.
I would like to upgrade to OS 10.
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I tried holding "option"- it only found my regular hard drive.
I tried holding "cmd-opt-shift-del" but my mac got very confused and blinked a ? at me.
How can I boot from the external drive so I can upgrade?
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Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Mac OS X will not boot from USB drives on a PowerPC.
You need a Firewire optical drive to boot, and an AGP PowerMac G4 at that to boot Mac OS X. To identify your PowerMac G4, see this article:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58418
Once you've identified it, boot the machine into Mac OS 9 on the hard drive and make sure your firmware is up to date:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86117
And then you'll be able to install Mac OS X. Follow these precautions on my FAQ before doing so:
http://www.macmaps.com/upgradefaq.html
If it turns out you have a PCI PowerMac G4, you'll have to replace the optical drive internally to boot Mac OS X or Mac OS 9.
Also make sure your clock battery is under 4 years old before attempting to upgrade the firmware. It is a 3.6 V 1/2 AA battery you can buy from Radio Shack item 23-026.

How Do I Always Boot From An External Drive

I successfully installed Mac OS X 10.4.8 on an external hard drive. It boots successfully into OS X, but only if you press option on boot and select the drive or if you boot from the drive inside my Mac Mini and go to startup disk and select the external. Is there any way to just always boot from the external drive without doing anything? Thanks in advance for all of your help.
Mac Mini PowerPC Mac OS X (10.4.8)

If booting from a cold start doesn't work but restarting after selecting the drive does work, then most likely the drive isn't ready when the Mac is doing the cold boot.
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Crunching noise from the optical drive

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If your optical drive is making a crunching noise it's probably a goner. You can replace it yourself using the guides at iFixIt https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Mac
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Boot from second optical drive

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