Can't start up from external drive

I have cloned my startup drive to an external firewire drive. I made the clone using Carbon Copy Cloner, with the "Make Bootable" preference checked. It's my intention to be able to use this drive as the startup drive should there be a problem with my internal drive.
I selected the external in System Preferences as the startup drive and restarted. I got a gray screen, and no further activity, so I pressed the Restart button and tried again, to no avail. Then I tried to restart holding the Option key. I got the Select Drive screen, but there were no drives on it, and after a few minutes I pressed the Restart button again.
What am I doing wrong? The external drive is an ATA drive in a firewire case, and I have booted from it in the past.
Thanks
BC

Now that I think of it, I did NOT boot from this external drive in the past. this is a new drive in a new case. The old case had the Oxford chip set, this one has the Prolific chip set. Does this make a difference?
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Similar Messages

  • Starting up from external Drive???

    Have cloned my on board Drive with CCC, on a brand new JOURNALED external drive.
    All went well.
    Checked copied data.. it all seems fine.
    Now testing the External Drive is creating a bit of anxiety as I have never attempted that before.
    I know what and how to do it but am concerned that booting my computer FROM the ext.Drive, especially if slightly corrupted may cause me an issue to re-boot internally.
    Also
    Does updating the CLONE require as much time on follow ups, I truly hope it does NOT start all over again, just amends newly modified data...RIGHT?
    I thank you for any input.

    Basically all you should have to do is;
    1) with external drive connected and powered on Open System Preferences->Startup Disk & select your External Drive.
    2) Restart using the Restart... button.
    There are things to keep in mind. The external drive must the appropriate type of Partitioning for the Mac CPU architecture that you are trying to boot (GUID Partition Table for Intel, Apple Partition Map for PPC). Up until somewhat recently Macs would only boot off of Firewire, and even then only certain Firewire chipsets. Newer Macs (I believe this includes all Intel Macs, but not sure) can boot off of Firewire or USB 2.0. I do not know about the very latest Macs, but obviously the new MacBooks won't boot off of Firewire because they do not have that interface available.
    As far as I know unless you start accessing your internal drive and doing damaging changes there is little or no risk trying to boot off of your external clone. Worst case if it doesn't boot properly, power the mac down with the power button, disconnect the drive, and start up with your internal disk. If you do need to take this action make sure to go into Startup Disk and select your internal drive, otherwise your Mac spends time looking for bootable disks every time you power it on.

  • Can't import library from External drive to new compueter.

    I guess this could be more of a Windows 8 issue but maybe someone knows what I can do.  My old 2006 Macbook died and I just got a new Windows 8 laptop.  I had my iTunes library on an external drive (formatted in NTFS) because the Macbook had a tiny hard drive.  Anyway, this new laptop has big enough HD that I can copy my library directly to it.  The problem is, I can't...  I opened up two Windows Explorers, one with my old library, and another with the location of the new library.  It should let me just copy the contents from one folder to the other but for some reason it just won't.  I select all the files/folders, drag them over to the new location, and nothing happens.  I tried to copy/paste, both with the right-click menu, as well as keyboard shortcuts, and again nothing.  Not even an error message.  Why won't Windows let me copy the files?  Should I just open up iTunes and drag the files over that way or will that screw things up?  Please help!
    PS.  I'm using Windows 8 64-bit and iTunes 11.1.1.11

    Benhermies wrote:
    I guess this could be more of a Windows 8 issue but maybe someone knows what I can do.  My old 2006 Macbook died and I just got a new Windows 8 laptop.  I had my iTunes library on an external drive (formatted in NTFS)\
    If this was used with your MacBook, Macs cannot write to NTFS drives.
    So what was on the external drive? WHat do you mean by "library"? Which folders?
    Copy the entire /iTunes/ folder.
    Why won't Windows let me copy the files?
    Dunno.
    It's not an iTunes issue.

  • Can't start up from optical drive

    I can't get my MacBook to start up from the optical dis drive, It does not get recognised either when I start up and hold 'C' or when I select it under Start Up Disk in the System Preferences. Any suggestions? Thanx.

    are u using the Efi password protection utility? youll have to bypass/disable/turn off that first. Its got a feature that will disable the startup keys

  • HT1338 If I have OS 7.5 installed on an external drive, can I start up from the external drive in that OS when my macbook pro is 10.7?

    If I have OS 10.6 installed on an external drive, can I start up from the external drive if I have 10.7 installed on my macbook pro?

    Provided that the MBP supports booting from that version of 10.6, and the install was from a retail disk (not a different Mac model), then yes. If it's a newer Pro that came with Lion, it may not boot to 10.6.
    Matt

  • How can I import file of photos from external drive into photoshop elements 11 organizer?

    I just started with elements 11 after many years of El., 10. How can I import files from external disk to elements 11 organizer? My files were stored on the external drive.

    Hi,
    The Canon S100 wasn't supported until version 6.6 of camera raw and that isn't supported by pse 8.
    You options are to either upgrade to pse version 10 or use the DNG converter
    for windows http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5310
    or
    for mac http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5309
    Brian

  • Can Disk Utility get SMART status from external drives?

    I recently updated my backup plan with a NewerTech quad-interface dock and a WD Caviar Green hd. I'm using the FW800 interface to connect to my iMac (10.6.7) Everything works perfectly, as expected. I noticed, though, that Disk Utility cannot report the SMART status on the new WD drive. DU simply says "Not Supported" under SMART Status.
    Is Disk Utility telling me that it doesn't read SMART status from external drives? Or is it telling me that the new drive doesn't support SMART (which I would find highly unusual)? And, if it's Disk Utility that can't read the status, are there any third-party apps that can report the SMART status on an external drive?
    Thanks,
    JimC

    Unfortunately I cannot speak to the NewerTech enclosure, but in principle it appears to be possible to have SMART information displayed even for external drives if the enclosure's bridge controller chip allows it.
    My experience:
    I've used two MacPower Pleiades FW800/400/USB/eSATA enclosures for several years and I've now supplemented them with two additional inXtron enclosures. They all work as expected daisy-chained to the iMac.
    The interesting thing is that the inXtron enclosures came with a CD with some software on it ("Smart AP") which is not available for download, notably a Dashboard Widget for displaying actual and maximum temperatures, total hours of operation, start/stop cycles, drive model and serial number.
    This widget is complete garbage, though – it is a nauseating nightmare of extreme over-design at the expense of even basic usability:
    http://www.inxtron.com/information-center/smart-ap-for-external-hard-drives
    To make matters even worse, it can only display the above information for the first external drive connected.
    BUT: This Widget internally calls a command line utility which does the actual parameter retrieval, and that one can be called from the terminal as well.
    So after installing the software from CD and effectively discarding the Widget, I checked out the command line utility in the Terminal and found that this utility actually reported data about ALL my enclosures, both the inXtron and the MacPower ones (there seems to be firmware compatibility across these):
    (The '$' is supposed to be Terminal's bash prompt – type in only the rest of the respective line.)
    $ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 1
    29 50 13 8
    53 67 645 15829
    52 53 90 7105
    51 52 18 13
    Each line reports the following for one connected enclosure:
    [temp] [maxtemp] [cycles] [hours]
    The drives are reported first USB, then FireWire drives, each in the order of first connection / mounting.
    $ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 2
    WD-WCA**************
    WDC WD30EZRX-00MMMB0
    5TE09***************
    ST31000333AS-00MMMB0
    5TE09***************
    ST31000333AS-00MMMB0
    WD-WMA**************
    WDC WD30EZRS-00J99B0
    Each drive gets two lines reported, first the drive's serial number ("***" blocking out my exact ones), then the drive model.
    $ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 3
    29 50 13 8
    WD-WCA**************
    WDC WD30EZRX-00MMMB0
    53 67 645 15829
    5TE09***************
    ST31000333AS-00MMMB0
    52 53 90 7105
    5TE09***************
    ST31000333AS-00MMMB0
    51 52 18 13
    WD-WMA**************
    WDC WD30EZRS-00J99B0
    This combines both of the above.
    $ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 5
    disk4
    disk1
    disk2
    disk3
    This reports the mounted disk names (referring not to the volume names but to the internal Unix names as in /dev/[drive]); Numbering is in connection / mounting order, the actual sequence is as always USB drives, then FireWire drives.
    $ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 6
    USB
    1394
    1394
    1394
    This reports the connection interface for each drive in the same sequence as all other commands.
    $ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 7
    MPT934DS1.20.0104.00
    MPT934DS1.20.0104.00
    This might report the firmware revision or something like that.
    These are the commands I know about, and they apply only to the "Smart AP" software supplied with current inXtron enclosures, but it may be possible that other brands use it as well.
    I have not been able to identify information about the self-test (early(?) failure warning), but it might be contained as well in the data reported above.
    As always, your mileage may vary and you should never do such experiments without FIRST making sure you've got backups of your data and that such backup is not connected during experimentation!
    Maybe this can help some people getting the information they need; And maybe there are similar capabilities with other enclosures. At the very least it demonstrates that with the proper firmware in the enclosures themselves and some software on the Mac it IS possible to get at least some of the SMART information from the drive in an external FireWire- or USB-connected enclosure.
    None of that is fed into the system's "official" SMART mechanism, though, so no luck using standard mechanisms or applications for it. It's strictly a command-line affair (deservedly disregarding the mishappen Widget).
    Good luck!

  • Since you can no longer backup to disk, how to restore from external drive without losing all ratings and playlists

    since you can no longer backup to disk, how to restore from external drive without losing all ratings and playlists?

    My own opinion is that you should install the later appropriate version of Silverkeeper. That said, I would in fact recommend if you can wait a few days for an answer, that you email the La Cie Silverkeeper backup team via the email link on the site at http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/
    They are careful to say they are not officially providing a backup service, but when I emailed them with a query regarding usage about a year ago after downloading Silverkeeper for myself, I got a reply within a couple of days that cleared up my question.

  • Can't read iPhoto library from external drive

    I suddenly can't can't read iPhoto library from external drive. I have talked to WD and nohing is wrong with the network drive. I can open images and files from it. But, I can't read in iPhoto Library.

    Network Drive? a NAS?
    iPhoto needs to have the Library sitting on disk formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Users with the Library sitting on disks otherwise formatted regularly report issues including, but not limited to, importing, exporting, saving edits and sharing the photos.
    Basically, you need to move the library to a correctly formatted disk.

  • Time Machine will not let me restore from recent backups.  I can see them on the external drive but will not restore sooner that June of 2013!  Any suggestions?

    Time Machine will not let me restore from recent backups.  I can see them on the external drive but will not restore sooner that June of 2013!  Any suggestions?

    All I can suggest is that you open that file on the MBA and save it as a new file, then see if you can open the new one on the iMac.

  • Can No Longer Burn To External Drive

    About two years ago my then six-year-old 800 mhz flat panel iMac's SuperDrive started acting erratic. Rather than replace the internal drive I purchased an external LaCie firewire drive. I was able to both read and write from this drive.
    I am not positive, but I believe that I subsequently upgraded to OSX 10.4.11. And not too long ago I had no trouble burning a music CD from an iTunes playlist in the LaCie drive. In any case, the other day I tried to burn a simple data DVD of some photos to a DVD in the LaCie drive. I have been completely unable to burn a disc. I've tried burning from the finder, burning via Backup, and burning via Toast. All have failed.
    I have wasted about a dozen discs so far. Often the burn will seem to complete, but fail verification. Sometimes when it fails verification it says it was because of a data transmission error, other times it says a sector failed.
    Other times the burn will terminate early and the disc will ejec. The error messages are never consistent. Sometimes it will say "Buffer Underrun." But the LaCie drive protects against that, and I've gotten the Buffer Underrun message even when burning at only 1X. Can't go any slower than that.
    Blank media inserted in the LaCie drive takes a long time to appear on desktop, and appears as a folder with a "burn" emblem on it, not as a disc. I've tried swapping Firewire cables but that hasn't made any difference.
    The internal SuperDrive is completely dead by now. If I insert a disc into the internal drive there is no startup noise, no whirring, etc. Eventually the machine just spits out the disc.
    I don't need to burn discs often, but this is driving me nuts. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I get the impression that Tiger has a real problem burning to external drives.

    Daniel,
    For several years I've been burning optical media of every kind on what is likely your drive. (Because they're sensitive to mechanical trauma, I bought a Firewire/USB Multi-drive encased in a small tank my cat can't move.
    Your desktop icon struck me. I fiddled with 'System Preferences', but couldn't reproduce it. (My choice for blank media is 'Disk Utility.) Normally, only mounted devices appear on the desktop: this means a file system compatible with the Mac's was recognized (after a lot of handshaking) and attached to it. Hence you can drag an object from the drive to the Desktop.
    The other thing that struck me was the variety of errors, rather than one. This tends to support BDAqua's suggestion of power problems. I'd check the cable and its plugs carefully. If yor Superdrive reported a variety of errors as well, I'd suggest a problem with your iMac.
    There were many problems with the LaCie drive when 10.4.9 appeared (big changes to the kernel). Kludges & hacks ran amok, but all everything has worked after a few patches by Apple. That was years ago. My LaCie (Samsung w/Lightscribe) has never had another problem
    Does either of your drive burn CDs? This I ask because of BDAqua's second statement. There's nothing simple about DVD. An engineer, writing about how it worked, ended with 'it's a miracle it works at all'.
    When a optical drive dies a natural death (all is ephemeral), the DVD lasers get knocked out of alignment or burn out first. CD continues working.
    So, you know the routine: be sure your blank media are blank (or, try a DVD-RW to be safe), change buses if you can or cables if you can't, then try a friend's burner. You can visit LaCie and install a new driver. (Though, like Adobe, it has an installer installer.) I'm not sure whether you need to be in warranty to place a 'trouble ticket' with LaCie; but that's a possibility. The desktop icons would suggest an inconsistency at Apple (which is next to heresy) or a problem with your iMac. Perhaps other have seen this. In any case, your symptoms are not the typical ones expected from a naturally dying drive.

  • 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.

  • Can't boot OS9 from external HD

    I have an external HD with OS X4 and OS9 installed on it. Classic will open, but I can't instal an OS 9 app because the app says I need virtual memory. I tried to boot OS9 from the external drive to install the app from OS9, but it is not a start up option in system preferences. I also can't start it from the c key. I have a full retail version of OS9.
    Does any one have any suggestions? Do I need to install an earlier version of OS X?

    Allan,
    Thanks for the response.
    When I upgraded my iMac G5 to OS X5 I thought it was time to finally get rid of all of my OS9 apps. I originally had them on an external bootable HD. It's now Thanksgiving and I had a few holiday graphics in Corel Print House 2000 I would like to use (OS9). I thought I would reinstall OS X4 and OS9 on the external HD which I did. OSX4 boots fine and classic opens but I can't get it to boot from OS9. I can't reinstall Print House because it says it needs virtual memory to instal.
    Any ideas how I could load Print House onto my external HD or how to open a .cxx file? I wonder how I got this app on the external originally.

  • I can't access my portable external drive anymore.

    I can no longer access my external drive. I can see it in the system profiler but not the disk utilities. What should I do?

    At the Apple Icon at top left>About this Mac.
    Then click on More Info>Hardware>USB, does it show up there?
    No idea why Mobile me is popping up.
    "Try Disk Utility
    1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
    2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
    Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.
    3. Click the First Aid tab.
    4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
    5. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
    Does the external show up there?

  • Broken in Logic 9?: Reindex loops from external drive

    Adding loops from an external drive in Logic 9 does not seem to work any longer. It used to work great in L8. Anyone have similar experiences? Know any work arounds? Is it a bug? If it's a bug I'll file it with Apple.
    Previously in Logic 8 it was easy to reindex loops on an external drive:
    (1) Delete the loop indexes from root/Library/Audio/Apple Loops Index
    (2) Use Finder to locate the loops on the external
    (3) Drag the loop folders into the L8 media browser.
    (4) L8 asks if you want to copy the loops or use them from their present location. Select present location intsead of copy locally.
    (5) L8 takes 5-20 minutes to build index of loops from external drive
    I have tried this procedure several times in L9 without success. Instead I get the following:
    (1) Delete the loop indexes from root/Library/Audio/Apple Loops
    (2) Use Finder to locate the loops on the external
    (3) Drag the loop folders into the L8 media browser.
    (4) L9 ask for my admin password.
    (5) Enter my password
    (6) I'm NOT asked if I want to copy loops locally or use them in their present location. Instead a reindex progress dialog comes up for 2 seconds then goes away.
    (7) In the end nothing happened. No loops copied, indexed, or anything
    There is only one way I managed to get loops into L9 but it is exactly what I'm NOT looking for:
    (1) In the folder with all my loops spotlight search ".CAF" (In this case want to reindex Apple content which is all CAF)
    (2) Make sure to click "show more" at the bottom of the search results.
    (3) Drag the search results to the loop browser.
    (4) L9 indexes them all right, AND also copies them to my user library! All 30 GBs worth. Definitely not what I want.
    In the end, I had to reinstall the Loops from the DVDs and specify an external location for them. (This whole mess got started when I tried to move the GarageBand and iLife loops to an external drive. The installer does not let you specify a location for them.)
    Just so you know I've done some homework:
    I've scoured other Logic forums and found these relevant threads that in the end did not solve the issue. They mostly seem to refer to Logic 8 which does not have this issue.
    @ LUG
    Thread 1
    @ Logic Pro Help
    Thread 1
    Thread 2
    Thread 3 this fellow seems to have a similar problem as I. He drags folders into the loop browser but nothing happens.
    @ Apple Discussions
    Thread 1
    Thread 2

    I just installed LP9 and all my loops and samples are on external drives. The drag and drop onto the browser method worked fine and I WAS given the option to move the files or not. The only exception to the above is Ultrabeat samples. They seem to want to be on the System drive.
    RW

Maybe you are looking for