Changing boot drives

I want to boot my mac from a DiskWarrior CD. Then run the DiskWarrior program. Then reboot from the hard drive. Does anyone remember the keyboard commands to change the boot drive?

To boot from any CD or DVD insert the disc then restart the computer. After the chime press and hold down the "C" key until the spinning gear appears beneath the dark gray Apple logod.
You can also switch boot drives by using the Startup Disk preference pane or by holding down the 'OPTION" key after the startup chime until the boot manager screen appears.

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Changing Boot Drives and Keep Your Time Machine History

A problem with Time Machine is that it is specific to the target and backup drives. Change one or the other and TM will want to do a new full backup. If you don't have enough space, it will delete your old backups. HOWEVER, this is a way to install a new boot (or other) drive that TM is backing up and get it to pick up where it left off doing incremental backups. This is extremely helpful if you change your boot drive. In my case, I moved from a HDD to an SSD but wanted to keep my history intact. TIme Machine "knows" which drive to backup based on the UUID (unique drive identifier) so merely changing the name of the drive in the Finder won't do it. You need to change the UUID in the latest backup of TM.
Note: This is not for the faint of heart or technically challenged. It also requires a mild knowledge of unix or at least the ability to follow instructions TO THE LETTER! You will change the UUID from the Latest Backup in Time Machine from the "old" drive to the "new" drive thus tricking TM into thinking the new drive is the old drive and it will continue to do incremental backups of the new drive. The technique described below was originally developed under OS 10.5 (and posted on the MAC OS HINTS 10.5 blog but I have just used it under Snow Leopard. It might work for newer OSs but I haven't tried them. I actually did 2 things: 1) Installed a larger TM drive and 2) installed a SSD as a boot drive. I will post under a different title to provide information on installing a larger TM drive since putting that information here may be confusing.
You will need 2 Unix commands: xattr and fsaclctl. xattr is included in OS 10.6 Unix shell but fsaclctl is not. You will have to get fsaclctl from a version of OS 10.5 using the techniques described in the article posted below. I had an old 10.5 disc and found it in: /sbin/fsaclctl at the root directory of my 10.5 hard drive. I also performed the technicque described below logged in as root but this may merely logged in as an administrotor.
** How to change your boot (or any other) drive and get Time Machine to just pick up where it left off doing incremental backups and not do a full backup of the new drive:
1) Turn OFF Time Machine
2) Install the new drive
3) Clone the old drive to the new drive (in my case HDD -> SSD) using SuperDuper, CarbonCopyCloner or even Disk Utility
4) Make sure you have both xattr and fsaclctl commands installed
5) Open Terminal
6) Follow the instructions here:
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090213071015789&query=time+machine +new+disc
Note: you may need to use the command switch "l" (the letter l) to see the ascii version of the UUID
sudo xattr -l com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeUUID my_partition
Note: Unix uses spaces (white space) as delimiters and is always case sensitive so if you have spaces in the name of your drives, you MUST put the drive name in quotation marks:
if the drive name is: My HDD then to list the contents of the drive in Unix would use the command ls thus:
> ls "My HDD"
will list the contents of My HDD
(the command: > ls My HDD (without quotation marks) will produce an error - no such file or directory)
When you've followed the above procedure and turned Time Machine back on, the first time TM may warn you that the disc has been changed and "someone may be trying to trick your computer" into using the new drive. Answer: do the backup
I wish I could take credit for this brilliant technique but I just followed it and it worked for me. I also read the entire thread before starting.

The two drives are handled as separate drives, even if they have the same name.
In essence, the old backups are from a drive that's no longer connected; see #E3 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

Change boot drive source in windows 8.1

Need to disable secure boot option in bios and change boot source to cd . How to do this in windows 8.1

Hi,
Please post the HP product number for your PC. How to Find the HP Model Number and the HP Product Number or let HP automatically find your PC model number and HP network attached printers.
HP Secure Boot Windows 8 Topics
You have an UEFI enabled PC and if you want to boot from CD and if the CD material supports UEFI then the CD must in the drive when you power on the PC.
HP DV9700, t9300, Nvidia 8600, 4GB, Crucial C300 128GB SSD
HP Photosmart Premium C309G, HP Photosmart 6520
HP Touchpad, HP Chromebook 11
Custom i7-4770k,Z-87, 8GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650,GTX 760
Custom i7-4790k,Z-97, 16GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Plextor M.2 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650, GTX 660TI
Windows 7/8 UEFI/Legacy mode, MBR/GPT

License question: Changing boot drives.

I want to replace my boot drive with one imaged from the old drive.
Do I need to somehow deactivate the license on the old drive before I change? (A few years back I ran out of activations on Acrobat because I kept 'testing' my backup drives to see if they worked. Mistake on my part.)

Since software was distributed on 5 1/4" discs, software developers exploited dozens of tricky ways to identify media to prevent unauthorized copying. Usually without explaining to customers what might invalidate their software. In my case with Acrobat, I could find nothing in my user manuals, help nor advertising material that explained that running a disc restore on a new drive would use up an authorization. But it did. Without telling me. And I had to stop using Acrobat until I bought a new copy.
I have never seen any drive image software that promised a physically/electrically identical copy that could guarantee no authorization problems. Are there some? I pay for my software - but I have abandoned tools that are too hard to keep authenticated. Less common in the last 5 years and there really isn't a decent single source of so many fine tools as Adobe. And hard drives fail so much less often than they did in the 90's.
I was just hoping someone at Adobe could help me carry out a reasonable step that a customer might want to take. Thanks to Jose above for a good suggestion.

Changing boot drive at startup

I have a loan of a PBG3, 300 MHz running System 9.2.
I have a scsi adaptor for it.
I have multiple scsi drives, both external and internal from (1) a IIsi and (2) a performa 6300 CD.
I could not get the IIsi to boot. However, the drive was spinning up, so I was hopeful that if I put it in an external enclosure and attached it to a computer that talks scsi, that it would come up. It tries to. In fact, it tries to snatch the boot from the PBG3, whereupon I get a message saying that the PBG3 can't run that old an operating system.
I just went and looked at the pdf of the manual that is on the apple website. It did not deal with this issue. Does anyone out there know if there is a set of keys that I can hold down to force boot drive selection at startup, before the external tries to hijack the boot? I checked, and the startup drive appears to be listed as the powerbook. At least, it is selected when I look at the control panel.
I plan to go through the same process with the performa drive. I'm pretty sure it's running 7.6, (the IIsi probably has 7.1 on it), so I'll probably have the same problem.
Sharon

It tries to. In fact, it tries to snatch the boot from the PBG3, whereupon I get a message saying that the PBG3 can't run that old an operating system.
Macs will seldom run any OS older that what they shipped with. The oldest OS shipped with the earliest Wallstreets G3s was 8.1; yours probably shipped with something newer. If you really need to boot those drives, they will have to be attached to an older Mac.
According to the MacTracker database, the 6300 has an ATA drive. Much easier to deal with if you only need to recover files. A gadget like this:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/U2NV2SPATA/
allows you to connect a bare drive to any USB-equipped computer.

Change boot drive

After i use carbon copy cloner to transfer clone my old hard drive over to my new ssd drive how do i make my mac pro boot from the ssd drive

Select it from the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences, or restart with the Option key held down and tab to it.
(58874)

Boot Drive Randomly Changed in BIOS

The PC will randomly change boot drives to some other drive, be it internal or USB attached. I thought it was my boot drive, but I recently changed it and for about a week things seemed fine. This morning, it switched to my BD_DVD drive, and when I switched it back, it reset itself back to the DVD drive. I reset again and this time it worked.
OS is Win 8.1
10 MB mem
Boot drive is 4TB, one partition (listed as 2nd drive in BIOS.)
Second drive (though listed as first in BIOS) is 3TB with no OS files on it
Multiple external drives through USB 2.0 and 3.0
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thank you

Hi,
Removing the battery will invalidate the system clock and BIOS settings will be the defaults as delivered by HP.
HP DV9700, t9300, Nvidia 8600, 4GB, Crucial C300 128GB SSD
HP Photosmart Premium C309G, HP Photosmart 6520
HP Touchpad, HP Chromebook 11
Custom i7-4770k,Z-87, 8GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650,GTX 760
Custom i7-4790k,Z-97, 16GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Plextor M.2 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650, GTX 660TI
Windows 7/8 UEFI/Legacy mode, MBR/GPT

Having difficulty in Win 8.1 changing boot order drive at the Bios level

My desktop computer has 32GB of DDR3-1600Mhz Memory plus a 128GB SSD boot drive "C" and 2 2TB SATA drives and finally a 1TB Sata drive.
My problem is that the 128GB SSD drive is maxed out space wise. I want to change the boot drive to the 1TB drive, but when I go into the Bios, and slect "Boot Order" it only lists two CD Rom drives and "Windows Boot Manager". If i go out to look at available drives, it shows all my drives. How the heck can I select the 1TB drive to become the boot drive if its not even listed under "Boot Drives"?
Using disk partitioning software, it advises that before copying everything over from the boot SSD drive to the new 1 TB drive, I should change the boot drive so that when it starts up again, it will go directly to the correct drive.
Thanks so much,
Ken

That is impressive for a OEM. However, I think it is probably not a good idea to try to make a different drive the boot drive. Typically with a unit set up like that, the SSD is only used for essentially the OS and special programs that need the extra speed of the SSD. Then use the other drives for data and nonessential ( for speed ) software. About the only advice I can give is to reassess the way software is installed to get some things off the SSD or replace the SSD with a larger capacity unit. I think switching boot drives will be a nightmare you will not enjoy.
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Changing ZFS options on boot drive before install

Hello,
I would like to install Solaris on a new server but I am hoping that it's possible to set up ZFS on the boot drive (which happens to be an SSD), modify some of the options and then have Solaris install onto this.
In particular, I would like to change the number of copies to 2. It's my understanding that if this is changed after install, it only affects newly written data. Unfortunately I cannot fit anymore drives into this machine, otherwise I could add a mirror instead.
I could install Solaris, modify the options and reinstall and select the existing partitions, but the installer indicates that this will be wiped (I assume reformatting and losing my changes).
Is it possible? I was planning on using the Live USB installer but perhaps I'd need to use an alternate install. I've been doing a bit of searching but not having much luck.
Alternatively, is there a way to modify the option and have ZFS duplicate the blocks for existing data?
Thanks for any help
David

HI David,
You can set ZFS pool or file system options during an AI install but I don't think there is a way to set copies=2 for existing data after the root pool data is written. Some options can be set after the data is written but this isn't one of them.
I have set pool options during an AI install and the syntax should be similar for a file system option. The syntax placement is a little tricky.
A non-redundant root pool on a server with copies=2 doesn't provide real redundancy for your data. The copies=2 option is suggested for
one-disk laptops, where there is no other option. I wouldn't depend on copies=2 to protect your data on a server. Yes, it might help in some
cases, but if the disk fails, then copies=2 is unlikely to help. Please consider a mirrored root pool for your server.
Thanks, Cindy

Change hdd2 to the primary boot drive

My Pavillion has two hdd. I have cloned the boot drive (1) to the secondary drive (2). Now I want to move drive 2 into the primary drive bay as the boot drive. What is required to accomplish this. Are there bios settings to change or pin settings on the drives that need changing?

No. All you need to do is physically swap positions. The method varies a bit between the different dv7 generations but basically you remove the cover plate(s) and swap the drives one for the other. If you give us the exact model we can probably find pictorial instructions and maybe even a video. Only a drive in the primary bay is bootable which serves as a fail-safe.

Lost Boot Drive

Dual G5 locked up with 2 or 3 apps open and runniing. I turned off the power via the switch on the front and booted back up. The chime goes, the grey screen comes up and the osx window loads and then goes to plain blue screen (not Aqua which is default). None of the two HD's show up; inserted TECHTOOL CD doesn't show up.
Rebooted holding C Key Techtool opens and diagnostics report nothing wrong with either the oem nor the 2nd Seagate SATA Hd. Repaired permissions on both with Tech tool just to say I did something. Still no HD mount on reboot.
Booted with X install disc. Ran utilities and utilities found nothing wrong with either disc. Changed boot HD to 2nd Seagate SATA and rebooted. Desktop came up showing both HD's and the CD in the drive on an Aqua screen. All files on OEM HD are visbile.
I changed back to OEM as boot disc and went right back to original problem.
No HD's showing at all on a plain blue screen. I repeated the path from the X install disc and rechoosing the 2nd Hd to get back into the machine. Is it possible to just loose the boot path and have the disc utility see no problem. Neither the Tech Tool nor OSX report any problems? Any other suggestions besides wiping and having ITS reload the OEM HD.
Dual 2.0 G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Yes. It is possible for that to happen. Boot from your second drive, backup all the important files from the first drive, then reinstall OS X onto the first drive without erasing it. That might bring it back and keep your data intact.
If it doesn't work then you'll have to erase the first drive before you reinstall and then restore the files you backed up.

After changing disc drive letter iTunes no longer recognizes Cd's

I changed my disc drive letter from G to A, & now iTunes no longer recognizes Cd's but when I change it back to G, iTunes recognizes Cd's again.
I've done a full reinstall of all apple software components but still won't recognize disc drive set to drive letter A even after reinstalling iTunes with drive set to letter A.
I've looked at all the help documents & nothing relates to this particular scenario.

I've done a full reinstall of all apple software components but still won't recognize disc drive set to drive letter A even after reinstalling iTunes with drive set to letter A.
Traditionally, in Windows, the A drive letter has been reserved as one of the two floppy drive letters (It's actually the letter reserved for the boot floppy ... which is why most floppy drives on relatively-modern-machines-that-still-have-a-floppy-drive are B drives, since the C hard drive is usually the boot drive.)
So I'm not surprised you're getting erratic sorts of behavior from a A:\ drive that isn't a floppy. If you need to change your optical drive letter, try perhaps an H or higher letter.

SSD Boot Drive for Mac Pro

Apologies in advance, I’m really not great with this sort ofstuff.
Basically, what I would like to do is add an SSD to my MacPro and use that as my boot drive. Ihave a 1TB HDD which is currently doing everything but I’d like to use thispurely to store music, videos etc.
As well as booting to Lion, I’d also like to use the SSD torun Windows 7 with VMware Fusion – presume this doesn’t cause any problems?
The plan would be to have the system software andapplications on the SSD and everything else on the HDD. Only thing I’m not sure of is where the homedirectory should go?
Does this all sound like a realistic goal? Also, will this be an relatively straightforward process? Migration Assistant?
Thanks.

So in effect, lets just say your SSD drive fails. As you are currently setup, can you boot from your secondary drive to your backed up OSX, or do you have to have restore that backup image to a new hard drive?
My whole rational of keeping the home dir separate (disk) from the boot dir is that I can switch among any number of boot drives any time I want to. For example, as a hypothetical case*, I use 10.6.5, and I want to update to 10.6.6, 10.6.7, or 10.6.8, I just do it to my ssd. Now I can still boot from my 10.6.5 backup, say for the sake of comparison to some weird behavior I see on the update, without a blink of the eye. I'm still using my same (common) home dir because it is not involved with the update. If I want to go "back" I can restore the ssd from my 10.6.5 backup.
Of course I would actually do it the other way and boot and update from the backup leaving the ssd alone (don't want to write to it any more than I have to). Only if I was satisfied with the new OS on the backup would I then update my ssd.
The point of all this is keeping the home dir off the boot dir allows you to "flit", "jump", switch, whatever, to different OSs (or backups of the same OS) at will. Your home dir is none the wiser unless the OS dramatically changes or screws things up (so that's why this technique may or may not work across major OS revisions -- Snow Leopard to Lion for example, but its great with a single OS sequence).
While everyone always debates the pros and cons of keeping the home dir separate from the boot dir, what always seems to get lost or not mentioned is the benefit of being able to switch among the OSs when they are separate.
So all of this was a long way of answering your question -- no you don't have to backup to the original boot drive before using it. Just boot from the backup. Your home dir couldn't care less.
* For me going to 10.6.6, .7., .8 is hypothetical since I use 10.6.5 and have no current plans of updating beyond that (can you say "app store"? -- don't want it my machine -- and I won't debate any comments on this -- its my personal decision. And besides this is off topic.).

HT4889 Replacing System hard drive with a new one. How to get everything over to the new boot drive?

Replacing System hard drive with a new one. How to get everything over to the new boot drive? Should I use Carbon Copy or does apple have a better untility to do this?
I can't get my current system drive (OSX 10.8.3) to start on the first try. I always have to shut down and restart again to finally see the Apple logo.
Have used disc utility to repair the disc and permissions several times and that works. The next time I boot up, it works fine and I get the apple logo, but then the second time I boot up, it's back to the blank screen again and it only boots after the second try. I have tried this repair three different times now always with the same result. Works right the first try (after the repair) then from the second time on it doesn't work. I just get the white screen until I reboot a second time.
Thinking I should change drives but what's the easist and best way to move everything over to the new drive so it will boot correctly with all my data on it. This is the system drive for a Pro Tools 10HD setup. MacPro 3,1 with 16 gigs ram and OSX10.8.3 on it.
Thanks for any help!

If you have a time machine back up of your current drive you can do this
Shut down your computer, install the new drive. While the computer is off plug in the external hard drive that you have your time machine back up on. Hold Option key while the computer turnes on, let go of the option key once you get a grey screen. Shortly after you'll see a list of bootable drives, select the one that has your time machine back up on it and boot into that drive.
From there go into disk utility, format your new drive too, osx extended journaled ( I think, double check that, its been awhile since ive had to do this), hit format
Exit disk utility and then you can use time machine to copy all your exisit data to the new hhd and then your pretty much done.
There is also a program called Carbon Cloner that will do esentially the same thing however I've never uesed it.

New boot drive and a clean install of Lion

I have a Mac Pro with multiple internal hard drives. My Lightroom catalogs are on one disk, my actual photos are on another, and my OS is on a 3rd. I recently decided to upgrade my 7200rpm SATA boot drive to SSD. In the process, I also did a clean install of Lion. None of my data was moved, as it was all on separate internal drives.
I have the new OS installed, and I reinstalled Lightroom 3. I should also mention that whenever I import files from CF cards (using a card reader), I import as DNG. I only shoot RAW.
When I launch Lightroom and look at my previous work, or the shoot that I was working on prior to the upgrade, I notice that (at least) the following is missing: flags, ratings, edits. I think I can live without the flags and ratings (though I would love to get them back), but I thought the whole idea of DNG was to store the sidecar "edits" file with the RAW file in one package. Shouldn't I be able to see my crops, treatments, localized brush edits, etc.?
What am I doing wrong and what can I do to remedy the situation?
Thanks very much in advance.

You need the original catalog file. You should have copied this over to your new instillation and then just opened it, rather than reimporting files.
If, as you seem to be saying, your catalog is not on the OS disk then all you need to do is open this after reinstalling LR, rather than creating a new catalog as you seem to have done. Just find the original catalog and open it from LR, or double click on it from Finder when LR is closed.
If you have not kept a copy of the catalog file, then you could use your most recent back up of the catalog, hopefully you made regular backups using LR's backup system and did this to a separate drive.
However if you have re imported the files then any edits that have been actually saved to the files will be read by LR. You do have to actually write the edits to the files, either by choosing to do this automatically in LR's preferences or by clicking on the update metadata in LR, otherwise these edits are not written to the files (or as xmp files when using propitiatory file types. If you didn't write the changes to file then LR has nothing to read.

Changing boot drives

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