Can't boot from IDE hard drives

Just purchased a barebones system with a KEN NEO Platinum board running an AMD 64 3400+. Tried to install old Maxtor hard drive (40 gb) into new system and a blue screen pops up for less than one second and reboots PC. I can’t read the blue screen but I believe it is saying there is a hardware conflict.
What is causing this. The CMOS recognizes the HD but it can't boot from it. I’ve got two of these units and both have the same problems. I put the drive back into the original PC and it works fine.
Need help desperately.

When I connect the cables, they show which is the slave and which is the master. In the CMOS, everything looks fine. I've noticed alot of people are having difficulty installing used and new hard drives. I've been working with PC's for quite a while and I've never had this much trouble. I was hoping there was something I missed in the CMOS settings.

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HP Pavilion 500-210 QE Can't boot from any hard drive.

Good Evening. As you can see from the subject, my computer just can't boot from any hard drive that I put on it. I tried swapping the power supply, the SATA cable, resetting the BIOS, enabling legacy boot, changing from AHCI to IDE and RAID...
When I get to the BIOS setup, I can see the hard drive and its specifications, but it just won't boot or show up when I'm trying to install a new OS. I'm not an expert, but I think the problem might be in the motherboard SATA ports, but I'm not sure. Just to make sure, I did try another hard drive and it didn't work aswell.
I was also thinking about buying an external hard drive and instaling my OS on that, but I don't even know if that's possible and I would really like to have my computer working again.
Thank you for your attention!
This question was solved.
View Solution.

What is the installed operating system?
Did you make a recovery disk set?
Did you happen to make a Windows 8.1 startup disk or USB recovery thumbdrive?
Have you tested the hard disk?
Press the power button and then immediately tap the Esc key. In the Startup menu, choose F2 for Diagnostics. In the HP Basic System Diagnostics menu choose hard disk. Run the test and post the results here.
The issue you are facing has nothing to do with the SATA ports. It is a configuration issue. Your PC is a modern one and its BIOS (UEFI) is far more advanced than what you may have seen before.
If you want to install a different operating system then you will have to make a few changes in the BIOS configuration. Secure Boot is turned on by default for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. If you try installing a different OS without turning this off then your system won't boot up. You may be running into this if you are trying to install another operating system.
The image below is what will be seen in the BIOS of your PC in the security tab --> . In the secure boot configuration options do not clear the secure boot keys! Those keys are your operating system license activation keys.
****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

X86 install was successful, but now I can't boot from the hard drive

I have successfully installed Solaris 10 for x86 from the bootable CD ROMs. However, now, after removing the CD-ROM from the drive and booting from the hard disk I am having problems.
The system attempts to boot. It displays the Solaris Primary Boot Subsytem v2.0 screen...pauses for 15 seconds...then reboots itself. And it continues this process.
However, if I boot to CD-ROM first, then boot to the Hard Drive, I have no problems. The CDE comes up fine.
We are running a 64 bit OS with a SATA drive that is supported. And as I mentioned, the install successfully completed.
Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

is your hard drive connected as IDE0 - primary master? if not try doing so.

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 hard drive with Snow Leopard

I bought a new Macbook Air with Lion. I have my old Snow Leopard installation cloned onto an external hard drive, and I want to boot from it. I can choose my external hard drive during boot, it shows the Apple logo, but after that the screen goes black and nothing happens. Is there a way to fix this?

Can't be done. Snow Leopard does not contain necessary drivers and perhaps other items required for OS X on the 2011 MBA. In fact, the version of Lion on the App store won't install on the 2011 MBA.
This is totally normal in Apple's world. A new version of MAC hardware that comes with a new version of OS X installed usually will not operate correctly with previous versions of OS X.

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.

Can't boot from internal hard drive.

I just replaced my internal hard drive and copied the back-up from the old drive onto the new one. The new drive appears to be properly formatted and to contain all the data I copied to it, but I am unable to boot from it. Any advice? Thanks!

Thanks, Courcoul. I went back and formatted the drive again, this time booting from the OSX installation CD. (Last time I booted from the back-up drive from which I was copying.) I don't know if it was booting from the CD and not the drive, or that I didn't format it properly the first time, but this did the trick. Working perfectly.

Can I format an IDE Hard Drive from Mac Pro?

I use a mid - 2012 Mac Pro; run Mavericks OS X 10.9.2.
1. Can an IDE hard drive (using an external drive) be formatted to 10.9.2, from my Mac Pro using Mavericks? (the IDE hard drive is new/unformatted).
2. Once formatted to 10.9.2, can I reformat the IDE hard drive to Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8, from my Mac Pro using Mavericks?
3. If so, would should I do to accomplish Question # 2 above?

The version of the OS that is running is not relevant to formatting the drive. When you format a drive in any OS, you should select "Mac OS extended journaled." (That is, unless you plan to share the drive with a Windows computer.) Formatted this way, the drive can be used with any version of Mac OS.
You do not have to reformat the drive each time you connect it with a different OS.

Why won't my iMac 27" boot from external hard drive?

I have a new 27in Intel i5 dual core 3.6GHz iMac. It works wonderfully.
My question is this. I have a Pleides Ice Cube external hard drive with a USB 2.0/Firewire enclosure with a 500GB hard drive. I used diskutility to format the hard drive as a GUID Partition Table. I then used SuperDuper to clone the iMac OS 10.6.7 and Apps over to it.
I can select the external drive in System Preferences/Startup Disk to boot from, but when booting the iMac gets as far as the white screen then just stops loading.
I have tried both the USB connection and the Firewire connection (with a Firewire 800 to 400 cable).
I have run Disk Utility and repaired the disk and the preferences.
I have used Disk Warrior to rebuild the directory as well, but the iMac will not boot from the drive.
It does boot from the original DVD's and its own hard drive.
My old 24" iMac had no trouble booting from this hard drive or any of the others I have collected over the years, so I am reluctant to think it is the external drive. It is something to do with this particular processor Snow Leopard and external drives.

It sounds like something in the SuperDuper clone might not have copied well. To get the full answer on that I would check with Apple or SuperDuper to see if they support each other.
As a quick test, if you restart and immediately press and hold "option" on your keyboard do you see your external HD as an option to boot from? If so, click it and see if the boot runs any differently, but if you don't see it at all that could show that the problem is more deep rooted.
Personally, if looking in to either of those didn't give me any other info to go on, I would reformat and start the clone again. BTW, do you know for sure GUID Partition is the format you'd want to do this on? Generally macs use "Mac OS Extended" and some external HDs can use "FAT32" (if you want them to work well with Windows)
Hope that gives a little direction
Alex

Can I boot from a SATA drive? What if it's RAID?

I'm planning on getting the MSI 875P Neo FIS2R 800FSB motherboard. I'm also planning on getting ONE SATA hard drive. Can I boot from the SATA drive? Do I HAVE to set up it as a RAID drive? Can you boot from RAID drives? RAID and SATA confuse me a little. Anyone care to help?

I'm using the MSI 865PE Neo2 board and I'm having this problem. It probably has an easy solution, but this is my first build, so I'm not sure exactly what to do.
MSI 865PE Neo 2 Mobo
2.4b P4
Seagate SATA 80GB HDD
Panasonic FDD
Lite-On DVDROM
It took me a little bit of experimenting, but I got the BIOS to recogonize the DVD & HDD. It seems every time I got it to recognize one, the other disappeared. Anyway, like I said, BIOS recognizes all 3 now.
I go to install XP and it says I need to install the drivers from a floppy (after I had previously hit F6). Well, where do I get the drivers? I have a CDROM that came with the mobo but I don't know where to find the drivers for the SATA controller on it. ???
Can someone help me by directing me to a download and/or the file names that I need to transfer to floppy for Win XP installation? I would appreciate it. Thanks.

Can I boot from an external drive with a "Virtual CD"

I just purchased a Hitachi LifeStudio external hard drive for use as my Time Machine backup. When I plugged it in to my MacBook running 10.6.4, I realized that it had one of those "Virtual CDs" that contained the manufacturers crapware, similar to Western Digital's MyWare or whatever its called. It shows up in disk utility as an actual separate disk and not just another partition that can be wiped.
I reformatted the drive using GUID and and created 3 HFS+ Journaled partitions. One was going to be for the 10.6 installer, one for the 10.6 boot, and one for my time machine backup. I restored a 10.6 install dvd disk image I created using disk utility to the 10.6 installer partition (with erase destination checked) then option booted my mac and the partitions did not show up. The only thing I could see was my internal hard drive.
I have done this many times before and it has always worked so Im trying to figure out what Im doing wrong. The only thing I can think of is that the "Virtual CD" that Hitachi put on this external drive is stopping the Mac from seeing the bootable partitions I created. I even went into system preferences>startup disk and blessed the 10.6 install partition. That didn't work either, the computer just booted to my internal drive.
So my questions are. Is it because of this "Virtual CD" that I can't boot from my external drive? If so, is there a way around it? I already searched their web site and emailed their tech support asking for a firmware update to remove the virtual cd.
Thanks in advance.

Yes, it's a known issue. You've already referred to the issue with WD systems. WD has a long list of products that are either not compatible with Macs or won't boot a Mac.
There are practically no problems with bare drives, but once installed in an enclosure there is no guarantee that the package will function as a bootable device. This is especially the case if the manufacturer uses some sort of "virtual" scheme intended for using the device as a sort of one button backup device.
External drives don't have to specifically say anything about being Mac bootable or compatible. It's up to the consumer to verify compatibility and usability.

Set Bios to Boot from 2nd Hard Drive

Hello HP forum!
I have a situation that I am afraid may be hardware related, so this is my last attempt for help before I let it go.
In this laptop, I have two hard drive slots with two hard drives. The second hard drive was used as an HP backup/restore drive as shipped from the factory.
I would like to format and install an OS onto the 2nd drive for easy-peesy dual booting. (This is a work computer, so easy + time-efficient + low-risk is optimal). I have actually done this already, but the BIOS does not seem to detect two bootable hard drives. In the BIOS (pretty sure not EFI) boot list, it simply shows the option to boot from "Notebook Hard Drive", which boots from the 1st drive.
In my 1st Drive's Windows 7, I can read the contents of the 2nd disk, so it is definitely functional. Also, replacing the 1st drive with the 2nd drive, I can successfully boot from it, so it is bootable. This seems to imply that my hardware understands that there are two drives, but the BIOS does not recognize that port to be a bootable option, but only a storage option... I guess?
My question is, then, how can I set up my computer to give me the option to boot from either drive? Is it even possible on this hardware?
Thanks
Rex

Did you make sure to update your bios as that could be something that might require a bios update? Also if you can't see or locate that second drive in the BIOS you might not have the option to boot from the second drive? Does the bios also give you the option to boot from the cd drive? Your asking us to see a boot bios screen and unless some has your same make/model no everyone will be able to confirm or see what your asking so unless you can do more looking at all your bios options you might not have the option to boot from the second drive port.
I am a Volunteer to help others on here-not a HP employee.
Replies aren't online 24/7 because of Time Zone differences.
Remember in this Day and Age of Computing the Internet is Knowledge at your fingertips if you choose understand it. -2015-

Booting from external hard drive on intel-based MacBook Pro

Good day everyone. I know similar questions were raised in this community, but I still have some questions.
I have MacBook Pro(late 2011) with OS X 10.7.5 and external hard drive with Ubuntu 13.04, from wich i can boot succefully on my PC. But MacBook Pro will not boot from my external drive, no matter which key/combination i use during restart.
After googling I found some answers to my initial question, how to boot from external hard drive
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1852633?start=0&tstart=0
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/faq/macbook-pro-boot-from-exte rnal-firewire-or-usb-drive.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1948
As I understand I need to format my external hard drive into GUID partition type and this will be enough to be able to boot from it on my mac?
With this new partition type, will I be able to install ubuntu again on my external drive?
Does GUID partition type supports NTFS, ext4 and FAT32, linux swap?(I use ntfs for big files, ext4 as partition for ubuntu and fat32, because i use windows, linux and osx)
Will I be able to boot from my pc from my external drive with this new partition type?
What are downsides, if any, to GPT?
here is info on my e-drive

LowLuster wrote:
The only OS that will boot from an external drive is Mac OS X or maybe Linux. For OS X to be installed on any drive it need to be formatted Mac OS Extended and have GUID partition table.
As for Linux I'm not that familiar with it but again for a Mac to boot it need an EFI partition on the drive and I don't think that is possible with NTFS or FAT32 let alone the native Linux format.
Went to wiki to learn more on efi but found artice on uefi.
Operating system loaders are a class of the UEFI applications. As such, they are stored as files on a file system that can be accessed by the firmware, called EFI System partition (ESP). Supported file systems include FAT32, FAT16 and FAT12, and supported partition table scheme is GPT only. UEFI does not rely on a boot sector, although ESP provides space for it as part of the backwards compatibility.[26]
Here is FAQ on official uefi website.
Can UEFI Secure Boot be adopted and implemented by a variety of operating systems?
UEFI specifications are platform-independent, supporting multiple platforms and architectures. In addition, UEFI specifications are designed to promote cross-functionality, as well as to support broad adoption across multiple operating systems, including Windows as well as Linux-based operating systems. The specifications are robust and can potentially complement—or even advance—other distributions, such as Linux-based distributions.
And here is wiki article on GPT expaining OS support.
It is obvious both uefi and GPT are ok with Linux and file systems such as FAT32, ext4 and NTFS.
I guess there is no much difference(or is that the same thing?) between uefi and efi used in Macs.
In your answer to Stark Industries you said that mac can boot linux from external hard drive, well this is not the info i got of official website and it is still my question, because your answer is very inconclusive and your info is partially incorrect

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).
Is it possible to boot and run an iMac G5 from an external hard drive? If so, what is required for hardware and what steps need to be taken?
If not, what course of action would you recommend?

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.
Apparently, there are ways to boot from a USB drive, but they are complicated and a firewire drive is very straightforward and fast.
Let us know how you make out,

Need to boot from external hard drive

MacBook Pro 3,1... 2.2GHz
My dvd drive is failing and my hard drive needs repair. I can't boot from my install DVD due to the failing drive, can I copy or clone it to my external firewire hard drive and boot from that. Or from a mac mini?
If so, how do I do it??? Please help, clients and projects on the line:)
Thanks!!

Hi there
You can boot to an external HDD, but it has to have a GUID Partition Map scheme, and formatted as Mac OS Extended Journaled (can be done from within Disk Utility)
OR
You can use the optical drive of your Mac Mini to perform a Remote Install of OS X (or to boot from the Install Disc) Please see the below articles
MacBook Air, Mac mini: How to use Remote Disc to share DVDs or CDs from a Mac or Windows-based computer
Mac OS X 10.6 Help - Using Remote Install Mac OS X
Have fun

Can't boot from IDE hard drives

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