Boot up with 2 internal drives running OS?

I have an older internal SATA drive with SL OS loaded.
I need to pull some stuff off that drive onto my current system.
If I slide the old drive into a free Bay- how do I make sure I boot from my current System drive?

Hi bokes;
Your Mac will remember the drive it last booted from, so unless you change that, it will boot again from the same drive.
Allan

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I have an iMac with 2 internal drives and set-up with multiple user accounts. How do I create a path to store data files on my second drive within an application?

I have an iMac with 2 internal drives and a multiple user account set-up. Hw do I create a path to store data files on the second drive within an application?

This is the Mac mini forum not the iMac forum however...
Applications written for average users like Photoshop, Word, i.e. GUI based applications provide a 'Save' dialog box which while allow selecting second drives or any drive. The dialob box initially shown might be in the simple mode but you just need to click on the triangle to show the full set of options. You should then see the different drive names amongst other options.
If your referring to an application your writing yourself then you need to build a pathname. This can be in one of two styles depending on the programming system your using. This could be a POSIX style path or a Mac style path.
POSIX = /Volumes/volname/foldername
Mac style = Volname:foldername:

Boot Camp on MBP internal drive (disk1), attempts to boot off CD bay drive (disk0).

Hi. I have an early 2011 MBP running the latest version of Mavericks with two internal SSDs. The HD bay has a 1TB (disk1) and the CD bay has a 512MB (disk0). Boot Camp is installed on the 1TB. When I boot up the system and hold down the Option key, I see Windows as a boot option. If I select it, however, it starts to boot and then goes immediately to a black screen with a white underline cursor blinking in the upper left. It remains like this until I reboot.
After spending a lot of time looking into the cause of this problem, I've come to the conclusion that the system is confused by the drive in the CD bay and is attempting to boot from it before it attempts to boot off the drive in the HD bay. I installed Boot Camp originally by using Boot Camp Assistant to partition the drive and then using WinClone to copy over a previous Boot Camp partition. I'm pretty rusre that as a result, one of the following two things is happening:
Whatever setting Boot Camp Assistant made to tell the Windows install DVD to boot first is still in effect and Boot Camp is attempting to boot from the CD bay.
The Boot Camp partition is set from the previous drive it was on to boot from disk0, which is now being assigned to the drive in the CD bay.
To test these theories, I've unplugged the drive in the CD bay and rebooted, at which point Boot Camp boots perfectly off the drive in the HD bay.
The drive in the CD bay is set to a single HFS+ partition. I've looked at the GPT and MBR on both drives and they seem fine (the Boot Camp partition is bootable). Does anyone have any idea what I'm missing here?
Thanks in advance.
Craig

Still having issues, any suggestions would probably be helpful.

About boot camp with multiple hard drives.

Hi folks. I've just ordered my new 27" iMac. It has the 256GB SSD and i'm wondering about using boot camp on the system.
I understand that OSX will come installed on the SSD, what I was wondering however, is that if I would be able to use boot camp to install windows on the standard 2TB HDD that comes with it.
Secondly, if thats possible, is it possible to switch the 'standard' system bootup from Windows to OSX as you desire?
I owned a MacBook Pro recently which had Windows 7 installed, however after I installed that, it would boot windows automatically unless I used the Alt key on startup to choose OSX instead.
What i'm worried about is that after I install Windows 7 again, that it will boot into Windows as standard, then i'll need to hold Alt and choose OSX instead, which is going to take some time, and totally cancel the benefits of having an SSD for quicker start up times.
So can you switch the standard bootup operating system once installed?
Thanks for reading.

Yes, Boot Camp can be used on any internal drive. To alter startup behavior use the Startup Disk preferences to set your OS X volume as the permanent boot volume. When you want to boot Windows use OPTION boot - restart and after chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager appears. Select the Windows volume then click on the large downward pointing arrow button. When you next restart the computer it will automatically return to OS X.

My 27" iMac (2009) won't boot OSX from the internal drive

Here's a fun problem. After installing Sophos anti-virus and starting a (VERY slow) full scan, a day or two later I found my iMac frozen at the screensaver. It was completely unresponsive so I did a hard reboot, at which point it got as far as starting to boot Lion (apple logo on screen, spinning indicator showing) before stalling indefinitely in that state with the indicator spinning.
I restarted and booted from the recovery partition, launched disk utility, and discovered that the SMART status of the drive was "failing". The machine would still boot from the recovery partition and my boot camp partition, but I assumed that the disk failing was why the OSX partition wouldn't boot (the recovery partition worked, as did the windows 7 bootcamp partition). I replaced the factory-installed internal HDD with another of the same make, model, and capacity (Seagate 1TB), and performed a restore from the Time Machine backup on my Drobo.
The result was the same as the original problem - it wouldn't boot, hung with the indicator spinning. Thinking that the Sophos scan was somehow responsible (in-progress when the last TM backup was made) I tried restoring to a backup a few days older, (to the best of my recall from BEFORE I downloaded Sophos) only to have the same result.
Anyone have any ideas? I made a clean install of Lion (using the recovery partition on my old internal HDD, now connected externally via USB) to an external drive while I was waiting for the replacement hard disk to arrive, and it boots fine from that. I haven't tried a clean install to the internal HDD yet, as I'd obviously prefer to recover my installed apps as they were before, that being the point of a Time Machine backup, right?

You have a serious drive issue that likely can't be repaired that way.
Follow the data recovery efforts here, your drive still works and thus data can be recovered, won't be easy
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3172
If you have your data off the machine, to a storage drive (or earlier with TM)
then hold command r keys and use Disk Utility to Erase the Lion Partiton with Zero option, and reinstall Lion from Apple's servers.
use the same name (important), different password ok Software Update fully
install your programs from fresh orignal sources and return files into their respective folders
once your stable, read the backup proceedures here etc.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3045
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents
note, don't move your computer while it's operating

Hard drive run OS X 10.6.8 and an added internal drive run OS X 10.8?

I want to run two OS X's on my computer so that I won't have to spend $1000+ to upgrade all my software. I have OS X 10.6.8 on my Mac Pro hard drive now but would like to add an internal hard drive that runs only OS X 10.8. Is this possible to do? If so, how do I go about it?

The Cheese Gratter Mac Pro (I used to own one), has room for four drive lots for 3.5" internal disk drives. It is rather easy.
<http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/faq/mac-pro-how-to-upgrade-hard-dr ives-what-type-supported.html>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_xGaTmz2Kk>
Once the new 3.5" internal drive is installed, you then use Disk Utility to format the drive.
Disk Utility
select the drive on the left
Select the "Partition" tab on the right
Select "Options"
Specify GUID (this is needed if you are going to boot from this drive)
Click OK/Apply
Decide if you want 1 partition, or more. If more than 1, size and name each partition.
Click Apply
Now install your operating system. I would suggest making a copy of the "Install OS X Mountain Lion" installer, as the installer will delete itself when it is finished. If you make a copy before you install, it will delete the copy you are running, and you can use the original again if you need to re-install, or want to install Mountain Lion on other boot disks or systems you own or control (aka Family).
If you have created more than 1 partition, you can install other operating system versions on those partitions or use them for data.
You should have 2 more empty drive slots. You can add more 3.5" disks. If you have not been doing backups yet, I would suggest installing additional disks in those slots for backups.
Once you have your 2nd (3rd, 4th, 5th, etc...) operating system installed, you can use System Preferences -> Startup Disk to specify which operating system you want to boot the next time you boot.
OR you can boot holding the "Option" key, and the Mac will boot listing every bootable disk/partition and you can click on the partition you wish to boot from.
Hopefully, when you boot up via the "Option" key, you will see a "Recovery" Partition for the Mountain Lion (10.8). If you do not see a "Recovery" partition, you should start over and create 1 extra 2GB partition on the new drive that can be used for the Mountain Lion "Recovery" partition.

Booting Up with an External Drive Using FW400

I inherited a 'Quicksilver: Dual Mirror Door' from work. Which was deemed by the local Apple Techs as "dead motherboard". I have had a Mac G3 which I fried when I tried to upgrade the processor to G4. When it fried it was FRIED as in DEAD...nothing worked, not even the monitor. Now, this Quicksilver starts up normally, a folder icon comes up on the display and when I start up while holding the option key it won't acknowledge the internal hard drive or my external firewire 400 hard drive.
The computer is 4 years old, not much use to it...1.5 Gigs of Ram, batter on motherboard was replaced a few days ago, hard drive is a 1yrs Seagate ultra IDE, its a sweet machine! So I know the motherboard is not the problem here. Anyone has any clue/idea on what maybe the "pest" here?
Thanks,
Henry

And tried re-installing, but nothing happened.
Ah! So it does boot to the installer CD to at least get you that far. That suggests that the computer as such is okay, but you're missing an OS on the drive, or the drive is bad, but at least it eliminates 90% of other possible issues.
I know that is another way to startup the system.
Are you correctly working under the assumption that the Firewire drive has a bootable copy of an operating System that will boot on a MDD? Holding the option key will let you select from the drives where the computer has found a bootable system, and it isn't seeing your Firewire drive as such.
But again, maybe I should put a jumper on the drive, do you think that will work?
Take the hard drive out of the Firewire enclosure and put it in the computer? It should work, but so should trying to boot from the Firewire drive externally. Again, I would want to to establish that it has a bootable OS on it that will work with your computer.
Disk Tools
Disk Utility. This is available as a feature on the installer CD. If you think the drive inside the computer has 10.4 on it you should not use Disk Utility from any Panther disk less than 10.3.9. [Only use Mac OS X 10.4-compatible disk utilities with Mac OS X 10.4 volumes|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301269] Certainly wouldn't hurt to verify and repair the internal drive.

Boot problems with multiple SATA drives

I have a PC that I built using a P6N Platinum mobo. I have used it without problems for two years. About 6 months ago I installed a 1Tb SATA drive to act as backup to the original 500Gb SATA drive, and have used it w/o problems until this weekend. I also have 2 SATA DVD drives in the machine. The other day, I had a system freeze that forced me to power down. This resulted in an inability to start Windows. After much work, I have everything up and running thanks to chkdsk. However, I have the strangest problem still. If I keep the second backup HDD connected, I can only boot up in safe mode. Once in safe mode, I can read and write to both HDDs as before. However, if I try to start up in normal mode, BIOS seems to keep putting the backup HDD as the primary boot drive. This hangs the machine! If I disconnect the backup drive, the system boots up fine. Once Windows is running (XP pro) I can reconnect the backup drive, it is seen by the OS, and I can read and write files without problems; I just can't boot up when the second drive is connected.
I tried some BIOS troubleshooting. I have set the BIOS to use the 500G drive as the primary boot drive, with the 1Tb drive as second or third in boot order. It still won't start Windows. I also set the boot order to omit the 1Tb drive altogether, also with no success. Likewise, I also toggled the "Boot from other device" option, again with no success. The only thing that I noticed was that the boot sector protection was set to disabled. I have not yet tried to enable boot sector protection. The thought of a virus infection comes to mind, but I have been rigorous in using AV software and scans.
Any advice from board members would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Gosh... I must be mixing bags of beans. Not master slave, it is ACHI enabled selection in BIOS.

My late 2012 mac mini boots slow with new ssd drive

So here is the situation. I purchased a 128gb ssd drive, installed it a usb enclosure, formatted it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), cloned it with carbon copy cloner 3, used the option key during boot up and selected the ssd drive and it booted my mac mini and it functioned perfectly. I than tested it for dozens of reboots and it worked fine. I then took apart my mac mini and removed the original hard drive and installed the new ssd drive. When I boot to the ssd drive it still takes 47 to 53 seconds just like the old drive. Aren't ssd drives supposed to be a lot faster?
My solution or tip is as follows; The reason it takes so long to boot is because the mac mini doesn't know you replaced the old drive and it is looking for it during the boot process. Finally it can't find the drive so it boots to the ssd drive. All you have to do to correct this is click on "system preferences", select and click on "startup disk" and select your ssd drive and click on "restart". After these steps your mac mini will now boot in about 17 seconds. Issues solved.

Yes, my solution fixed the issue. I went from a 47 to 53 second boot time to a 17 second boot time. The ssd drive is significantly faster than the original drive that came with my late 2012 mac-mini. This is my first post and I wasn't sure how to post this as a tip. I have another tip regarding usb 3.0 hubs.

Installing boot camp on 2nd internal drive on MacPro

I have a Mac Pro that came with 2 hard drives built in. Can I install bootcamp on the second internal hard drive? Right now it's totally blank. I just want to leave my main mac hard drive as only mac stuff.

Yes, you can. I have 4 hard drives on my Mac Pro and have given the entire 4th drive to Windows.
You don't say what you plan to install on that bootcamp partition on your 2nd drive, but if it is some version of Windows you will likely have to use your Windows install disk to format the partition.

Dual boot setup with two hard drives

Hi all, I've searched through the forums but haven't been able to find an answer to what I figure is a couple pretty easy questions.
My wife has an older G4(circa 2000) with OS 9.2.x on it now. What I would like to do is put a new, larger HD in the box and install Tiger on it. I've found write-ups talking about installing Tiger and OS 9.x.x on different drives or on the same drive in different partitions. My problem is I still am not sure how you switch between Tiger/OS9 with two different drives. Is Tiger able to recognize the OS9 on a different drive and allow you to easily switch back and forth like it does when they are installed on the same drive?
My second question is hopefully even easier. Can I head on over to my local computer supply store and pick up any old ATA HD like I would for a *Nix/Windows box or am I forced to get one directly from apple like I had to with a bad power supply?
Thanks in advance for the help all.

OK, here's mine for comparison:
ibook:~ michaelc$ bless --info /Volumes/*
finderinfo[0]: 3040 => Blessed System Folder is /Volumes/OS9.2/System Folder
finderinfo[1]: 0 => No Startup App folder (ignored anyway)
finderinfo[2]: 0 => Open-folder linked list empty
finderinfo[3]: 3040 => OS 9 blessed folder is /Volumes/OS9.2/System Folder
finderinfo[4]: 0 => Unused field unset
finderinfo[5]: 0 => No OS 9 + X blessed X folder
64-bit VSDB volume id: 0x233F23EAA912CD05So it would appear this might be the problem, since you don't have a "OS 9 blessed folder".
Now, I have never had to do this, but have seen it work for others. The bless command has a lot of options, many of which we don't want here. But let's give this a try. Remember, copy and paste this command into a text editor (TextEdit will do). Then edit the command to put your volume name in it (in place of <yourvolumename>, without the angle brackets), and copy and paste again into Terminal.
You will need to be logged in to an 'admin' account:
sudo bless -folder9 /Volumes/<yourvolumename>/System\ Folder/Press return and you will be prompted for your password. This is not echoed for security reasons: just type it and press return.
Then, if you get no complaints, I would issue a
rebootcommand. Your OS 9 System Folder should now be available to you in your Classic preferences screen.
Let us know how this goes!

Won't boot up with external hard drive attached

Pavillion HPE h8-1360t, AMI 7.15 Bios, Windows 7 Home Premium x64 bit, consistently fails to boot with external USB hard drive attached (WD 500GB MyBook) attached. Have tried disabling the device in BIOS, htting f10 to apply the change and then selecting "save changes and exit", but after shutdown/powerup the BIOS returns to the old setting. Read the posting that states a BIOS upgrade will solve the problem but Support web page shows no BIOS update available. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

2Suntech,
Open up command prompt and run the following command SFC /scannow.
This will scan the system files and correct any errors that it can.
Here is a link to command prompt.
When you go to open command prompt, right click and run as administrator.
If it has not been to long since the problem started, you can run a system restore.
This will take the system back to when everything was working correctly without affecting your personal files.
Here is a link on how to do a restore.
Let me know how everything goes.

Boot Problem with new SSD Drive on CQ60-409SA

I have just replaced my HDD with a new Sandisk 120GB Extreme 11 SSD.
All went OK with no problems installing Win 7 Ultimate and much faster search time, etc..
The problem I have is that when I boot the laptop from cold, i.e switch it on for use, the SSD is not recognised and I just get a Black screen with Flashing cursor top left corner, but if I then press Control-Alt-Delete, the system Reboots, and then boots into windows no problem.
I am trying to find out if I can Access BIOS Advanced Options, if I press F10 during boot I only get Options like Change Boot order, and not more Advanced Option to change Drive parameters, etc... and F2 does not run Diagnostics for SDD.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am very pleased with the performance increase the SSD drive gives to Windows and Boot itme except for having to boot twice.
Best regards,
This question was solved.
View Solution.

No worries.
What year model is your notebook?
About your request for the Advanced options, unfortunately that is not possible with a BIOS supplied by HP.
You can, if you don't mind taking the risk, go to a BIOS Mod forum and look for a modified BIOS for your notebook there. The modified BIOS will have advanced options.
Have you tried the Solution and Update finder on the Support download drivers page for your notebook? It says that it will find missing drivers.
****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

Using iMac with dead internal drive long term

I've got a friend with an iMac with a definitely dead internal HDD. Got it back running with an external and it seems to work. We also selected that external as the default start up in System Prefs.
I'm curious was to whether, however, he can just run it forever with that HDD inside. I'm not at his machine, but when working on it I saw some evidence that there were attempts to access it, from like mds for Spotlight, and so on. If it was one of mine I'd at least yank the drive, but he doesn't wanna pay to repair it and is quite content with the external. But we'd like to know if that wonky drive is gonna cause issues, or if there's a way through software to disable it forever.

Add it to Spotlight's Privacy prefPane to preclude indexing. That's all that needs doing.
27" i7 iMac (Mid 2011) refurb, OS X Yo (10.10), Mavs, ML & SL, G4 450 MP w/10.5 & 9.2.2

Boot Problems with USB HD Drive

I bought a
*Samsung S1 1.8" 250 GB Drive*
for using as boodrive with my Macs.
*This drive will not be found during system boot*.
Yes, the disc ist formatted correct (GUID partitiontable)
Mac OSX 10.5, 10.6 could be installed without any problems.
*Yes, I tried:*
- different USB2 ports
- tried different drives on the ports, works fine
- copied system to the drive
- installed a clean system on the drive
- tried "alt" during boot, drive not shown
- from the installed system the drive is offered as bootdrive in systemconfiguration setup
- disc works fine as external disc after booting the mac. Even on the Keyboards plug.
*Yes, I asked at samsung support*, seems they are not really interested.
They told me they the did not verify - ask at apple-suport - apples fault.
It was obviously a text module.
What is my option using this drive? Trash?

The reason ist found.
The Samsung S1 Mini 250 GB HDD USB2.0 1,8" can not be used as a boot-disc, because ist is not a single disc. Internal it is a raid-system of two discs. This will not be shown as one disc before finishing the system-start.
Samsung should have known this and I do not understand why the deny the problem.
The smaller discs of 120/160 GB are able to boot. This is positively confirmed with the 120GB disc.

Boot up with 2 internal drives running OS?

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