Booting OS X from G-Tech Drive

Hi,
If understand it right you can boot the OS X from an external hard drive and also have a 'computer image' backed up on an external. How do I accomplish this (these). My 500G G-tech G-drive is now partitionned in three 10G, 75G, and 375G.
It would be great to have this explained or get a link for more info.
Thanks,
Apple Cheeks
PBG412 (Dell Inspiron 8100) Mac OS X (10.4.6) Cinema 20

Use an application such as this one to duplicate your existing Mac OS X system to another partition; you can have one bootable copy of Mac OS X on a partition. The same partition can be used for a bootable version of Mac OS X and a device image containing another version if it is large enough to hold both. The drive basically needs to be a FireWire drive to start Mac OS X from it on your machine.
(14923)

Similar Messages

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

Booting my G4 from an external drive?

hi!
I'm relatively new to Macs but have upgraded my g4 graphics model with a new graphics card, (Ge force- i think, and a Newer tech processor, as well as more RAM) and a fresh copy of OS X 10.5.2 so that i would be able to run the Music creation program LOGIC 8. The problem is the computer keeps crashing in the middle of my work. The CPU is running at 2 GHZ... the logic specs said that this would be fast enough, so Im not sure if this is the problem.
I think it maybe something to do with my relatively small hard drive?
I'm using a Freecom external hard drive (400gb) to store all my files, and i was wondering if i could boot OS X from this and whether this would solve or cause any problems?

When you say "crashing" how is this showing up? Is the beach ball spinning and you can't seem to be able to do anything? Do the windows all disappear and nothing is on the screen? Does an error window show up? What? There's a million ways that a computer can tell you to go get lost.
Also, you said you added more ram, but how much ram do you have? Graphics is ram intense and it is easy for it to run out of ram, try to go to virtual ram and just crash for no reason. To check on that, in Finder (at the desktop), pull down the menu "Go". Down near the bottom of the menu there's "Go to folder....". Enter /var/vm/ and push the go button. This opens up the vm (virtual memory) directory and you can check to see if you have lots of files called swap0, swap1, etc. If you only see swap0 you are in the safe zone. Loads of files mean lots of swapping going on. It keeps running out of ram. This is just one of many reasons why your computer is crashing so don't give up if this looks good. Note: you can navigate to the directory to look in, but using this menu pick is convenient if you are going to be checking from time to time since the entry seems to stay in there making it an easy menu pick.
Also, in the utilities folder open up console and look at your system log for errors. This is a valuable tool for narrowing down the cause of crashes.
I'm not a graphics guy and these are just to get you started. Japamac and others here do all the graphics work.

Booting two Macs from one external drive: 10.8 and App Store?

I boot two Macs from one external harddrive. Does this mean that when 10.8 is sold exclusively via the App Store and thereby linked to a unique hardware identifier, I am going to have issues with activation/authentification each time I switch machines? I have avoided the App Store since I discovered that an app I bought there, and which I really needed to open automatically on log-in, had to be manually re-activated with my Apple ID after every switch (so that I eventually deleted it and reverted to an earlier, non-App Store version).

Welcome to the forum!
There are a couple of "solutions" to your problem. The easiest, and possibly the best for you (although it is a bit slower) is to copy your catalog onto the external drive as well.
Then when you plug in the drive, you will always have your latest catalog for access.
The other way is to keep a local copy of your catalog, and copy it onto the local drive as a way to transfer it from one computer to the other.
This has the problem of possibly not being in sync, that is, you forgot to copy it over once and did some editing. Then you would end up with essentually two different catalogs, instead of one in two places.
You can copy the catalog either with your OS, or you can "export as catalog" and specify the external drive as the destination. Then, on your other computer, "import from catalog" and only take the meta-data settings (it's on the import dialog box).
Personally, when I'm traveling, I have my catalog on my external drive as well. It just makes life easier, and I don't have to worry about it being out of sync, or losing it (and not the images).
So, I would go with the first method, at least to start. To get your catalog over there, you can either export as catalog or copy it, either one will work.
You can find the location of your catalog file (if you don't know where it is) in the catalog settings menu prompt. Both the location and the name will be displayed.
Cheers!

Going from 10.3 to 10.5... can i still boot 10.3 from an external drive?

I want to switch from 10.3 to 10.5, but I have some important software and hardware that only works with 10.3. Can I copy my current hard drive information to an external drive, and then essentially boot up my old computer setup from that external drive whenever I need to use 10.3?
How would I go about doing this?
thanks!

System Preferences >> Startup Disk >> choose the one you start from and press restart. Or boot to Startup Manager.
-mj

Can't boot my Macbook from an external drive

Hi there,
After my internal hard drive failed, I put an older (temporary, and somewhat small -- 100gb) internal hard drive onto my Macbook, and using a time machine used an external drive to recreate the data and OS that were on the internal drive that failed. Part of the reason I did this, rather than just buying a new internal drive, is that I live in Germany and my family is coming to visit in a month with a brand new mac, so I'm hoping to just run everything off this external drive until I get the new computer and can transfer all my data over.
Anyway, I can't get the computer to boot from the external drive. It has the right partitioning scheme (GUID), my mac is willing to assign it Bootup Status, and when I browse the contents of the external drive, it basically looks fine. The termporary internal drive, incidentally, is running 10.6.7 as well, and using time machine I put my old applications on it, but not my user data. I can boot from that internal drive, but when I try to boot from the external drive I get stuck on the grey screen. Any idea what might be the problem and how I might fix it? Or a suggestion about how I can run my computer off this external drive until the new mac arrives next month?
A few technical details:
My macbook is about 5 years old, and when I check the "about this mac" tab it says it is running 10.6.7 OS, with a 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo processor and its memory is 2BG 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM.
The external hard drive is LaCie, 500gb, firewire 800 cable (and with the option to use a USB port too), which uses the macbook as its power source.
Thanks for your help and advice.
Bernie

Hi,
Thank you for your time.
Even if Disk Warrior can help recover/restore my files i think replacing the hard drive is necessary, right ?

How to boot Powerbook G4 from USB hard drive using Mcintosh v10.5.2 install

Well I am Rider and I have been a mac user for at least 8 years. By far these OS's are the most advanced I have ever seen and it blows every other OS out of the water. My dad bought a Powerbook G4 8 years ago and it lasted 3 years till the hard drive crashed. My dad had it taken out and we still have the Powerbook G4 under the bed. When we bought a new macbook that came with the install disk 10.5.2, I was wondering if there was any way to use a USB 16gb Flash Drive as a hard drive and start up disk.
I have tried sticking the Install Disk in the G4 and after it says choose language for primary install, it says 'Mac OS X cannot be installed on this computer'. It gives a few utilities to use such as Disk Utility, Start up Disk, Net Utility, etc.
So if anybody knows how I can boot a G4 from a USB using Mac OS X install disk 10.5.2, *PLEASE HELP*.
Thankyou,
Rider M.

Hi,
Since you are trying to boot from 10.5, post in the Leopard forum here.
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1225
Or the PowerBook forum here.
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=120
Carolyn

[VHD][BOOT][UEFI] Boot Windows 8 From a VHD Drive On a GPT Disk Using UEFI BIOS

I had been dual booting two copies of Windows 8 prior to getting a new rig without any issues. Once I installed Windows 8.1 I can no longer boot a VHD from the GPT partitioned drive.
My PC specifications
Intel i7-4770k
ASUS SABERTOOTH Z87
16GB KINGSTON HYPERX BEAST DUAL-DDR3 2400MHz
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 660 Ti
120GB INTEL 520 SSD
4TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX
4TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX (two way mirror = storage spaces)
15x BLU-RAY Writer Drive
CORSAIR 750W PRO HX750-80
Corsair H60 Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Windows 8.1 Pro x64
So I basically copied my existing VHD to the new data drive and created the relevant BCD entry, when I chose to boot from the VHD I am presented with an error saying Windows cannot boot and to choose another OS or the troubleshooting options (I’ll post the
exact error later as I am at work at the moment).
I can boot the VHD inside Hyper-V without any issues, it just wont boot natively. I also created a brand new Windows 8.1 VHD and still the same thing happens. Once I created a new VHD I used “bcdboot j:\windows /s j:” to insert the attached VHD into the BCD
store.
So existing or brand new VHD’s don’t seem to work for me, any advice would be appreciated.
Mike Park

I posted this issue on Neowin and someone kindly pointed out the answer, it's to do with storage spaces:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1191873-native-boot-vhdx-from-second-drive/#entry596152197
Quote
What types of drives can I use with Storage Spaces?
You can use commodity drives attached via Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS), Serial ATA (SATA), or USB. Storage layers that abstract the physical disks are not compatible with Storage Spaces. This includes VHDs and pass-through disks in a virtual machine, and storage
subsystems that layer a RAID implementation on top of the physical disks. iSCSI and Fibre Channel controllers are not supported by Storage Spaces.
From: http://social.techne...stions-faq.aspx
Mike Park

Boot camp install from USB Flash Drive

Hi Folks,
I recently purchased a new Macbook Air. It has 10.8.3.
I used the Boot Camp Assistant to set up the computer for Boot Camp. It went through all the steps: First, it formatted my USB Flash Drive. Next, it copied Windows installer crap from the my ISO to the USB Drive. Next, it downloaded the Apple Drivers and put them on the USB drive. Next, it restarted in order to boot from the USB drive.
This is where I hit a wall. The computer will not bpt from the Flash Drive. It is as if the control panel has set the startup disk to "BOOTCAMP" instead of the flash drive. So when the computer restarts, it just says "No bootable device - insert boot disk and press any key."
How can I get it to boot from the flash drive?
Thanks In Advance
Andy
Corrected the error message to exact phrase.

Hmmm... interesting... My sites I found suggested otherwise. I tried three diferent brands of jump drives and none of them actually booted the Macbook Air. The Boot Camp Assistant used them all just fine, but booting was the issue. Glad you got it to work. Would you mind posting what brand you used so other reading this thread in the future could learn?
Also, were you just using the BCA or, did you do some other process to make it bootable first? Since the BCA formats the drive, I would think any process done ahead of time would be thwarted (as mine were).
Thanks!

T400s Linux/Windows dual boot with Linux from Esata Flash Drive

This project is about a dual boot Windows/Linux system without using the normal dual boot changes in the bootloader of the windows hard drive. When I started this I found bits and pieces of information on the web but no complete description so I wrote this post.
I have done a dual boot system on my previous Thinkpad where I had partitioned the hard drive between Linux and windows. For this project I wanted to leave the windows hard drive absolutely intact and unaltered, and boot Linux from a flash drive in the esata port on the back of the T400s. Obviously this uses the F12 boot list function key to boot from the flash. The advantage of this is that Windows is totally unaltered and when I need Linux, I plug in the esata flash drive, hit F12 during the boot cycle and select booting from the esata flash drive. The reason for Esata rather than USB is simply speed. I have a nice fast Linux installation.
I used the OCZ esata flash drive but suspect any of the alternatives will work. It did not need the accessory usb cable because the Thinkpad powered the esata flash directly.
To boot from the esata drive I had to make the following changes in the bios
    I left the esata flash plugged in as I went into the bios
    Bios>config>Serial ATA and changed the Sata controller mode option to compatibility
    Restart and back into the Bios
    Bios>startup>boot - in my case the esata flash drive showed up as ATA HDD2 and was excluded from the boot order so I had to un-exclude it and move it to the point in the boot order that I wanted.
Next I downloaded a linux installation iso and put it on a CD - in my case opensuse. Then booted from the CD
From now on this instructions are specific to opensuse and yast but can be generalized to whatever Linux is being used.
In my case yast came up with a good set of suggestions for automatically partitioning the flash drive but then crashed during the partitioning itself. So I rebooted and specified the partitions manually.
    A fat32 partition left as a partition which both windows and Linux could see (in my case about 20% of the drive) (/dev/sdb1)
    An extended partition with the remainder of the drive (/dev/sdb2) which contains the following logical partitions
    A linux Swap partition of 2GB (/dev/sdb5)
    A linux /home partition –the remainder of the drive (/dev/sdb6)
    A linux /root partition of 8GB (/dev/sdb7)
Yast automatically suggested mount points of C,D,E for the windows partitions. Unfortunately because of the way the Thinkpad hard drive was laid out Yast had C assigned the ThinkPad Service partition and D assigned to the SW_Preload (or main windows partition). However there was an edit function that allows for the reversal of those mount points so that the windows C drive is mounted in Linux as Windows/C thereby avoiding confusion. I had already backed up and removed the Thinkpad factory install data so I did not have to deal with that. Yast suggested Windows/E for the mount point of the FAT32 partition on the flash drive, which I accepted.
The yast install configurator made all this manual selection easy, and after the manual configuration the partitioning worked perfectly.
Next step was Linux user configuration which went fine
Next was booting.
In the section management tab
    delete the windows 1 and 2 options (since we are not dual booting directly)
In the boot loader installation tab
    uncheck boot from mbr ( this stops the install from installing Grub and dual boot on the windows c drive
    check boot from root partition (this installs grub and all associated files in the Linux root partition (/dev/sdb6)
I believe that the correct procedure at this point is to click Boot Loader installation details which will bring up the Grub device map. In the device map there will be a line for the fixed hard drive (aka the windows drive) and a line for the esata flash drive. When the installer started up these were in hard drive and esata drive order. However when we boot directly from the flash the esata drive will be grub drive hd0 and the fixed hard drive will be grub hd1. The device map order needs to be changed to reflect this ie the esata drive should be first not second.
I did not do this and ended up initially doing Grub command line editing to boot and later manually editing the grub files using information I had previously learned the hard way and through google.
At this point let the installer go ahead and install Linux. After doing this it should come back and tell you to reboot. Do not do it yet because we need to install the MBR into the flash drive.
I suspect that there is a way of doing this in Yast running from the Live CD but it was not obvious to me so I used the manual method that I have used before.
Open a root terminal
Mount /dev/sdb6 to /mnt/sdb6 (my linux root)
Touch /mnt/sdb6/boot/grub/flag
The purpose of this is when we go looking later at the grub command prompt we need an easy to find unique file
Start grub and do the following
#grub
            grub> find /boot/grub/flag
                (hd1,5)    -- the result of the find in my example
            grub> root (hd1,5)   -- using the result of the find in my example
            grub> setup (hd1)   -- install mbr -- my example parameters - if you get this wrong you will trash some other drive!!!
                  hopefully grub announces success
            grub> quit
Reboot and select the flash drive. In my case I still had the grub devicemap wrong and had to edit the grub commands during boot to tell grub how to find the correct partition and then edit them again after booting
Typical linux install issues that we all always seem to have and can be solved with a little (or a lot of) google research.
As I said at the beginning I now have an untouched windows installation and a nice fast Linux installation. I hope that this will be of some use to someone.

Hi chrissh
i tried this exact procedure... on the exact same notebook (T400s). However, as soon as I set the
   Bios>config>Serial ATA to "compatibility", I cannot use my default Windows installation! I immediately get the "blue screen of death".
I doubt I did anything differently since this is the first step of your procedure and my laptop is brand new!
any idea?

Cannot boot Snow Leopard from external FireWire drive

I use a Western Digital My Passport Studio 500 GB external drive to back up my MacBook Pro with Time Machine. I had created a 30 GB Leopard boot partition with various utilities and tools; since the small drive goes wherever the laptop goes, I figured it might come in handy to be able to boot the computer in the event something went wrong with its internal 250 GB drive.
Over the weekend, I upgraded the external drive to Snow Leopard, and now it can no longer be used to boot the laptop. The symptoms are truly weird. Holding down the Option key while rebooting does not show the external drive unless I disconnect and reconnect the FireWire cable. The drive then shows up. I select it, and it appears to begin to boot, then it just sits on the gray screen with the little round thingie turning for a long time (five to ten minutes). Eventually, the system boots from its internal drive. This happens regardless of whether I'm connected by means of FireWire 400 or 800.
After spending a lot of time looking at the usual suspects (cables, permissions, PRAM, etc.) I reinstalled Sand Leopard (OK, 10.5) and lo and behold, the drive boots again (though for some reason I still have to go through the disconnect/reconnect routine). Clearly, something in the OS has changed with respect to the way booting from external drives is handled.
On the positive side, I have none of the symptoms described in other threads: Time Machine works flawlessly, and both the boot partition and the Time Machine partition appear on the Snow Leopard desktop every time I connect the drive.
Does anyone have the same issues? Does anyone know of a workaround?
Thanks,
Daniel

Hi,
Working from a MacBook Pro 2.4 (Santa Rosa) with 4gb ram, running OS 10.5.7-
(All external HDs are 7200 rpm)
Shortly after our fresh install of Snow Leopard onto a new but already tested External 1.5 Seagate Barracuda (with the most current firmware), in an OWC Mercury Elite enclosure-
We installed Snow Leopard smoothly to that external HD without any issues, and it booted up from that 1.5T external HD, and worked fine.
Then, still working from the MacBook Pro, I turned on and booted another external HD (a Newertech Guardian Maximus RAID running 10.4.11 via FW800, daisy chained to the 1.5T External with Snow Leopard newly installed.
Again that's MacBook Pro <FW800> Snowy external HD <FW800> 10.4.11 RAID (booted & working from the RAID).
But when I tried to bootup up Snow Leopard, after doing the work on the 10.4.11 RAID-
It would not boot up.
Though Snowy would appear as an available Start Up disk, each time it was selected as the Boot drive,
the Internal HD OS 10.5.7 booted instead.
I changed around the cables and tried repeatedly.
Same result, no Snowy boot.
Even after the OS 10.4.11 external RAID was power down, and disconnected.
After some looking around, I found this forum:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2136208&tstart=0
Got me thinking.
I tried the USB, and it booted !
I tried the FW400, and it booted !
And mysteriously, at this point- I tried the FW800, and it booted !
And then, the MBP boots seemed to reliably boot from that external, via FW800.
Bizarre.
Snow Cat needs to be taught originally how to find FW800 from the bottom up ?
Turns out, Snow Leopard doesn't like booting,
if the preceding boot was on the 10.4.11 RAID, and work was done with programs there.
So, once again, I repeated this process:
After working with programs on the 10.4.11 external HD,
the MBP would not boot the Snow Leopard external HD,
it defaulted to booting from the MBP internal HD OS 10.5 via FW800.
even though Snowy was selected for Start Up.
This was the case repeatedly.
(It would also boot from the 10.4.11 external RAID, if it were selected for Start Up.)
(In each of these tests below, I only rebooted the computer at each test. I did no work with programs on the various HDs.)
SO, once again, at this point of the process:
I plugged in that Snowy external HD via FW400,
and it booted up fine !
Then I booted up from the Internal 10.5, and tried to boot Snowy via FW800 again.
It worked !
Then I turned on the 10.4.11 RAID external HD, and tried to reboot from the Snowy external HD.
It worked too !
Then I booted from the 10.4.11 RAID, it came up fine.
Then booted from the Snowy, it came up fine.
Then booted from the Internal HD 10.5, it came up fine.
Then booted from Snowy again, it came up fine.
Then I turned off the 10.4.11 HD, booted from Snowy, it came up fine.
Then booted from the Internal, it came up fine.
Then tried Snowy one last time, it came up fine.
Anyway, the issue is:
It works fine-
Except when I do work within the programs on the 10.4.11 external RAID.
Then I have to use FW400 or USB to get it to boot once again . . .
Regardless of whether the other external HD is removed from the system.
It's some sort of flaw, and totally repeatable in testing.
Hopefully, it will be fixed soon.
Howard

Trouble booting Windows 8 from mSATA SSD drive on HP Envy

I’m having an issue booting Windows 8 from my mSATA SSD drive (I believe that’s the correct terminology, it connects directly to the motherboard.) I have a HDD that, it appears to me, it is trying to boot from. The bios does not let me specifically select the boot drive, just disk. I can boot from the SDD if I either remove the HDD or go through boot options and select to boot from an EFI file. A little background – I’ve had this running Windows from the SSD drive since I got it (installed that way) and using the HDD for storage. My SSD drive had been removed and Windows installed on the HDD (since this is the HP forum I won't get into how this happened when I sent my laptop in for an unrelated repair.) Seems I should be able to get it booting from the SSD again since it has not changed. I’ve since removed the partitions and reformatted the drive. I also tried setting up the EFI files on the HDD using BCDBOOT, maybe I didn’t need to/did it wrong/something else. Seems this is not an uncommon issue but trying various things I’ve not yet been successful. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi Ralph,
thanks a lot for the helpful information! But the problem still persists, and I don't know what's wrong about the installation. I again checked the case and device are fully compatible with Windows 8 on USB 3 and the current boot camp drivers are installed - so everything should work perfectly fine as Windows 8 does natively support booting from external USB-3-devices.
I personally still assume it's rather a driver related problem as the external SSD doesn't even show up whilst booting into the boot menu with "Alt" pressed - I can only choose to boot from the external SSD within the "start volume" menu in OSX (which then doesn't work out when rebooting, unfortunately). I mean, if there was a chance to boot from the external SSD with the configuration I got right now, but OSX/the iMac just "doesn't know" it shall boot from the external partition and therefore rather chooses the internal boot camp partition, the SSD would at least show up in the boot menu when pressing "Alt" on start-up, or do I go completely wrong? I even tried to rename the internal bootcamp partition (which did not work out) or disable it in order to prevent OSX/the iMac to boot from the internal bootcamp partition, but it didn't help: After rebooting it again chose the internal boot camp partition to start from.
Might the deletion of the internal partition be worth a try? Meaning is there a realistic chance that the issue might be caused by that? I would give it a try although I really don't wanna loose the internal boot camp partition for no good reason (btw: would it be possible to clone an image back from the external SSD to the internal HDD then?). Or do you maybe have any other idea what driver could miss resp. could be wrong about the installation so the boot process from the external SSD fails...?
Again MANY MANY THANKS in advance for your further assistance, everybody!!

How can I boot into PartedMagic from a USB drive on a newer MacbookPro?

Hello,
has anyone successfully booted into PartedMagic (or Gparted) from USB drive on a newer (2014) Macbook Pro? If so how? I've tried multiple ways of "burning" my ISO file to the USB drive but in no case am I able to boot into it. I seems to freeze a few seconds into the boot process. Somewhere I've read it might have something to do with EFI but I am not sure.
Looking forward to your feedback. JW

These are mpeg files probably mpeg 2 which iMovie won't import without conversion. Will they open in Quicktime player? If so do a command i and see what the inspector says about the file. MPEG Streamclip is a free app that will convert the Mpeg 2 to .Mov which iMovie will accept although it does require a converter you buy from Apple at $19 I think. Other converters are available just google for them.

Boot Intel Mini from USB external drive

Hi -- can anyone confirm that Intel MacMini can boot from an external USB (NOT firewire) drive?
I see plenty of notes that people boot from firewire, but I haven't seen anything about USB.
Thanks for your help!!

Alan, SATA drives are "faster" than ATA drives, but I don't think the have any other advantage, and unfortunately you lose that advantage when you opt for a USB 2.0 or FireWire 400 connection (they both are slower than SATA or ATA, so it's like a bottleneck). And while USB 2.0 is theoretically faster than FW400, it real-world use FireWire is faster.
There have been reports of people successfully booting off a USB drive on Macintels, and some of them even where Mac minis, at least as far as I can remember. Unlike on PPC Macs, in order to boot off an external drive, you have to partition it with the GUID partition scheme. I'm not sure that cloning a drive would automatically do that, which could explain why Seedling can't boot off his clone ...

Can't boot into OSX from different Hard Drive

Hi,
I am having a problem booting into OSX.
I put my own HDD into my Macbook when I first got it and everything was fine, no problems. But recently I took it out to keep my data safe and put back in the old HDD and reinstall OSX Snow Leopard onto the old HDD. After this completed I put back the one I had purchased myself but upon starting the laptop a bar appeared at the bottom of the Apple startup logo and after disappearing the system did not get any further.
I put my my Snow Leopard CD after this to repair and check the disk and then came the errors that It was corrupt and could not be repaired and that I should try to back up as much data as possible.
My question is, is there anyway to boot from this HDD again without reformatting it? and if I do have to reformat it, can I place it into an enclosure to get the data off?
The HDD was working perfectly with no reported errors until I put in the old HDD and made a new installation on it.
Thanks for any help,
Francis

After looking for answers and phoning Apple I have ended up having to reformat. For those who also have this problem:
I have heard that running Disk Repair multiple times works, try booting into safe mode and try fsck in single user mode. My solution was just to connect the hard drive via USB so I could at least get all my data off of it.
Cheers,
Frank

Booting OS X from G-Tech Drive

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