Clone boot drive disappeared

My Drives
1) MAC...HD primary boot Snow Leopard
2) Boot2 another physical drive with my old Tiger installation
3) SLboot2 Another Physical drive which is a clone of Snow leopard.
I could boot into either and run fine until today. Tiger or Snow leopard.
I needed tiger ilife iDVD, vers 6 didn't always play well with SL.
I booted into tiger (boot2) fine and had tiger. I used iDVD. Left unattended and came back and woke the computer up from sleep mode and didn't have the apple bar across the top.
Next I shut down via power button and rebooted using the 'option button' to get boot menu. I didn't have boot2 drive but had two Mac..hd drives labeled in the menu.
Rebooted and now boot2 drive showed in the menu.
When boot2 was selected I was in snow leopard not tiger.
Now I boot into SL know matter which of the boot drives I select.
I purged boot cache via onyx which didn't help.
How do I boot into tiger again?

Thanks baltwo
While waiting on a reply I checked the tiger boot disk and it has many errors..
Thinking thru this -- did the boot process find an error and reverted to my my primary boot drive which is SL?
I understand the repair and will try. If I need to reinstall with tiger install disk where does the A&I option appear? I thought of doing that(a repair install) but wasn't sure how to keep my settings and apps intact.

Similar Messages

Boot Drive failed to be found - Question Marks ???

I recently used SuperDuper to clone my primary OSX 10.4 Tiger startup disk to a second internal hard drive in my Intel MacPro, and now I am experiencing strange behavior when booting from the Cloned drive...
To start with, let me first say that upoin successfully cloning my main OS onto the secondary internal drive, I removed my primary drive from my machine and replaced it with a cleanly formatted blank drive for data storage...in other words, there is currently only one capable startup disk in my machine at the moment...
So when running my OS from my new Clone OS drive, everything works fine when the OS is running, and things are fine and dandy...When I restart my computer, the machine loads right back up as if everything is totally normal and functioning perfect.
But then I went ahead and shutdown the machine for a short while, and upon returning and attempting to power up again, the startup process brings me to the FLASHING QUESTION MARK icon shortly after hitting the power button (as if for one reason or another, its not seeing my OS)...
The only way I can get the machine to work again, is by force-quitting the flashing question mark screen thereby powering back down; then restarting holding the 'option' key, and choosing my Clone boot drive from the list of startup discs (as it does show up as the only available drive in this list...)...Then my computer loads back up again, and things are working as normal, again, as if there were no problems...I test restarting a few times - no problem...I then re-test shutting down and powering back on again...QUESTIONS MARKS AGAIN!!
Anyone have any idea what the heck is going on, and how I should go about handling this?
any suggestions would be greatly appreciated... Thanks!

Are you sure you have the startup disk set correctly in System Preferences -> Startup Disk?
If so, try zapping the PRAM. Reboot while holding down command-option-p-r. Continue holding them down until after the third startup bong, then release. After the Mac boots, try setting the prefs again and see if it sticks then.
If not, I suspect you might have a dead PRAM battery. Try shutting your Mac down, then disconnect the power cord and the internet. Reconnect the power cord but leave the internet disconnected. Boot the Mac. If your time and date is set to sometime last century, you need a new PRAM battery.

Xserve not seeing boot drive

Wanting to make a cloned (carbon copy cloner) boot drive for our xserve. Mount a new drive - fromat it and then clone over the boot drive. Go to system preferences and start up disk and the new drive is shown as bootable. However the xserve will not start up from it - showing the flashing hard drive. Using the very latest Snow Leopard Server Software. ny ideas appreciated.

Run diskutil list and look at the partition map:
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS MacHD                   120.5 GB   disk0s2
Are you using GUID partition or does it say APM?   You may need to reformat the drive laying down a GUID map.
Just a guess

What's the best way to clone my boot drive?

I just bought a new 500GB drive for my G4. What's the best way to clone my boot drive?
Is there a way to put the new drive on the buss as a second drive and then copy everything from my boot drive to the new drive? How do I make the new drive bootable?
Or
Do I have to install OSX on the new drive, put the old boot drive on the buss as a second drive and migrate everything to the new drive with the Utilities Migration Assitant program?
Are there programs available to make this easier? Where & how much?
Thanks for any help I can get.

bamim2:
Dr. Smoke's FAQ Backup and Recovery has excellent advice on developing a backup strategy.
You already have a larger extrnal HDD (Hopefully it is firewire?) The next step is to format and partition the HDD. (see step-by-step below). And thirdly you will need a good cloning utility. Carbon Copy Cloner has already been suggested, and the latest version is excellent. I, personally, prefer SuperDuper for its ease of use and efficiency. Both are great tools and relatively simple to use.
I mentioned the hope that you have a firewire. One of the wonderful benefits of using an external firewire HDD for backing up is that you can make a bootable clone. This gives you an emergency boot drive in case of a problem. It also gives you an external device for running diagnostics and repairs from the extnernal to the computer and vice-versa.
Congratulations on taking the first step toward securing your computer and your data!
Formatting, Partitioning Zeroing a Hard Disk Drive
Warning! This procedure will destroy all data on your Hard Disk Drive. Be sure you have an up-to-date, tested backup of at least your Users folder and any third party applications you do not want to re-install before attempting this procedure.
Boot from the install CD holding down the "C" key.
Select language
Go to the Utilities menu (Tiger) Installer menu (Panther & earlier) and launch Disk Utility.
Option for formatting an External HDD
Connect external HDD to computer
Turn on external HDD
Start up computer and log in
Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility and launch DU.
Select your HDD (manufacturer ID) in left side bar.
Select Partition tab in main panel. (You are about to create a single partition volume.)
Select number of partition in pull-down menu above Volume diagram.
(Note 1: One partition is normally preferable for an internal HDD. External HDDs usually have more than one. See Dr. Smoke’s FAQ Backup and Recovery for tips on partitioning external HDD
Note 2: For more partitions than one, after you have selected the number of partitions you can adjust the size of the partition by selecting the top partition and typing in the size; then move down if more adjustments need to be made..)
Type in name in Name field (usually Macintosh HD)
Select Volume Format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Click Partition button at bottom of panel.
Select Erase tab
Select the sub-volume (indented) under Manufacturer ID (usually Macintosh HD).
Check to be sure your Volume Name and Volume Format are correct.
Optional: Select on Security Options button (Tiger) Options button (Panther & earlier).
Select Zero all data. (This process will map out bad blocks on your HDD. However, it could take several hours. If you want a quicker method, don't go to Security Options and just click the Erase button.)
Click OK.
Click Erase button
Quit Disk Utility.
Good luck.
cornelius

Can I switch out a hard drive for an SSD without having to clone the existing hard drive, and then install Yosemite from an USB Boot Drive onto the new SSD?

Can I simply replace a hard drive with a new SSD and just install Yosemite from a USB boot drive onto the SSD? I recently bought a used MBP and it has absolutely no files on it except for the OS, and so I'm assuming I don't need to clone the current hard drive as I can just reinstall the OS onto the new SSD.

Honey_Revenge wrote:
Thanks.
Just a quick follow up question, is formatting the SSD with HFS+ done in Disk Utility?...
It's possible that the SSD will be set up for use on a PC, which means it will have a Master Boot Record partition table rather than a GUID Partition Table, which is what Yosemite needs. In Disk Utility, select the SSD and click the Partition button. Create a new Partition Layout and click the Options... button at the bottom. You'll likely see MBR is selected. Choose GUID instead and Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for the Format.

Possible to use TC as clone of boot drive in Leopard?

Time Machine seems to take FOREVER whenever I run it, so I end up not running it. I was wondering if it is possible to use Time Capsule as a pure hd and clone my boot drive to it for a full backup option? If so, how? Are there reasons not to?

Bad sectors automatically get re-written when new data are supplied. If the new data don't "stick" a spare will be substituted.
If you are happy with your clone, just update it. There is no need to write Zeroes to it. I was suggesting that process for when you make major changes -- it takes several hours to complete.
You may prefer to use you smaller drive, Zeroed, to start a new clone, wait a little while to assure success, then start a Time Machine backup set on the larger Iomega.
Or some other approach that has not occurred to me.

How to position boot drive icon to top right on clone

Under 10.4 my boot drive icon always appeared at the top right. This is particularly useful when I boot from a clone, so that I do not carelessly do something believing that I have booted from my main drive. Under Leopard, however, the boot drive icon does NOT appear in the upper right when I boot from my clones. Rather, the icon of the main drive stays there. Any way to restore this Tiger capability? I know that I can manually place the icon on each clone, but that defeats the purpose, since it reverts with each new cloning. Thanks!

I don't have two Leopard drives at the moment, though I have Leopard installed on the main partition of my internal hard drive, with Tiger installed on a smaller partition. Currently, when running Leopard, the Leopard drive is in the upper right, with the Tiger "drive" below it. If I manually move these icons so the Tiger "drive" is in the upper right, and if I then right-click the desktop and select Arrange By ->Kind, the icons revert to the Leopard drive being in the upper right. Would arranging your desktop icons by "Kind" give you what you are looking for?
Ken

Copy/Clone of boot drive

Hi.
I've just picked up a 1.5TB drive that I'm planning on sliding into Bay 1 to make it my new boot drive.
Is there an OS X native way to clone my current boot drive so that I can just swap the drive over and I'm good to go?? or is CCC the only way to do it? I'd really like to make it as simple and painless as possible.
Thanks

superduper by far in my experience is the best.
however, id be really wary about those Seagate 1.5TB drives right now.
there seems to be alot of complaints on various PC and Mac forums that theyre unstable.
not trying to scare ya, just thought id give a heads up!

File level clone of boot drive leaves extra folders, can I remove or hide?

I made a file level drive clone with DiskUtility and then again with Carbon Copy Cloner (to confirm behavior) in preparation to go from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2 and found extra folders on the new copy.
dev
home
net
These folders are in addition to the usual app, users, library etc. They appear to behave like /etc and /var in that there is not a folder for them on a non running OS boot drive. They claim to be empty. Can they be deleted, hidden, turned invisible? Advice?
Thanks.

Kostas is correct. These folders are used by the system, and will be hidden from the users when the disk is running as the current system.

G4 Power Mac Boot drive clone

Hi,
I have an old Power Mac G4, which runs with dual hard drives (10gb Boot and 80gb secondary). Recently, though, the 80gb drive died. I got hold of another 80gb and a 40gb, because the 10gb isn't big enough to run 10.5 well. The problem is, though, that I no longer have the install disk for 10.5... Is there any way to get the 40gb to work as a boot drive by cloning the 10gb drive to it? I was going to use Ubuntu's cloning technology (works very well) to try this, but I wasn't sure if it would work as a boot disk, because it doesn't with windows.
I do have a macbook, but I don't like it, it's running really crap.
I CAN'T RUN LOGIC PRO ON MY WINDOWS; AND I'M NOT GETTING A HACKINTOSH
Thanks for any help.

but will a superduper clone work to boot off? And will I be able to clone it while botting off the drive I want to clone?
Of course.
It is all explained on the page that I linked, but......
SD! clones are the most reliable of the popular cloning softwares.
CCC is good, but fails to make a bootable copy from time to time.
CCC also fails to clean up file structure as SD! does.

How do i clone this external boot drive to my MBP?

I have been testing Mavericks for some time, booting from an external drive. The internal drive on my MBP is still running 10.6.8.
Now I want to clone the external to the internal, replacing the Snow Leopard setup with Mavericks.
In the Finder, my internal drive appears in the sidebar under ‘Devices’ - as does the external boot drive. But clicking on the internal drive icon (bringing up the file hierarchy) shows the external boot drive in the adjacent column - ie as part of the internal drive.
As a result, when I launch Superduper to clone from the external to the internal, the internal does not appear as an option.
Can you see what’s wrong here, and advise on how can I achieve what I want to do?

I tried 3 re-starts - the first 2 made no difference to the situation, but the third at last brought up the option to clone to the internal drive. The clone is now completed, and all appears to be working OK.

Main boot drive completely disappeared from Finder

Wow. This is an odd one indeed. My main boot drive is called "Leopard." I have a few other HDs, Backup, WinXP, and so on. One day, I noticed that "Leopard" was missing from the sidebar in Finder! Turns out, if I click on the sidebar icon for my whole Mac, it shows all the hard drives in the Finder window, EXCEPT "Leopard"! There's no way to get to it other than double clicking "Leopard" in the Path Bar at the bottom of a Finder window.
Anyone know how to fix this?

Can't use the desktop icon because it doesn't show up there, no matter what.
You didn't say that originally, so that's why I mentioned it. The sidebar comment was to let you know I have little to no knowledge of it. In my case, I find it intrusive, since I can't close it up like I could in Tiger.
Reading the other posts, I see you've fixed the issue. Good computing.

Internal Hard Drives Disappeared, Finder Memory Problem

Hello Helpful Folks,
I recently installed an addional internal Hard Drive, and an additional 1GB SDRAM. This worked great for a day, but the next morning, after powering up, system was extremely sluggish, and after much deadline-induced impatient problem solving, has gone from bad to worse (system refuses to acknowledge existence of internal Hard Drives). I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but as
the devil is in the details, I figure too much info is better than not enough.
Following is a breakdown of my system: AS IT LAST WORKED; RECENT UPGRADES; and MY LAME ATTEMPTS AT PROBLEM SOLVING THAT HAVE MADE THINGS WORSE. Please don't interpret my all caps as shouting, just trying to organize this post for better clarity.
System is dedicated to Video Editing with FCP 3, running under OS 9.2.2. System is "off the Grid", i.e. no network, no internet, no printer, no gaming devices. System was purchased new in July 2001, by a friend. At one point I know this system had an Airport card, which was removed prior to my purchase in 2003. I can't remember what else it may have had installed in its history, but here's what it has now:
SYSTEM AS IT LAST WORKED:
**bold items are upgrades Original Owner or I installed with no apparent problems**
Power Mac G4 "Quicksilver" 2001
867 PowerPC G4, 256 L2, 2MB L3
-1 Stick "ValueRAM - KVR 133 x 64 C3/512" in PC 133 DIMM slot **
- "Virtual Memory" was turned off years ago due to conflict with FCP 3
-2 empty DIMM slots
-1 60 GB internal HD (Maxtor Ultra ATA/100), 1 partition, formatted HFS+, jumpered as "Master" on Internal ATA 2 ID=0 (which as I understand it is ATA/66 speed)
-1 Pioneer "Superdrive" DVD-R/W/CD-R/W on Internal ATA 0 ID=0
-NVIDIA GeForce2 MX with 32MB SDRAM in AGP Slot, feeding a 17" Apple Studio Display.
-PCI Display Card "formacGA7" - not attached to any external device, not sure what its intended purpose is.**
-3 Empty PCI Slots
-OEM Keyboard attached to Monitor's rear USB port.
-Microsoft 3 Button Wheel mouse with "IntelliEye" (wheel is 3rd Button) connected to Keyboard USB port (right side).**
-2 OEM FireWire (400) ports
-2 OEM USB (1) ports
Peripherals that have worked in various configurations with this system over the past 3 years:
-3 OWC Mercury Elite ("Oxford Chipset") Externally powered, External FireWire(400) 200GB Hard Drives, 1 partition each, formatted HFS+, daisy-chained to either of the FireWire ports.
-1 Canon GL1 MiniDV camera, attached either to the other FireWire port, or to the last drive in the chain, depending on my urgency/laziness factor. BTW, FCP 3 has worked flawlessly controlling this Cam for logging and Batch Capturing.
Applications on System Hard Drive that I have OEM CDs for:
-OS 9.2 - (I think I remember that OS X was removed from system due to conflicts shortly after original purchase)
-FCP 3
-DiskWarrior (version unknown, purchased from Alsoft in 2003)
-OWC Intech Hard Disk SpeedTools ver 3.5
Other CDs I have:
OEM CDs for Power Mac G4:
-Software Install, OS 9.2, CD vers 1
-Software Install, OS 10.0.4, CD vers 1
-Software Restore, OS 9.2 & 10.0.4 CDs vers 1, Discs 1-4 of 4.
-OEM Apple Hardware Test; Power Mac G4, SW vers 1.2.1
Applications on system Hard Drive that I don't have CDs for, that I rarely use, but I'd like to keep:
-After Effects 5.0
-QuickTime Player 6.0.2
-Toast Audio Extractor 1.1
-Toast Titanium 5.0.2
Applications on system Hard Drive I use if my wife is busy on our Windows XP machine:
-Photshop 6.0
-Microsoft Word & Excel
# of other Applications on System Hard Drive I either don't use or may be integral to the system: 260
# of Control Panels:
-Enabled: 34
-Disabled: 0
# of Extensions:
-Enabled: 174
-Disabled: 0
note: a number of the applications and extensions are for AOL, Quickbooks, Microsoft Money and the like, as well as other things I don't use (Airport, USB printers, Networking, etc.)
Smart things I did:
-Regularly made backup copies of my FCP projects to the external drives.
-Bought a copy of MacDrive so I can see what's on my External Drives on the XP machine.
-Printed out System Profile before I installed upgrades.
-Thoroughly searched this discussion board for and gathered as much info as I could before upgrading.
Dumb things I did:
-Made a copy, but not a clone, of my System Folder to one of the external drives when I first got it.
-Didn't keep any sort of separate log of what's on the External Drives.
-Never ran any sort of Disk Maintenance, even after one of the Externals crashed (DiskWarrior saved my butt on that).
-Ignored some of the advice on this discussion board.
Really dumb thing I did without even realizing it:
Captured all media for a rush job onto my internal system Hard Drive, as well as storing and using massive jpgs for the same job on that same drive...
Which led to painfully slow rendering times, and crashes caused by "Error: Out of Memory", which I interpreted as "Must buy more memory" and not "must make sure I'm not trying to edit media stored on system drive, especially with massive jpgs that I should reduce"
RECENT UPGRADES:
Here's what I did, and how I did it:
Turned off system, disconnected all External FireWire Devices, disconnected Monitor, opened case, touched various metal parts of case and power supply to discharge any Static, unplugged power cable.
-Installed 2 512MB sticks of "Lifetime" PC 133 SDRAM; total System RAM is now 1.5GB, all 3 DIMM slots now occupied.
-Installed 1 Maxtor "DiamondMax" Ultra ATA/133 100GB Hard Drive (8 MB buffer) as "Slave" (no jumper) in top of U-Carrier above System Hard Drive; attached to middle of original Apple ribbon cable, attached available power plug.
Taped spare jumper to inside of empty drive bay, noting origin and date. Did NOT push PMU button. Carefully closed case. Reconnected Monitor, did NOT reconnect any FireWire devices. Powered System on, but did NOT perform PRAM reset.
I don't remember the exact order of what happened next, but I think: System booted up normally, a window popped up saying a new drive had been found, would I like to intitialize it?, which I did as Mac OS extended, and then named. If I was instructed to restart, I did so, otherwise did not. Clicked on "about this Mac" and saw that it now showed 1.5GB RAM. I then went about moving Media/Render files off the System drive (and one of the Externals) onto the Internal Drive, with a combination of FCP's Media Manager, and dragging from the Finder. After files had copied, dragged Media/Render files from System Drive to Trash. Opened FCP project, had FCP re-link to new locations of missing files. Saved, closed, and re-opened project, set Capture/Scratch disc to new internal Drive. At some point I changed FCP's Memory Allocation from whatever it was to 512000KB Minimum, and 900000KB Prefered (and I hope I got all those zeroes right). Did NOT restart after changing Memory Allocation, unless a window popped up instructing me to do so, in which case I did. Re-opened my project, rendered a few thing at a noticeably increased speed, saved everything, emptied the Trash, shut everything down, and called it a night as it was 4:30 am.
A few hours later, I plugged the MiniDV and an External Drive into the FW ports and powered up the System. It was behaving extremely sluggishly. I would click on something, the pointer would turn into a wristwatch (sometimes with the minute-hand moving, sometimes not) and like an actual minute later, what I'd clicked on would open. All three drives were on the desktop, still had their files, and "About this Mac" still showed 1.5GB total Memory. So I powered down, disconnected the FW devices, waited a bit, and powered back up. Same sluggish response. I tried to open my FCP project file, and instead got a Window that said something to the effect of "The Application associated with this document could not be found". I think I tried to open FCP from the Applications folder on the System Drive and got the same message (I'd only had 3 hours sleep, no coffee, my client had died, and his family was coming for whatever I had in a few hours).
LAME ATTEMPTS AT PROBLEM SOLVING THAT HAVE MADE THINGS WORSE
Panic had set in, which never solves anything, so I don't remember what order I performed which tasks, between searching for clues in this forum, and convincing myself that that would be faster than trying to compose a question, waiting for a response, etc.
The first two things I did, and I can't remember which I did first (both from Keyboard Commands during Restart):
Rebuild Desktop
PRAM Reset
Neither of those solved the problem, so I continued.
I tried restarting without extensions.
I would get errors that said something like "Not Enough Memory to Open Finder".
I tried booting from Disc 1 of the Software Restore Disk, which only wanted to destroy my data.
I tried booting from the OS 10 disk, with the same result.
I was finally able to boot from the OS 9.2 Software Install Disk, and actually saw both internal drives on the desktop, and the 1.5GB RAM in About this Mac. I tried to allocate more memory to Finder, but was informed that "Cannot Perform Requested Operation. This operation requires versions above 8.0".
I think at this point I decided that I must have too many extensions, and started disabling ones I thought irrelevent to my cause (mostly anything that said "AOL", "Airport", "Ethernet", "Printer", "Modem", "Speakable", and a couple things called "Open TPT".
It gets worse. Then I decided to turn off some "unnecessary" things via the control panels, but somehow managed to disable the control panels themselves: AppleTalk, DialAssist, File Sharing, Modem, Mouse (as I saw that Microsoft Mouse was among the others), Remote Access, Speech, USB Printer Sharing, and possibly TCP/IP.
That certainly didn't help anything (though upon restarting from the OS 9.2 Disc I was able to see the extensions and control panels in their respective "Disabled" folders in the System Folder). But I still wasn't able to get more Memory to Finder.
So, I decided a few more PRAM resets might help, which succeeded in making both Internal Hard Drives disappear. I tried booting up from the DiskWarrior disc, but even the Mighty DiskWarrior couldn't find the drives. I performed the longer, in depth version of the Apple Hardware Tools tests, which reported that everything's fine (including the new RAM), but made no mention of the Hard Drives at all. The deadline having long passed, I shut the system down. I read through more posts and tech articles, etc.
I searched my External drives with MacDrive on my XP, and found the drive that has the copy of my System Folder (which shows all extensions and control panels as enabled); not sure if the Quicksilver will boot from that, I don't know what the Keyboard command for booting from a FireWire drive is (if there is one) and the drive itself only has 900MB of free space.
I can't find any reference to Internal ATA drives anywhere in the MacDrive documentation; if it was possible I'd put them into the XP, get the files off the Mac drives, reformat them and install OS9 from the Discs.
This is where I am now:
The Quick Silver is still powered down. I removed the Microsft mouse and replaced it with the OEM Apple mouse. I opened the case, and removed the PRAM/Backup battery (manufacture date: July 2001). Couldn't find my voltmeter, so took the bat to Radio Shack and bought a new one. Had the Radio Shack guy test the old one: it showed 3.69 volts still. Have not installed the new battery yet. The case is still open, waiting for any advice any of you might have to offer.
Thank you all so much for your patience in perusing and pursuing this.
Sincerely,
Patterson
Power Mac G4 Quicksilver 867 Mac OS 9.2.x 17" Studio Display, 512MB RAM

Thank you Rodney and John,
The jumpers are correct for both Maxtor Drives.
Rodney, you are correct in that the initial problem (slow rendering/"out of Memory" crashes) was caused by my not realizing I'd stupidly captured several GBs of media to my system drive, and not checking which drives those files were on (as I'd assumed I'd put them on one of my external media drives) once that problem presented itself.
Before I'd determined what I'd done, I bought the extra RAM. After I'd found the media files on the System Drive, and saw that my dedicated media drives were too full to easily move them, I decided to buy an additional Internal drive so that I could:
-Move the Media onto it relatively quickly and finish my urgent project.
-Juggle all my media into a more organized fashion for archiving (as most of my projects are on-going long-term affairs)
-Wipe it, Partition it, and clone my System Drive onto it, as a spare bootable drive in case my OEM System Drive failed.
Copying the Media files onto the New Drive and moving the System Drive's Media files into the Trash worked great: huge improvement in Rendering, etc.
Before shutting down for the night I Emptied the Trash, and was pleased with the amount of space I'd freed up on the System Drive.
My guess is that the System Drive was terribly fragmented, having been subjected to intense use over the past 5 years without any sort of Drive Maintainence, and deleting that massive amount from it in one shot caused my extreme system sluggishness upon Startup the next day.
My subsequent lame attempts to solve the sluggishnes ultimately resulted in my losing access to both drives.
Today, I replaced the Backup Battery, pushed the PMU, re-attached the AC, and Powered Up with the case open as per your suggestion.
It was trying for a few minutes (the gray screen went black at one point, and then returned to gray) before presenting me with the flashing question mark.
There was, however, a quiet but distinct "buzzing" sound that would alternate: 1 sec "buzz", one second silence, one second "buzz", one second silence, etc. coming from the drives, even after the "?" appeared.
I powered down, removed the Ribbon and Power Cables from the new "Slave" drive, and powered up again, with the exact same results.
I powered down, removed the Ribbon and Power cables from the original "Master" drive, reinstalled the Jumper on the New Drive as "Master", plugged the End of the Ribbon and the Power cables into the New "Master" drive and powered up. The screen went to the "?" within 20 seconds instead of 4+ minutes, and no more "buzzing".
I put the Apple Hardware Tools Disk in, ran the "long" test, and everything came out fine.
I have to abandon this for now, but thanks again for your previous advice, and any more you may have!
Cheers,
Patterson

Mac pro 2.66 Quad Core - boot drive mirrored, replace?

All,
I have a Mac Pro 2.66 Quad Core system.
I got all 'sexy' when I set it up - loaded four 1-TB drives in the 4 bays, Mirrored the boot set, also mirrored the secondary set for data.
I am getting ready to have these guys filled up (I do lots of video, pics, etc), and am thinking about 'growing' the drives to 2TB or even 3TB disks (mirrored of course, I'm paranoid).
So I am thinking about the 'how' of moving my data to the larger drive, getting things set up. I have not had any of the drives fail, so I haven't needed to do a swap out yet.
Can I simply take out one of the mirrored boot drives, put in a larger drive, and it will then rebuild the mirror?
or if anyone has some info they can point me to, I'd appreciate it.
thx

You cannot just add a larger drive and grow your RAID Volume size. You need to create an empty larger RAID Volume and COPY the data to the larger Volume, e.g., from your Backups.
Mirrored RAID is NOT Backup. It merely extends the time to repair to keep a drive failure from becoming a data disaster. RAID gives you no protection from human error, crazy software or file problems that happen "just because". You still need backup.
One of the best ways to get increased performance from a computer with the ability to support multiple Internal drives is to keep only System, Library, Applications, and the hidden unix files including paging/swap on the Boot Drive, and move everything else off. This dramatically reduces competition for the Boot Drive and everything speeds up. A Velociraptor is a little faster, and an SSD is incrementally faster still.
If that is all that is on the Boot Drive, you do not need to RAID it, since it can be reproduced from DVDs or downloads in short order. All your User files and Preferences are on other drives..
Implementing this would suggest a single small fast Boot Drive, typically with an offline clone as Backup for emergencies, and forget about RAID-ing the Boot Drive.

Can not shut down late 2011 MacBook Pro and turn it back on again without the hard drive disappearing?

Ok, I have searched for months for an answer to this question to no avail, probably because no one has experienced it before. I am hoping however that you guys can help me figure this one out cause it is driving me nuts! Also, I am not entirely sure what section of the support I should put this under so if I stick it in the wrong place, I apologize.
Right now my problem is very simple. When I turn off my laptop, and then try to turn it back on, my internal hard drive disappears... and I get the blinking folder with a question mark on it. I have figured out something interesting however. I have an install disk with Ubuntu Linux on it. If I boot into that first, then RESTART the laptop, not shut down and turn back on, it reads the internal hard drive just fine and I can boot as if there is nothing wrong.
Second part to the problem... If I allow the laptop in either OSX or Windows to go to sleep (aka shut off the hard drive but the computer remains on), when I attempt to wake it up, I am greeted with the usual log in screen of whichever OS I am in, but is frozen and after a few seconds goes black and restarts the computer to find that... Surprise! The hard drive is gone
I have tried every trick in the book that I can think of, but can not seem to come up with a solution to the problem... I know when the problem happened and if anyone thinks that that will help them figure this out I will type everything I did up till, including the crash that caused this, and my attempted fixes, but I have class right now so only if you guys want it I will type all that out.
What I am currently running is:
2011 MacBook Pro 13in screen
4Gb of Ram
1TB internal Hard Drive
OSX 10.11.whatever the newest update is... just updated the other day again.
Windows 8.1 on BootCamp 5 (yea I know its not supposed to work but it does) again, fully updated
Ubuntu 13.10 (I think? Doesn't really matter, its just an install disk I use to boot the computer)
If there is anything else that you guys need me to provide, I can, just simply ask. I can provide as much info as is necessary.

Sorry it took me so long to write back, But unfortunately this didn't help my issue.
My uncle and I did a lot of tests on this computer and have narrowed down the location of the problem a little bit.
We tried to first reset the SMC and the NVRAM as suggested, but the only thing that did was make the fans run on full tilt for the first session after restarting it for some reason. After that we tried re installing OSX over the OSX that was already on the system (not removing any of the files). This also didn't do anything but make refit stop working. Then we moved onto the next task at hand by removing the hard drive entirely and booting it as an external drive from one of the USB ports... as long as you booted it with the options key held down, it worked perfectly fine. Then we put an alternative hard drive into the computer and installed OSX on that. This time there was no trouble booting anything up. Everything seemed to work flawlessly. So we made a backup of my original drive (OSX, Windows, and all) onto an external hard drive and tested booting to it via USB. That again worked perfectly fine and booted right up with no problems. So after that we formatted the original hard drive and reinstated OSX. We then proceeded to transfer all the old files from the backup onto this new installation and LOW AND BEHOLD..... we were back to square one with it refusing to recognize the hard drive again.
So this basically told us that there appears to be something either wrong with the hard drive, or something got really screwed up in the software along the lines and by me copying all my old files back over, I just ended up bringing the screwed up file back over with it! (despite not copying over any settings of any kind) So I am still extremely confused as to what is going wrong... did some boot sector possibly get screwed up may be?

Clone boot drive disappeared

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