Booting from FireWire Drive

Question

I have a LaCie 160MB (F A Porsche style) external firewire drive.
I have been able to create a bootable clone of my iBook HD using Disk Utility and the Restore function.
I have been able to create a bootable partition by installing the System Software onto it.
But I have not had success using SilverKeeper or SuperDuper! Does anybody know why? I would really like to use the features of one (or another if available) of these applications.
Thanks.
-Ted

Answer 1

Below is LaCie's Tech Support Reply. What is interesting is that they suggest Carbon Copy Cloner (instead of Silverkeeper). Also interesting is that it worked. I hope this helps some of you.
Ted
Hi Ted--
Thanks for contacting LaCie Technical Support. All of our firewire
drives can be used as boot volumes. Due to differences in operating
systems and Macs, we are unable to provide support for booting from
firewire drives other than the following information:
1. Make sure the Mac is bootable via firewire. All Macs with built-in
firewire can be booted from an external drive except:
-Blue and White G3s
-PCI-Graphics G4s. This can be determined by looking in the Apple
System Profiler. The PCI Graphics G4s use the same motherboard as the
B&W, except with a G4 processor shoehorned in.
2. The drive must be connected to a native port. It will not work if
the drive is connected to an add-on card.
3. The Mac must have the latest firmware installed. The proper updater
can be found and downloaded from here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86117
Download and read the instructions carefully. It is possible to kill a
Mac if the update is interrupted. Then, perform the update. If the
firmware is already current, the updater will report this.
4. Format the drive fresh using either Apple's Disk Utility in OS X or
Silverlining in OS 9. Use the Mac OS Extended (HFS+) format only.
(Journaling may be enabled on OS 10.3.)
5. If making an OS 9 boot drive, you can just copy the System Folder
over to the root of the boot volume. To be bootable, the System Folder
must be blessed, i.e. has a happy Mac face on it. If it does not, you
can try to force it to bless by removing the Finder from the folder and
moving it to the root. Then, move the Finder back. The folder should
now be blessed. If not, then there is probably an issue with the System
Folder.
6. In making an OS X boot drive, the ONLY two recommended solutions
are:
--install from the OS X install disk, preferably the one which came with
the Mac. You will not be able to make a successful boot drive using an
older disk set. A newer disk set should also be fine.
--use a utility, such as Carbon Copy Cloner, to perform a copy of an
existing OS X install. It is not possible to do this manually. There
are issues with permissions, hidden files, and files in use that cannot
be manually overridden. If you are using a disk image, you will still
need to use a utility, such as Carbon Copy Cloner, to copy the files out
from the image to the root of the new boot volume. A simple drag and
drop will not include the necessary hidden files, such as the boot
loader and the kernel.
If the volume does not appear as a Start Up Disk, try booting with the
Option key held down and see if the drive shows in the boot drive
selection screen.
If the volume does not show, or the kernel panics on boot, chances are
the OS install was not performed properly.
In general, CD/DVD drives are not bootable via firewire, but will work
under certain circumstances, usually booting from OS X to OS X. They
should not be relied upon as such. To boot from one, hold down the
Option key while booting. If the boot CD shows on the screen, you may
select it and continue the boot.