IMac G5 iSight won't boot from external optical drive . . . FW or USB

Hello, all. I have an iMac G5 iSight with a busted optical drive. Every six months or so, OS 10.4 eats itself (directory structure goes corrupt), and I need to reinstall.
The issue I'm having is that the computer won't boot off of my external optical drive. It's not shown as a choice in the Startup Manager, whether it's connected via USB or FireWire. Any ideas?

Okay, sorry this took so long . . .
Reset the SMU, NVRAM, and PRAM, no luck. Tried different FireWire port on the iMac, no luck. Tried different FireWire port on optical drive--LUCK.
Ah.
Wipe and reinstall got underway, and finished the first part. Unfortunately, my OS 10.4 Disc 2 turned out to be scratched, and wiping the hard drive didn't get rid of the logic board error either.
Took it to Apple retail store, and it was BOA (bricked on arrival). Astoundingly, it would not power, POST, turn on the fans, nothing. They then replaced the power supply, so they could troubleshoot the hard drive/fan/whatever issue.
Now the computer POSTs, and they finished the reinstall, and said it passes their advanced diagnostics. I asked them to run the diags on the install CD, so they could see they fan error, and they agreed. That was around 7:00 last night.
Now, it's still at the store, and I'm eagerly awaiting word on what might REALLY be wrong. Thanks for your help so far!

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I purchased an unclaimed luggage at the airport that had a mid 2010 13" MB-Pro -- It comes up to a boot screen with snow leopard or Windows -- I tried to boot from Optical with Lion install -- it woon't won't boot from the optical drive, help

It won't go to taget disk mode -- I took the drive out and used disk utility to re-partition and format - now I get the folder with a question mark and it still won't boot from optical or usb or go to target disk mode -- I haven't tried installing lion on the disk while it is out and then putting it back in the machine --
according to the serial number, it is still under apple care but since I don't know the person that used to own it I can't get it transferred to me -- or will apple do that since I bought it in an auction?

Ok so I've done what you said and this is what it's come back ....
I don't know that these are the errors , but they're the things which don't look right ...
Throughout the shut down there is a recurring line ;
It says ;
Com.apple.launchd 1 0x100600e70.anonymous.unmount 301 PID still valid
Then there are 2 more which I think are related ;
Com.apple.securityd 29 PID job has I overstayed its welcome , forcing removal.
Then the same with fseventd 48 and diskarbitrationd 13
Oh and on Launchd1 : System : stray anonymous job at shut down : PID 301 PPID13 PGID 13 unmount...
Then the last process says "about to call: reboot (RB_AUTOBOOT).
Continuing...
And stops ...
Hope this means something to you ... Thanks again for your help so far :-)

Can "Refit" Be Used for USB Boot From External Optical Drive?

Since the new Mac Mini 2011 has no optical drive, how would one make a generic USB 2.0 optical drive act as a boot device? I have heard that a utility called "Refit" can alter the boot loading order and device choices in Macs. I suppose it is also possible that the new Mini may already be set up to boot first from USB. I would appreciate any comments. It would be nice to have some kind of optical drive boot option for Windows installation and other possible utilities that need to boot before the OS in order to work. Maybe I will have to take my external optical drive to an Apple store to find out. Hope not. I also suspect that a USB keyboard will be mandatory for "Refit" and the boot drive to be used before Mac OS X is loaded.

No utility should be needed.
You can hold the Option key down during the boot process to select which drive you wish to use as a boot device.
Also pressing and holding C boots to the optical drive.
There is reportedly a pretty broad number of USB optical drives that people have been able to use as a boot device, as inexpensively as $30. I don't know that there is a specific list though. I would research whichever model you wish to buy with a quick google search or searching that model here in the forum.
Or maybe somebody will have a recommendation which one they have.

G5 won't boot from external hard drive

I have installed Leopard on my external hard drive, but have not gone through the 'setup'. I want to boot my G5 from the hd now, but when I restart holding down the option key, the internal hard drive is the only option that appears. When I do boot from the internal hd, the external hd is recognised perfectly and I can see all the files and everything - I just can't seem to boot from it. The newer iMac I used to install Leopard on the external hd will boot from it, but the G5 refuses to recognise it in the boot options.
Any help much appreciated.

No. If you boot an installer disc on an Intel Mac it will only install an Intel version of OS X. You would need to boot the installer disc on the G5 then install OS X onto your external drive. However, if you do that you will not be able to boot the Intel Mac with the external drive. The only solution to using one external drive on both computers is to partition the drive. Install OS X on one partition using the G5, and install OS X on the other partition using the Intel Mac.

Yosemite won't Boot from External SSD with Firewire Connection

Seeking help, I boot from external SSD drives from my 2010 iMac. I recently installed Yosemite on an External SSD with a firewire connection and all went well with the installation and first boot. After completing set up and restarting my iMac Yosemite will no longer boot from the firewire connection it will boot to the loading bar and then get the dreaded Goest Buster Emblem, if I swap out the SSD to USB connection it boots normally. I have 6 SSD Drives with Mavericks and Lion installed on that will boot from the Firewire Connection. Any suggestions ?

Additionally when testing while the SSD is connected to a USB Connection and booted if I attach any firewire device they are not recognized or connected to the operating system.

Tiger won't boot from external firewire

Installed 10.4.3 DVD on clean external firewire (Extended/Journaled). Before I installed Tiger, I ran updates, and repaired permissions. Everything looked good to me.
I'm keeping Panther on main system drive for now - so from System Preferences>Startup Disk>the external tiger drive appears and I select it. Then I select restart and the promt confirms that the computer will restart with 10.4.3. Looks good so far.
After restart, I'm looking at the desktop, guess what? It's 10.3.9, not 10.4.3. How could that be?
Also, when I restart and hold down the Option key for Startup Manager options - the firewire drive does not appear as an option.
So Tiger appears in System Preferences>Startup Disc as an option, but the option doesn't actually work, and that drive does not appear at all in (Option key) startup manager.
I'm Indexing the firewire drive now (OMG is that slow or what!), but I'm not expecting this to make any difference. I'm stumped. What am I overlooking? Please advise.
Muchas Gracias

R MacCool,
"What if I manually drag and drop the 4 folders (from the Tiger DVD) onto a second internal SATA drive without partitioning the drive first? Will I be able to boot off an internal SATA drive like that? When I installed Tiger on the external firewire I see that 4 folders are there - I could drag them from that drive onto the second internal drive. Does that work?"
No, this does not work. MacOS X consists of more then 20,000 invisible files, most of them somehow connected and referencing each other.
MacOS X DOES boot from external firewire drives, both hard disks and DVD drives.
Why don't you just upgrade your current 10.3.9 to Tiger using this procedure: 10.4 Tiger Upgrade: Decision tree+Checklist?
"Why does Tiger seem to install correctly, then System Pref>Startup Disc recognizes it, but then after selecting 10.4.3 it restarts into 10.3.9?"
I am not a technician, but it could be that the firmware is the primary source for connectivity. After MacOS X has booted the internal firewire drivers might take over and "overrule" the firmware (this is why you can see it in the startup disk preference pane) but at boot-time it exclusively depends on the firmware. This theory might be completely wrong though.

Boot from external Firewire Drive-cannot repair or optimize internal drive.

Hi all
Connected my new 300 GB Seagate External Firewire Hard Drive today.
Installed Tiger from DVD. Updated to 10.4.3.
Installed Tech Tool Pro 4. Updated to 4.1.1.
Booted from External Firewire Drive.
Disk Utility cannot Verify or Repair internal drive. Does not say or do anything.
Tech Tool Pro cannot repair volume or optimize. Says, "Cannot Unmount Volume."
Is there a fix for this?
Thank you for the help!
Jeff
eMac 800 nVidia. Mac OS X (10.4.3) 160 GB Internal HD. Pioneer Superdrive. 1 GB RAM.

Hi
I did name the new external completely different from the internal.
After booting from the external Firewire Hard Drive, I tried running Disk Utility and Tech Tool Pro from both drives. No matter which drive I run the Utilities from the same things happen every time...
Nothing happens when trying to use Disk Utility to Verify Volume on internal eMac Drive.
Tech Tool Pro says, "Cannot unmount volume" when trying to check Volume or Optimize internal drive.

Ibook g3 M2453 boot from external DVD drive

Hi, I'm Simon from Germany.
I have an iBook M2453 Mac OS X and a lot of dvds.
But the iBook has no DVD drive. So I bought an external DVD drive. But no matter what I do during boot (press the C key or alt)
I can not boot from external DVD drive.
Please help me
Thank you.
Simon.
PS: I have translated the text using Google translate

Hi Simon,
the iBook is able to boot from USB, but this is not expected behaviour and not supported by Apple.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA20554
There are some external enclosures that do the trick.
But only when you press ALT after Power on. (Select a startup volume via the Startup Manager)
External enclosures with Prolific PL-3507 chipset (Firewire/USB Combo)
You will find them on Ebay Germany
I have a Delock IDE>USB 2.0 enclosure for 2,5" HDs
http://www.delock.com/produkte/gruppen/Geh%C3%A4use/Delock_25_external_enclosure _USB20_42365.html?setLanguage=EN
that works also.
Hallo Simon,
das läuft nur mit einigen wenigen externen Gehäusen. Such auf Ebay nach "PL-3507"
und nimm eins mit Firewire und USB Anschlüssen.
Ein Festplattengehäuse von Delock für 2,5" Festplatten ging auch ( Link oben)
Ein Boot ist nur möglich wenn du die ALT Taste nach dem Einschalten drückst und dann über den Startup manager dein Boot volume auswählst.

Booting from external hard drive on intel-based MacBook Pro

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

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

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

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

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

IMac can't/won't boot from Leopard DVD

My 1GHz G4 iMac can't or won't boot from the DVD, although I know the media is good.
I get stuck on the grey screen, the rotating bug stops rotating after about 5 minutes.
It will still boot from the hard disk fine, and will boot with other DVDs as well. Hardware diagnostics check out fine.
I did try single user mode, it will get there OK.
Verbose mode spits out a lot of messages (who knew? - lol), but nothing that seems to point to any one issue. It too stops spitting out messages after about 10 minutes.
Any ideas?

I did try the clicking the mouse thing just for the heck of it... no joy.
I do see a few other threads like this one, so I'm not alone on this.
The error messages I see are (not going to type them out all the way):
launchd[1]: Failed to count the number of files in /System/Library/StartupItems no such file or directory
Then a bunch of mDNSResponder errors, also saying either no such file/directory or invalid destination port.
Then a message saying Folder Manager is being asked to create a folder (cach) while running as uid 0
Then Cannot use ATS Persistent Store - switching to old FODB cache code
kextd[47]: root filesystem is read-only; skipping kernel link data generation
followed by a couple of errors from configdp[41]
Then nothing....
Still stuck...

SL won't boot from external drive

i tried installing SL on an external FW800/400/USB drive. while the first part of the install went fine, upon the restart, it would only get as far as the gray apple screen. after many false starts, i tried finishing the install by booting my wife's (non-unibody) macbook with the drive attached and the SL disc in the optical drive. sure enough, the install finished and it booted to SL.
now, when i try to boot from this same drive on my new MBP, it stays stuck at the gray apple screen. i'm able to see and choose the SL partition when i start up, but it just won't continue booting. i've tried booting via FW800, FW400 and via USB. none work.
has anyone else experienced this?

To wrap everyone's comments, since I just got back—we had a rare power failure due to someone knocking a local transformer down—yes, the new machine won't allow you to boot an earlier version's disc. The one that came with your new machine is now your GM for that machine. The other, the SL GM, is unusable for it, but good for all the machines that shipped before it arrived. The new disc can be used on any properly formatted volume, internal or external. If you followed the steps in Best Practices and Setup new Mac, then your new MBP should mimic your previous machine. You do the same. Install the OS onto the ext HD and, on first boot, use the Setup Assistant to migrate from the MRB to the ext HD. We used that procedure throughout the beta-test period. HTH

MacBook won't boot from new hard drive.

I'm trying to upgrade my hard drive, but my macbook will not boot to the new hard drive. I have erased and cloned the hard drive about three times now, using both Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper. It won't boot while it is in the macbook and it won't boot from an external hard drive case. All I get to is the screen with the mac logo and the spinning wheel. I have made sure the drive is GUID formatted, but it still doesn't work. When I put the new drive in an external case and plug it into the USB port of my macbook I can see and access everything on the drive. Can somebody please tell what I am doing wrong?
By the way the new hard drive is a 500gb western digital Scorpio blue drive.

I got a new hard drive recently 500gb seagate. I followed the directions on this page http://www.ehow.com/how2063795format-hard-drive-mac-os.html , Mine was a little more complicated since i had 2 partitions windows and mac on mine. Initially the process took a day and it started getting to the same thing as yours where it would get to the mac logo and not find the hard drive. I reformatted several times before i got to the point where i could boot up.Eventually I just figured out all the info was there the drive was formatted i could boot into windows 7 but not mac. So i put old hard drive back in the computer booted up with that. Attached new hard drive via usb in external case i was trying to put in the mac. I was able not to boot up but it would show the drives that have been formatted into the new drive and i simply copied my existing Disk by dragging it onto the new hard drive. Than turn off your mac keep your hard drive plugged in. Press and hold the option key in start up and you should see the 2 seperate hard drives and be able to boot into the new one. Was a long process for me took several complete deletes of the new hard drive and reformatting before it would work. once you get to the mac logo and spinning wheel its just saying mac cant find your boot up disk though. Sorry its confusing a bit any questions email me.

All users GONE except for "Other"...and CANNOT boot from External DVD drive

I booted the iMac (Intel...the last one with the White Bezel) tonight, and all of my users were GONE except for "Other." The internal Superdrive has had a disc jammed in it for months, so instead I have an OWC external USB/FW400/FW800 DVD drive. Snow Leaopard.
I need to boot from the SL install disc, but that must go into the external drive...which, as it's been since I upgraded to SL, the Mac sometimes sees and sometimes doesn't. Right now it can't see it. Which leaves me a big pile of crap, doesn't it?
So, what to do? I can't boot the internal drive because it's jammed with a DVD (or I spend $300 to replace what should be a $20 optical drive in it), I can't boot the external DVD drive because the iMac w/Snow Lepeord can't see it, and, meanwhile, all of my photos, etc., are on my Time Machine backup drive...which, as long as I can't do any of the above, just sits there...useless.
Can you tell I'm a bit frustrated with this?
I've reset the PRAM. I've rebooted. I've held down all sorts of combinations of keys. I've tried every single interface type on the external drive and the same thing - the drive can't be seen by the computer.
Has the internal hard drive failed? Nope. I'm tying this using the Firefox browser that's running on my Windows XP installation via Boot Camp on the internal hard drive.

Thanks, but no luck so far.
I have an old iMac G3 downstairs, and I connected it to the machine via Firewire. I could see the disk on the 24" iMac, its folders, etc. I wanted to see if I could install OS X via Target Disk Mode from the old machine to the new one, but it's a PowerPC machine and you can't do that. Maybe you can't do that from ANY iMac...I'm not that experienced.
Now the iMac isn't booting at all to Windows via Boot Camp - it's been booting for 45 minutes now with the "WinXP" logo, but nothing. I'm about to throw it in the car and haul it over to my parents, who have both a Powerbook and a 27" iMac. Maybe it'll work there. Who knows.
Other ideas...replace the internal hard drive (cheap)...if that doesn't work, I'll just sell the thing. I'm not going to sink $300 into the thing when I can get a new machine for around $600-$700. I may go to a Windows7 machine on the desktop and a Powerbook...maybe even an iPad.
I really want to love this iMac. It's my first (well, I did have the G3, but that was just to play with) Mac. It's given me a ton of problems since I bought it new. It's always been a "stock" machine - nothing weird done to it. I was hit with an iMovie update once, and that broke iMovie. Even the new iLife 2009 didn't fix it. Then, the internal optical disk drive failed. I couldn't believe that Apple used a proprietary optical drive rather than a stock Pioneer model. Price for the drive alone? $200.
I installed Snow Leopard 2 months ago, and that completely broke my ability to use external optical drives. Sometimes they work...most times they don't. This is an ongoing problem that many people are having (check the forums)...but no fix. Where does that leave me? With a useless computer.
So, I've boiled it down to this: I love the Mac software. I hate the hardware. Sure, it's pretty, but if something goes wrong, get ready to pay. I hate that Apple knows about problems, yet does nothing to address them, like the problem with external optical drives and Snow Leopard.
I bought the Mac because I was sick of Microsoft not being able to simply produce an OS full of security holes. Often times I read people bashing supposed "driver ****" with Windows, but look at what users of Windows machine are demanding of Microsoft - "please make my software compatible with the trillions of combinations of hardware that can run the os...all the way back to stuff that was created in the mid 1990s." Meanwhile, from my experience, Apple can't get their software to work with their own proprietary, supposedly vertically-controlled hardware.
Windows7 is a not bad OS. It's got it's faults, of course. But, if my optical drive failed in a Windows box, I'd have it replaced in 10 minutes...with a bluray drive...that can write...for under $100.
I use my computer for pictures, etc. In fact, we were ready to send off to iPhoto for our yearly photo books. That's not going to happen, as the photos are forever trapped on my Time Machine backup drive (lesson learned: dump photos to a generic format...fat32 works...just in case you decide to switch from Mac to Win7). iLife is great. MS Office is great, too, on the Mac. I love the little things the Mac does right.
After years of screwing around with my Windows box, I wanted a computer that acted like a consumer electronic device. That's not what I've gotten.
Ugh, so now do I buy a Mac Mini for $700, a new iMac for $1,400, or a Macbook Pro and a mac mini?
...or...do I continue to work within this silly Ubuntu Linux world?
Whatever the answer, I wish I didn't have to ask the question now.

Noise when booting from external firewire drive

When booting from a Maxtor drive with OS10.3.9 to the iMac G5 with Tiger the fan makes a lot of noise. Why?
When I reboot into Tiger the fan is normal.
Reasons?
Thanks

The fans are controlled by code in the OS you boot from. It sounds like the OS you have on your external Maxtor is older then your iMac G5. As a results it may not have the needed fan control code. When that occurs, the Firmware in the iMac, sets the fans to a high speed to ensure your computer will not overheat.
Tom N.

IMac G5 iSight won't boot from external optical drive . . . FW or USB

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