Can't Boot From External Drive

Situation:
Prior to upgrading to Lion I used SuperDuper to create a copy of the existing internal hard drive on an new external drive (iOmega eGo 500GB).
Tested booting from the external disk and it appeared to work correctly.
Upgraded to Lion.
Several days later attempted to boot from the external disk (by setting the start up disk in the system preferenes ) but it fails.
The system always boots into Lion.
What I've tried:
Setting the start up disk through system preferences
Holding down the option key to select a disk on startup - interestingly enough I only see the internal hard disk and a recover HD. No sign of my external disk.
Using a clean partition on the external hard drive I installed SL from the retail DVD. This produces the same effect of system booting to Lion on the internal drive, which suggests that the problem is not related to the copy I made using SuperDuper, but rather has to do with the external drive or something in Lion that prevents using an external drive (but I've never heard of such a thing).
Talked to technical support at Apple since I had newly purchased Lion. They couldn't offer a solution but did give a lot of thought and suggestions - but they don't support booting from an external disk.
Talked to iOmega technical support. Not helpful but did figure out at the end of an online chat that they don't support their disks being used for external booting.
Emailed SuperDuper. Very helpful. They offered some suggestions but in the end these didn't work.
Characteristics
Lion 10.7.4
iMac 2007
External Drive Interface FW800
I'd appreciate any suggestions as to the cause of the problem and possible fixes.
Thanks

@shootist007
Still no success but more information:
I found the USB cable for the drive, connected it to a powered USB hub (note that there are two cables going into the hub that must merge and go into a single connector for the USB interface on the drive). with both cables plugged in I still can't get the external drive to boot.
I need to do one more experiment on this. The hub is fully loaded so I'll try removing as much load as possible on the USB to see if I can get it to work.
Regarding your question, there is no way to get power to the drive. (Now I think about it, the design is for a portable drive that you can carry around with you so iOmega aimed the design at not needing a power supply to make it very portable). Hmmm, didn't think about that when I purchased it.
If reducing the load on the hub doesn't make it work then I'l have to get a replacement drive with its own power supply.
Thanks for your help. Even though no success yet I suspect you've identified the problem.

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MacPro can't boot from external drive

Running 10.7.3 and a MacPro which gets backed up each night with SuperDuper. Can't boot from this drive (black screen). Yet I can take the same drive and start up my Macbook Pro! So it isn't the drive or the data on it. I'm stumped. Could this be related to an issue where I can't get this same MacPro or system to successfully backup to Time Machine without error? The boot drive seems OK (ran Disk Warrior and Disk Utility).

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
The purpose of this exercise is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party system modifications that load automatically at startup or login. Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Boot in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. The instructions provided by Apple are as follows:
Be sure your Mac is shut down.
Press the power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple icon and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).
Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including wireless networking on certain Macs.
The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
Test while in safe mode. Same problem(s)?
After testing, reboot as usual (i.e., not in safe mode.)

Can't boot from external drive, no options...

Okay so I just upgraded my 24" iMac to Snow Leopard, from an external drive, and things seemed fine. I was migrating my old settings and then after I noticed I couldn't access system folders. It wanted old settings' permissions, not the new one, so I right-clicked on the folder and set permissions so that anybody could write to it.
Still didn't work. I thought I should then reboot.
So I did. But now when I try to log on, to my old profile or my new one, neither password works. Even though they're the same. If I get it wrong enough times, it will let me put in the master password for the computer, in a separate pop-up, which is the same, and that works.
Then it wants me to give a new password, back in the old password box, and then it just shakes angrily afterward, not accepting anything I type. Why is this?
The next step seemed to be re-install Snow Leopard. But pressing the option key at startup doesn't let me boot up from the external drive. I looked online with my macbook and found all these other boot options, but none of them work. Not a single one has any effect.
One thing I should mention is that I'm not using the standard iMac keyboard, not sure if that makes a difference. It's a PC keyboard and the keys are just slightly rearranged but it has Alt, Ctrl, and the option key is a circle with the windows logo in it. Any chance that the new OS isn't recognizing the new keyboard properly?
I just don't know what else it could be. Any help is appreciated.

coconutmelodies wrote:
I only have one master computer password, and it's not the same as any of my other passes. That's the pass that's needed to log on, and access system info. However it's also the same password as my old profile, that I was migrating over (which is still confusing as to how to do a clean install and then bring old admin info over so they work together seemlessly) so now when trying to log on, after the first reboot, I saw that I could log on to the old or the new profile. As well as a guest account, which isn't accessible though.
It sounds like here you are talking about an admin user account & its login password rather than a "master" password. Only admin users can access & change system info (more or less). However, you cannot merge two user accounts, if that is what you mean by 'bringing old admin info over so they work together seemlessly.' Also, keep in mind that each user is a separate entity as far as the computer is concerned, whether or not they have the same login password, & that you can log into & use only one account at a time. So for instance, if you have a user account "A" created on the Mac & an imported/migrated account "B" from another Mac, if you are logged in as "A" you will not be able to access info in the folders belonging to "B" unless while logged in as "B" you previously explicitly set permissions on those folders for "A" to access them.
So whichever profile I attempt to log onto, when I type in the password, (there's even an obvious clue after a few tries, so no chance I'm getting it wrong) the box shakes like I got it wrong.
The box shakes only if you did get it wrong, so I don't understand what you mean about there being no chance that you got it wrong.
After like six tries, it asks me for a "Master Password" "Type the master password to reset this uer's password" into which I put my regular login pass that I've been trying over and over, and here it does work.
"If you change the password for this user account, you will create a new keychain to store the user's passwords"
So then it asks me to put in a new password, and verify it, but after each try it just shakes. It won't accept anything.
Again, I don't understand what you mean in the first paragraph above when you say "here it does work." The Master Password the dialog box asks for is one you would have had to previously explicitly set up for the computer in the File Vault tab of the Security System Preference. It is not associated with any user account (& again, it makes no difference if you set it to the same one as for one or more user accounts). It's purpose is as a "safety net" to unlock File Vault protected user accounts. As explained in Mac OS X 10.6 Help: If you forget your password for your FileVault-protected account, you must first fail to enter the account's password correctly three (not six) times, then click the “Forgot Password” button to get to the Master Password dialog box. Entering the previously set up Master Password allows you to set & verify a new password for that account.
If you can get this far, it means you are successfully entering the Master Password & have successfully reset the account's password to something new. If the box shakes after you then try to log into that account, it means you have not entered the same characters at the login screen as you did when resetting the account password.
If you mean something else is happening please explain it more clearly, in step-by-step fashion including the results of each step. Don't say things like "try it." Instead, say that you clicked on the "OK" (or whatever named) button & say what the result was.

Trouble Booting from External Drives - MBA 2012

Hello,
I have a brand new 13" MBA which I'm working on building an image to use for deployment using Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.5. For whatever reason, I can't boot the new 2012 MBA from an external LaCie FW800 or Thunderbolt 1TB Little Big Disk that is running either 10.7.2 or 10.7.4. As soon as I select the drive to boot from when holding the Options key or from selecting the partition from Startup Disk in System Preferences, I get the do not enter icon(circle with the diagonal slash). I tried both plugged in through a Cinema Display and plugging the Thunderbolt drive directly to the laptop. I confirmed both LaCie drives boot properly on an iMac and the last gen MBP/MBA.
Laptop Specs:
13"
1.8GHz Dual-core i5
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128 SSD
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Paolo

Please be sure you have prepped these external drives correctly:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
My suggestion for cloning is to use Disk Utility. This will also automatically clone the Recovery HD, as well:
Clone Lion using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Select Disk Utility from the main menu then press the Continue button.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.

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I recently bought Toshiba Satellite L20-100 and I wonder if:
1. is there any possibility to boot this machine from external usb hard drive?
2. it is possible to attach another internal hard drive?
Supposing that the both answers above are 'no', how can I solve the following problem: I need hdd space, I need to boot 3 separate Wxp Operating Systems onto the same machine (Toshiba Satellite L20-100).

Booting from external USB HD - "No" would be the official, mcrsoft sponsored, answer. However, it is possible. Not easy but it can be done. I've seen it done with my own eyes and there are guides how to do this. Just look for it with search engine. But if you have enough disk space you better do what was suggested here - create 3 partitions and use boot manager.

Can't boot from external HD with Leopard on MacBook Pro or PowerBook

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Is this a common problem? Anybody know how to fix it?
Thanks!

That probably wasn't very clear was it? I have several ext. HD's, some with bootable systems and some just backups. One bootable disk was made with CopyCloner and the other was a clean format and only had an original install of the OS just to use for an emergency boot. They both booted just fine. Then at some point, they stopped being bootable. I have used the Control Panel "Startup" and also used the Option key boot and picked the bootable disk. Neither one boots anymore. It started doing this on the old PowerBook and then also refused to boot on the MacBook Pro. This is not the problem with the HD since it happens with any bootable HD. Something is going on at the system level and it was transfered from the PowerBook to the MacBook.
Thanks,
Bill

External Drive with Time Machine, booting from external drive with utilitie

I'm using Time Machine now with
a LaCie 1TB external hard drive.
Everything works fine.
But, I've been wondering:
Can I place a program like TechTool
on the external drive (that Time Machine uses)
and boot from that external drive.
I would like to be able to do that,
because diagnostics and repair programs
only works properly and fully when they run from
external drives. Anything on the internal drive can be repaired
and examine. Impossible to do if Techtool is on the same
drive that's been examined.
Any thoughts as to what I should do?
Thanks
iMac, Leopard, Time Machine, Lacie Quadra 1TB drive.
P.S. Stupid question: If my computer crashes, and I reboot from Time Machine
(from the external drive) how does the computer know which backup to take ?!?
Isn't there many versions of the OS on the Time Machine backup taken at different times?

pitou wrote:
P.S. Stupid question: If my computer crashes, and I reboot from Time Machine
(from the external drive) how does the computer know which backup to take ?!?
Isn't there many versions of the OS on the Time Machine backup taken at different times?
As V.K. says, you can't boot from TM backups.
But you can restore your entire system from any one of them, per the procedure in #14 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
You can also selectively restore from them, while running normally. See #15 in the FAQ Tip.
You might want to review these:
Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine 101
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
Apple - Support - Mac OSX v10.5 Leopard Time Machine
and perhaps browse the rest of the FAQ Tip.

Problems booting from external drives

Ever since I got this 6-core 2013 MacPro (January 2015), I have had strange problems and glitches, but for this posting, I am talking about problems being able to boot up from external drives. I took the 4 external drives out of my old 2009 MacPro and put them into a 4-bay Thunderbolt enclosure. This enclosure can be configured as a RAID if all drives are the same (which they are not) or it can just be a place to be able to access all 4 drives. I used to be able to boot from each of those drives on the older MacPro but I am unable to do so now. They show up in the System Preferences/Startup Disk but if I choose one, it just reboots into the new MacPro drive. I even tried pulling out a couple of the drives and mounting each into a USB 3.0 (Sabrent) dock and still I could not boot from those drives which have the latest version of Yosemite. Yes, they are formatted correctly. I used to boot from them. I was able to clone one of the drives to a Seagate USB 3.0 hard drive and boot from that. Although, the clone was not perfect. It didn't transfer all my settings so I could recover some logins and serial numbers I wanted that I have never been able to retrieve since I got this new Mac.
Yesterday, I formatted a 32GB flash drive and tried to install Yosemite on it. I planned to put DiskWarrior on it. When I started to install Yosemite (from a saved download) it let me choose that drive, but when it restarted before installing, I was right back where I started on my MacPro's hard drive.
Is this normal behavior for the 2013 MacPro? Or is it just mine? I am beginning to think I may have a lemon since I have had other strange problems that don't go away.

Not all external devices are bootable. First stop would be involve whoever handles the 4-bay Thunderbolt. Seeing how it has a bridge most likely in order to support RAID mode that may not have the correct frmware or other reasons.
https://bombich.com/kb/ccc4
https://bombich.com/kb/ccc4/search/bootable%20volume
CCC is the only program I would be using.

Tecra M2: Can I Boot from External USB/Firewire-HDD ???

Hi All,
how can I boot from an external USB Drive ?
The Bios 1.20, 03/15/2004 doesn't seem to support this on my Tecra M2.
I have an Maxtor 300Gig external HDD which can be connected via Firewire or USB. Usually I am using an Firewire PCMCIA-Card to connect this HDD, which has 3 partitions on it.
Would it also be possible, to Boot via PCMCIA-Firewire ?
Many thanks in advance.
Lembong

Hi
As far as I know its not possible to boot from a USB HDD. I know that in some cases its possible to boot from compatible USB FDD and CD/DVD drives but note from HDD.
This theme was disused a lot of time here in the forum.
Please check this other posting:
http://forums.computers.toshiba-europe.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=4534&messageID=14824#14824
http://forums.computers.toshiba-europe.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=8963&messageID=31325#31325
Regards

Can't boot from internal drive - Please help!

The internal drive on my PBG4 was making some funny noises this morning and sure enough, when I tried to reboot from it I was unable to. Instead I was brought to a screen with a DOS prompt with some cryptic error message. Since then I've called Apple support and their "solution" was to re-format the drive and reinstall the OS. I can do that if I absolutely have to, but if there's any way around it, I'd much rather avoid the reformatting/reinstalling everything nightmare scenario. Initially Disk Repair said the drive couldn't be repaired. I booted from my Disk Warrior CD (3.0.3), which prompted me to backup data (luckily I have an external 250GB drive) and I backed up my home directory. I did that and rebuilt the directory, then restarted from my Tiger CD and ran Disk utility again and it said the disk was fine. I tried to boot from the drive and I get taken to a DOS prompt again with the following error message:
launchd can't exec /bin/sh for single user: No such file or directory
Any suggestions on what I can try at this point short of reformatting the drive and starting over from scratch?
Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.7) 1.25 GHZ, 1GB Ram
Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.5) 1.25 GHZ, 1GB Ram

I assume you have OS X on a 2nd drive that you can run DW, Disk Utility etc.
As you backup files and know they are okay, delete them. Undo the layers of onion and try to go from latest to oldest.
If you don't have an emergency fw drive...
The trouble with long backups on a problem drive is they can fail during the backup if the drive gets too hot, which happens.
Back in Panther, you could use BootCD to create an emergency CD or DVD with your system, full finder, loads of utilities, and could even run FireFox. With that, you could run TTPro 4, Disk Warrior, DU, Rember etc. AND play around in the Finder and Terminal.
I still keep a CD and DVD with 10.3.9 just in case. The perfect FW drive would have a couple OS versions, a backup partition (that you can erase if needed).
Apple Disk Utility from CD/DVD can also be used to copy/clone a volume or foleer, using Restore and output to a volume or disk image.

Can't boot from firewire drive

Howzit,
I have partitioned an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 1.5 TB firewire drive into 2 partitions using Disk Utility and GUID mapping. I then used Carbon Copy Clone to clone the startup disk of my MacPro, which runs OS 10.4.11. The clone successfully boots when it is connected to the MacPro.
The problem is that I am unable to boot from the firewire drive when I hook it up to my iMac. When I restart and hold the OPTION key, the clone appears as a startup option, but the computer freezes when I click on it. The clone also shows up as an option in the Startup Disk preference, but when I try restarting after selecting the clone, it freezes the same way: gray screen, no apple, no rotating gear.
Can you help?

Make an OS partition then for each. Or, upgrade your Mac Pro to SL as well. Unless there is software holding you to Tiger.
Now, when SL came out, I know I saw a lot of threads regarding issues booting from external firewire drives, so you may not be 100% out of the woods, but you should.
I'd expect to get a panic screen from 10.4, lacks any support for newer hardware / graphics card and more.

Problem booting from external drive

I'm having trouble booting my MacBook from an external USB drive.
I've created a bootable backup of my hard drive, using SuperDuper! (in order to be able to install a bigger hard drive and restore my current drive state). If, with the drive attached, I restart and hold down Alt (which I understand should offer a choice of drives from which to boot), I get nothing but grey screen (ie. the first grey you see before the apple logo comes up right at the start of startup). I have been able to boot from the external drive by changing Startup Disk settings, so I'm sure there's no problem with the external disk volume.
The drive is an Iomega 80GB USB 2.0 drive, and I'm running 10.4.10 on a 2GHz Core Duo MacBook.

Hey guys,
Thanks for the feedback... here's my update (still no joy):
• I'm not sure about the GUID table - how do I check? Does the fact that I can boot from the drive having selected it in my System Preferences mean that it is? It is definitely HFS+ formatted, however. (I gave bad information about the drive type, however - it's a Freecom 400GB, not Iomega 80GB, not that I suppose that makes a difference.)
• After holding that Alt key for a very long time, my MacBook did show me something other than a plain grey screen: a single, large, internal HD icon in the middle of the screen, above a vertical arrow icon. I take this to mean that the MacBook is recognising the internal HDD and no other volume. The external drive was still plugged into the USB port.
• The external drive is in fact partitioned as two volumes.

After 10.4.11 upgrade Macbook won't start can't boot from external HD

Hi guys,
I just suffer as all other that after try ti install the 10.4.11 update my macbook won't start, I have a external HD with a image of my macbook but went I press and hold the option key I only see the bootcamp parttion and my internal HD, I don't see the external HD.
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I follow the robotobi post and solve this issue.
Thanks robotobi

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I installed an SSD and a seagate SSD/HDD hybrid in the optical bay. I installed refit but I can't boot from a thumb drive and my superdrive doesn't act right, Is there firmware update or any kind of fixes anyone has seen heard or similar problem.
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cleaning the drive worked.

Can't boot from external hard drive

I have a 250 GB OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Firewire drive that I use for backups for my MacBook Pro (running 10.4.8) and iBook G4 (running 10.3.9). The drive is partitioned into four parts, two of which I use for bootable clones of the MBP and iBook. I've been able to boot from the MBP clone, but whenever I try to boot from the iBook clone, after a few seconds of the gray screen with the Apple logo on it and the spinning circle, the Apple logo turns into a gray circle with a diagonal line through it, and the spinning thing keeps spinning, and it never boots up. (For lack of a better description, the circle with the line through it is a gray version of the symbol you see, for instance, in the Ghostbusters logo.)
Here's a few things that aren't (or don't seem to be) the problem:
- I'm not trying to boot from the wrong machine--i.e., I'm not trying to boot the iBook clone from the MBP
- Since I've tried creating the clone with both EMC Retrospect Express and SuperDuper and get the same result with both, it doesn't seem to be the backup software
- I've tried completely erasing the partition (including erasing the free space) from both the MBP and the iBook before creating the clone
- Just for good voodoo, I've also repaired permissions, reset the NVRAM, and run a disk repair on both the internal iBook disk and the clone
- The iBook definitely recognizes it as a bootable drive, since it shows up when I hold down the option key during boot, and also in the Startup Disk section of System Preferences
I'm a little stymied at this point. The only other things I can think of would be that (a) I need to completely reformat and repartition the drive (which I don't really want to do, since I also have other backups and data on there), or (b) for some reason the fact that I initially created the partitions on the MBP is preventing the iBook from using those partitions (i.e., I can only create Intel-only or PPC-only partitions, which I hope isn't the problem, since that would mean I'd need a whole separate drive just to back up the iBook).
Anyone have any idea what's going on?

The MBP and iBook require different partition schemes to be bootable. You won't be able to boot both computers from the same drive.
I can't install Mac OS X on a hard drive
If the installer won't let you install Mac OS X on a hard drive and gives as the reason "Mac OS X cannot start up from this volume," the drive may not have the partition scheme that the Installer requires. The needed partition scheme depends on the type of processor in your Mac. The installer installs Mac OS X for Intel-based Macintosh computers only on drives with the GUID partition scheme. It installs Mac OS X for PowerPC-based Macintosh computers only on drives with the Apple partition scheme.
To check the external drive's partition scheme, open Disk Utility, select the drive in the list, choose File > Get Info, and look for the "Partition Type." If you can't see the "Partition Type," you may have selected the volume instead of the disk. (Drives are flush left, with their volumes indented to the right below them.)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh2315.html
John

Can't Boot From External Drive

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