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 ?

Similar Messages

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 you boot a MacBookPro from an external hard drive with Windows XP?

I'm planning on getting a MacBookPro with a 512GB Solid State drive.
Is there any chance I would be able to find a way to boot from an external drive that has Windows XP installed.
Why would I want to do that you ask? I want to travel with my Mac, but have access to certain programs(AutoCad2010 & 3dMax)that are supplied on my Employer supplied computer without carting it around too... it's a "brick." I know there are Mac versions of AutoCad and 3Dmax, but my employer won't supply me with them. (They are not smart enough to recognize the productivity benifits of Macs.) I thought it would be great to take the Hard drive, put it in a USB or Firewire case and just boot up from that. Probably just a crazy idea, but maybe some clever person knows a way?

Windows XP will neither install nor run on an external drive. However, your boot volume is more than large enough to accommodate a Boot Camp partition in which to run Windows. Or you can purchase Parallels or VM Fusion to run Windows in a virtual machine. Problem solved.

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!

Satellite M30X-129: Can recovery CD be run from an external drive?

My wifi appears to have packed up - recognises wireless networks nearby but won't connect to them - so I am trying to use the Product Recovery disc in the hope that this might restore the wifi.
However, the DVD Multi Drive is not working properly - the light flickers briefly to indicate some sort of activity but no disc shows up in My Computer. I'm thinking that if I buy the External Drive, I can run the Product Recovery disc from this.
Is the Toshiba External DVD SuperMulti Drive (PA3454U-1DV2) compatible with the Satellite M30X-129 P-M 735? Can Product Recovery be run from an external (bootable?) drive?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!

Hi
According to this Toshiba page the drive is compatible with your unit:
http://eu.computers.toshiba-europe.com/cgi-bin/ToshibaCSG/options_and_accessories_search_by_model.jsp?servic e=EU&selSeries=-1&selFamily=2326&selCategory=2319&family=2326&selP roduct=98795
The fact is that only this boot device options are available: USB-FDD/HDD/ODD/LAN
I know that you can only boot from the external CD/DVD drive if the device support this option and the unit.
In my opinion to be100% sure you should ask the ASP for the opinion.
But know another question: Did you boot from the recovery CD to recover the OS?
If you want to recover the OS you have to boot from this CD and not to start it under Windows. Check it

Can you work on iMovie from an external drive?

I am working on a iMovie with iPhoto pictures and footage from my Sony HD DVD video camera. My internal drive does not have enough space to complete the movie. I have a Lacie external drive which does have enough space. I have opened an iMovie project from the external drive but I cannot get any pictures or movie clips added to the timeline. iMovie acts like it is applying my pictures or importing my video footage but then when I press play or preview to watch what I have so far there is nothing. Also the importing video does not turn into clips on the right side of the main iMovie screen. Everything works fine on my internal. I guess to get right to the point I need to know how to bring in media to the external drive. Thanks

I have that problem with my LaCie with a Canon camera. Are you trying to import your film directly from iMovie to the LaCie right? Use disk utlities and partion it so it is in Mac format.
If that doesnt work then that means your camera and your hard drive are using the same bus. They are fighting over which port sends and recieves data. You might need a separate bus for the LaCie to work, even though all my sony cameras have never had a problem with it.

Can I boot 10.5 from an external hard drive?

Hi Folks,
I thought I was able to create a bootable external firewire hard drive containing Mac OS X 10.5 but having no luck. I would like to be able to test some legacy software on it and cannot get it to even boot. I have an 80 GB external drive with 2 partitions (8GB and the rest storage); GUID partition. The 8GB portion has the 10.5 installer I created from an install DVD.
I followed all the instructions but it doesn't seem to work from my Yosemite MacBook Pro 10.10.2 (2.5 intel core i5). Is it not possible because of Yosemite already being installed and it doesn't like I am trying to boot an early version of Mac OS X? Thanks for the help!

Limnos wrote:
Unless this is some super special printer that has no modern equivalent you may want to reconsider. I haven't run things in server software but sometimes hardware can be picky and too much translation from Leopard to Yosemite (since you do have to run a Yosemite controlled cable out of the computer) will end up losing too much. I guess if you're the kind of person who loves trying to make this kind of thing work then fine, but if the bottom line is you need a printer you can pick one up in less time than it will take fiddling around, and not much more cost.
Thanks for the advice - yes I am going to have to fiddle. Good to know that there is a 10.5 server option but I think I will do an install of 10.5 on another older laptop or just go the windows pc route.

Can I boot my F30 from an external floppy drive?

I use Norton Ghost to clone a copy of my harddrive on my PC for use in disaster recovery and it requires a m/c boot from a floppy hard drive when I use Ghost. I want to do the same on my F30 but have no idea if I can can configure the F30 to boot from an external floppy drive. If it is possible can somebody please tell me how to change the boot sequence as I have no experience whatsover of laptops. Many thanks.

Hello
I use Norton Ghost 2003 and I am very satisfied with it. It runs under windows and you can create image file on second partition or even create recovery DVD immediately without using floppy disc. I can just recommend it to you.
Back to your question: with your Qosmio model you can use floppy drive with follow part number PA3109U-3FDD. If I am remember well you can press U button just after switching the unit ON and the unit should boot using floppy drive as first booting device.

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 ...

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.

Rescued iTunes library on external HD. Loaner comp has inadequate HD space to transfer back in. Can I use my library from the external drive? How?

My 5 year old Windows Desktop died but I rescued my iTunes library from the internal to an external drive. The loaner computer I have now is adequate to run iTunes but has a puny internal HD and I cannot transfer my library on to it. I've researched and tried many times solutions to use the external HD as my library location but cannot get it to work. Can anyone help or point me to a step by step guide?
Again the internal HD of the computer is too small to transfer over the library - even temporarily.

There is no reason to move the media to the computers harddrive. Simply point iTunes to the location of the media.
Edit > Preferences > Advanced and tell iTunes where the media is located.

Can't access my mp3s from my external drive. help please!

Hey,
So I've read most of the articles in Support but can't find an answer. I read this too : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449.
I'm running itunes 10.5.3 on my imac. I transferred my itunes music folder to an external drive because it was taking up too much space on my internal drive. Then I went into itunes preferences and changed the location of the folder to the external drive.
But I can't access tons of my mp3s now. When I click on a song in my library that it can't access, I get that explanation mark, and a statement asking me if I would like to locate the file. I locate it, and then I can listen to it.
And after I find that missing file for itunes, a window pops up and asks "Would you like itunes to use the location of "-----" to find other missing files in your library"? I select 'yes'. But then itunes can't find the missing files, even if they're in the same exact folder as the last one I found! It seems to me like this function is broken? And I have like 2,000 missing files! I even re-imported my itunes music folder back into my library. But that didn't work and now I have a ton of duplicates.
Any suggestions?
J

I read this too : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449.
I'm running itunes 10.5.3 on my imac. I transferred my itunes music folder to an external drive because it was taking up too much space on my internal drive. Then I went into itunes preferences and changed the location of the folder to the external drive.
That's where you went wrong.
iTunes: How to move your music to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527
do not confuse moving your whole folder and library with moving just media files as in
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449
Quick answer if you let iTunes manage your music: Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive. Start iTunes with the option key held down and guide it to the new location of the library.

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

Can I boot my computer from an external hard drive

I have already used the (internal) hard drive to boot my computer. If it is bootable while outside the computer, that is only the (internal) hard drive being outside the computer running while the computer is on then I will buy an external herd drive enclosure so that it can do so.
I want to boot my computer using one of my internal hard drives using an external hard drive enclosure so that I do not wear out the the hard drive ports
I am running a Late 2008 MacBook unibody with Mac OS X (10.6.8). The hard drive I plan to boot from has been used internally and is an ssd hard drive, I formated it before I started using it.

... that part is for using an internal hard drive and as I stated that is the one I am trying to avoid wearing by daily swapping. Not only is it an inconvenience to swap them, but it is not an activity that is usually expected to be performed by most users, so likely this part is not meant to be used for that and that would make it not built for multiple hard drives swaps making it prematurely wear out.
That is exactly correct. We do not do that.
It is not necessary to get inside your computer to connect a hard drive. You can connect a second (or third, or even more) drive externally. And if the drive is correctly formatted, you can boot from it. An external hard drive enclosure costs less than < $10. You install the drive in the enclosure, and you can connect it externally to a usb port on the computer.
A typical enclosure for a SATA laptop drive looks like this:
http://www.amazon.com/SATA-Hard-Drive-Case-Enclosure/dp/B001AAVA08
In summary then, keep one drive inside the computer. Always. Use any other drives you need as externals. If you have many external usb devices, plug them into a powered hub. This way nothing needs to be regularly connected and disconnected.

Can I boot Vista OS from an external USB drive

Hi, I would like to install Vista onto an external (USB) drive and boot from that occasionally whilst retaining XP on the internal drive. Is this possible please. I realise I would need to change the boot order in BIOS.
I know I could create a dual boot internal but would like to retain as much space as possible on the internal drive as I will only rarely need to use the dreaded Vista.
Thanks
Ron

And how you want to install Vista on USB device? Have you already tried it?
Please post a little bit about your experience with it if you have some.
Anyway, as far as I know something like this is not possible.

Can't boot my Macbook from an external drive

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for