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.

Similar Messages

Lost boot drive, Disk Util on boot CD sees but won't mount

1. My boot drive stopped booting (running Tiger)
2. Booted to 10.2 install disc, Disc Util found "keys out of order" problem, couldn't fix.
3. On extra HD, installed 10.2, boots fine
4. Now, following master/slave jumper directions on
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=111769, I can't get the boot drive to act as a slave. ID conflict?
5. The goal is to try Norton Utilities (I have version 7, hope that's late enough) to repair the keys problem or at least recover data from the drive to the new boot drive, so I need them both up simultaneously
6. What am I missing here?
thanks

Apple (MIcroMat etc) warn to never use an older
version of any disk utility, including Apple's, on a
newer system. There is a TIL if you look for it.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301269
Hatter, thanks for that. I was explaining the forward compatibility thing to my wife last night. My hope HAD been to use Norton to recover files, but after what was posted above I'm glad it didn't boot!
The other is that some systems won't boot OS X from
slave drives, probably more so with 10.2 (can you say
"beta?").
Actually, I'm not trying to boot from a slave, instead I'm trying to get to the OLD Tiger boot drive (Keys out of order) AS a slave now. Can't get a jumper setting combo to work, no matter whose documentation I use. New, 10.2 boot drive is a Maxtor 90000 model, old boot (new slave) is Quantum Fireball EX.
you should be using your Tiger DVD; and you shouldn't
be using NUM 7 or 8 on Tiger. The first thing to try
is always fsck or a clone of the current/latest
system.
Um, if I had a Tiger DVD that would be great. If I had a DVD drive, even better! I'm having to scrounge here.
I don't think B&W will support Cable Select. I would
invest in a SATA/ATA controller for 2nd drive (and
better I/O).
See above on scrounging. I've been aware of the controller issue since the B/W rev 1, they came out the first time I worked at Apple. Which reminds me, I was an assassin there, had one of the best First Call Resolution numbers. Now, three, four years later, with a computer that has run flawlessly all that time, I've forgotten more than I ever knew!
Thanks.
David

Lost Partition Table (Non Boot Drive) on Solaris 10 x86

Hi Guys,
fdisk asked me to answer yes or no to a question (which i don't remember) after which my nicely sliced up disk became one large parition.
The drive has not been written to since and is not a boot drive.
I have no backup of this data, can i retrieve the lost partition table?
By the way, i do not know the geometry of the previous slices, otherwise i would have already rebuilt.
Any help appreciated!
Thanks
Michael

Hi Guys,
fdisk asked me to answer yes or no to a question (which i don't remember) after which my nicely sliced up disk became one large parition.
The drive has not been written to since and is not a boot drive.
I have no backup of this data, can i retrieve the lost partition table?
By the way, i do not know the geometry of the previous slices, otherwise i would have already rebuilt.
Any help appreciated!
Thanks
Michael

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.).

Creating A New Boot Drive For Mac Pro Desktop

I have a Mac Pro 1,1 using Lion:
I would like to create a new and bigger boot drive but having not done this before I would appreciate any direction that would make this as painless as possible. I will continue to use Lion but am a little lost when it comes to doing this with the download process of Lion as well as transferring what has been created on the current HD in the MacPro. I have a new WD Black 2 TB SATA that I would like to use as the new boot drive. Again, thank you for the help.

Don't. Use. 2TB for system. Seriously.
Use that for data.
Get yourself a $89 Samsung 840 120GB instead along with Icy Dock $15. You will. Love it.
You don't need a large drive for the system. All you need to do is MOVE all the data and media files and every thing else, just leave the small 4GB /Users/myuseraccount/Library on the boot drive with the OS and apps. Everything else gets off loaded.
Leave your drive you ahve now as is for backup. Move data and clone the system.
Clone your system:
How to Clone a Volume
Using Cloning as a Backup Strategy
See also Erasing a Drive, How and Why to Partition a Drive, RAID.
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner
Using Cloning as a Backup Strategy
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone.html
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-partition-your-hard-drive-on-mac-os -x-snow-.html
http://pondini.org/OSX/DU.html
How to relocate system and user data to another drive:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4337http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-move-the-home-folder-in-os-x-and-why/To successfully relocate your operating system, user accounts and data from one storage device to another, meet the following conditions:
The destination storage device (SSD drive or hard drive) you are migrating to should be physically located in the same computer. Moving operating system files from one computer to another computer using software not specifically designed for that computer can cause issues due to software, hardware, and firmware version mismatches.
Always back up your storage device with Time Machine or Disk Utility before you start.
Icy Dock $15
http://www.amazon.com/2-5-3-5-Ssd-sata-Convert/dp/B002Z2QDNE/
SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 128GB
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Electronics-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-7TE120BW/dp/B00E3 W15P0/
2x2GB FBDIMM DDR2 667MHz @ $25
http://www.amazon.com/BUFFERED-PC2-5300-FB-DIMM-APPLE-Memory/dp/B002ORUUAC/

IPhoto 11 Migration Issue: Unique Circumstance (Boot Drive Crash)

Hello good folk,
I have a migration issue with iPhoto 11 due to a boot drive crash.
The issue: I have imported my library database file and all of my 25,000 photos into a clean install of iPhoto 11. All of the events are imported, but all of the photos appear in the very first event. All of the other events are populated with the correct number of photos, but none of the actual photos have been linked.
I know all about holding down option-click and option-command-click to rebuild libraries, directories, etc., as I have read about in multiple posts. But many tries haven't gotten me to success.
Any suggestions? What am I doing wrong?
Here are the specifics of the chain of events, in case it helps [sorry for all the details, but it might help]:
1. Was running iPhoto 09 in 10.5.8, my boot drive bit the dust.
2. I was able to save most of my data from the drive. Due to corrupt files, I was forced to back up unconventionally: instead of saving the entire library, which I could not do, I unpacked the iPhoto library and, from the Originals folder, I copied over entire year folders (2002, 2003, etc.) onto a non-boot drive. This worked.
3. I then installed the new boot HD and installed 10.6.X.
4. I installed fresh copy of iPhoto 11 and updated the software.
5. In iPhoto 11, I threw away the database and replaced with the recovered database from the old boot drive.
6. I copied all of the year photo folders (from the "Originals" folder on the manual backup disk) wholesale into the "Masters" folder of the new iPhoto 11 install.
7. [I could not use Migration Assistant to do this because Migration Assistant, for some reason, will not migrate from a non-boot drive that's installed internally on my Mac Pro.]
8. I option-command-clicked open iPhoto and selected:
-- Repair iPhoto Library Database
-- Rebuild small thumbnails
-- Rebuild all thumbnails
-- Examine/repair permissions.
9. I did this twice. The first time, the events from the database installed correctly, but the photos did not show up. The second time, after a very long time rebuilding the thumbnails, all 25,000 photos showed up, but in the very first event. All of the other events remain blank.
10. I then did an option-click, and chose to open the main library. I did that, but nothing changed.
11. Perhaps interestingly, when I option-click, it says that my manual backup from my internal drive -- where I did my emergency backup -- remains as the "default." The main iPhoto library is not the default.
12. That's where I am now. I really don't want to have to install manually without the data, when all of the events imported fine, and all of the photos are there, but in the wrong event.
Sorry for the long-windedness. Any suggestions are much appreciated!
John

I have imported my library database file and all of my 25,000 photos into a clean install of iPhoto 11. All of the events are imported, but all of the photos appear in the very first event. All of the other events are populated with the correct number of photos, but none of the actual photos have been linked.
You can not "Import" an old iPhoto library into another iPhoto library - it is not the way it works - if your old iPhoto library is available you simply place it in the pictures folder and launch iPhoto - no importing involved
you can not piece together an iPhoto library - which is why having a backup up is critical to avoid lost data
If your iPhoto library is not available as a single entity then you will have to start over and create a new library and import the photos into it losing all edits, metadata changes, etc
And if the future remember to always backup soon and often -it is the only way to avoid data loss due to failures - hardware, software and/or human
LN

Zapping boot drive question

Hello guys,
I have heard recently that I should from time to time (maybe once every two weeks) zapp the Boot drive by pressing and holding apple/option/p/r keys. It apparently organizes the files and make Mac to run smoother and faster (kind of de-fragmentation)
But then I have also heard that this is not recommended unless some problems appear and that it only should be used as a troubleshooting tool.
So which version is actually true?
And also, in case that this method is not recommended as maintenance, what is then recommended method for making system run smooth?
Thank you very much.

Obviously you have been talking with a Windows PC.
First, it's not called zapping the hard drive. It's zapping the PRAM, and it won't do a thing to your hard drive let alone organize your files. Only you can organize your files. It does not defragment the hard drive either. What it does is to clear a small area of RAM in which the operating system permanently stores certain information. This area of RAM is protected by a small internal battery - the PRAM battery - that keeps this reserved area of memory powered so the data stored there is not lost when the computer is turned off.
There is rarely any need to zap the PRAM unless you are having a problem associated with the information stored there. See Mac OS X- What's stored in PRAM.
If you wish to maintain your computer then read the following:
Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible. TechTool Pro provides additional repair options including file repair and recovery, system diagnostics, and disk defragmentation. TechTool Pro 4.5.1 or higher are Intel Mac compatible; Drive Genius is similar to TechTool Pro in terms of the various repair services provided. Versions 1.5.1 or later are Intel Mac compatible.
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts had been significantly reduced in Tiger and Leopard.
OS X automatically defrags files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems.
I would also recommend downloading the shareware utility TinkerTool System that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old logfiles and archives, clearing caches, etc.
For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the commandline. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard.
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
The following utilities can also be used for backup, but cannot create bootable clones:
1. Backup (requires a .Mac account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
2. Toast
3. Impression
4. arRSync
Apple's Backup is a full backup tool capable of also backing up across multiple media such as CD/DVD. However, it cannot create bootable backups. It is primarily an "archiving" utility as are the other two.
Impression and Toast are disk image based backups, only. Particularly useful if you need to backup to CD/DVD across multiple media.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.
Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.
Referenced software can be found at www.versiontracker.com and www.macupdate.com.

Time Machine is not backing up my Boot Drive

Time Machine is configured to not exclude my boot drive, but when I look at Time Machine history, I see that it has not backed up my boot drive since 2014. I recently lost a years' worth of data files when my Boot Drive was wiped buy a local mac shop because they assumed that time machine had backed-up the boot drive. Any suggestions out there?
Mac Pro 3,1

The hatter wrote:
Regardless, I would strongly add a 2nd cloning backup of your system.
Carbon Copy Cloner - Bootable Backups - Bombich Software
Definitely. It's not a good idea to trust Time Machine exclusively.

How do i install reader to a drive other than the boot drive?

how do i install reader to a drive other than the boot drive?

Hi nicksdaddy,
There is an offline version:
http://get.adobe.com/reader/enterprise/
Hope that helps!
Stacy

Is the spotlight index stored on the boot drive or individual volumes?

Hello!
My questions are pretty simple, and are sumarized here (from the block of text below):
First, if I have several external hard drives, is the Spotlight index file for each drive stored on the external hard drive, or on OS X's boot drive?
Secondly, if it's stored on the boot drive, can I copy these files to another Tiger-running Mac to eliminate the need to re-index the hard drives? Where do I find them?
Third: Leopard's Spotlight has quite a few new features. Even if the Tiger index files are stored on the external drive, will it need to re-index the drive to support the new feature set?
Now for the long explenation:
I have been preparing to upgrade my Powerbook to Leopard within the next month or two, and as such, I bought a new hard drive to dedicate one of my old drives to Leopard and Time Machine. Because I have three extrernal hard drives, I needed to move about 500 GB of data between the thee drives to make room for what was on the now-dedicated drive. Of course, this requires that Spotlight re-index the "new" drives.
Today, I left all of the drives attached to my old G4, running Tiger, while it sits there indexing the three drives, totaling around a terrabyte of external storage. Because Spotlight tends to hog all of the available CPU time, and the G4 should be done indexing the drives, it would save me a lot of time if I could copy the index files over from the G4 to my Powerbook to avoid indexing them all over again. That is, if the index files are not on the external drives already. If they are on the G4's boot drive, where do I find these files?
Finally, I plan to reformat the internal hard drive of my Powerbook when I install Leopard - I make a habit of doing a fresh install for every major upgrade (eg, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, etc). To estimate the amount of time needed to upgrade, I'd be nice to know if Leopard will need to re-index the files on the external drives - even if Tiger's spotlight index is stored on the externals - for Leopard's new Spotlight features. Will it need to re-index? I would assume that until Leopard arrives, most people wouldn't know this, of course.
Thanks a bunch,
-Dan

Each drive's Spotlight index is located on that drive.
(25154)

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.

Start Up disk problem following kernel panic-mounts but not as a boot drive

I have a problem that I can't solve.
Dual processor G4 with 3 hard drive, all of which are bootable drives with 10.4.7 installed:
A- my primary boot drive - internal SCSI drive (Adaptec PowerDomain 2930U PCI card);
B - internal hard drive that came with the G4; and
C - external Firewire hard drive
Recently, I booted into my B drive and it locked up after it went into sleep mode. On reboot, I experienced a number of kernel panic messages, prompting me to restart my computer.
PROBLEM: Since that time, I have not been able to get my A drive to once again be the Startup Disk.
Diagnostic steps that I have performed:
i. I have run and re-run Disk Warrior from a bootable CD and the A drive as well as the other 2 hard drives mount and are "repaired" by DiskWarrior.
ii. TechTools Pro shows no hardware problems and whatever glitches it has found were repaired.
iii. Disk Utilities consistently returns "Volume passed verification."
iv. Zapped the PRAM
The A drive does mount and is accessible whenever either the B drive or the C drive is the bootable drive.
System Preferences/Startup Disk lists the A drive as a candidate whenever either the B drive or the C drive is the bootable drive. However, when the A drive is selected in System Preferences, on reboot, it doesn't become the boot drive.
I have tried to restart and hold the "C" key down so that I might possibly be able to select the boot drive from A, B or C. But the C key method doesn't produce the intended result, only reverting back to the boot drive in power prior to the reboot. That occurs whether the boot drive is B or C.
At that stage, rightfully or wrongfully, since the problem persisted whether the B or C drives were the startup disk I concluded that the problem could be hardware related and not software related.
On one of the reboots following the kernel panics, a Crash Report was produced - the verbiage
which is code related and so far above my knowledge and experience that it is incomprehensible to me. I can post it separately if helpful but it won't fit in this email message due to restrictions on length of messages.
I haven't had a kernel panic following any of the last 50+ restarts that have accompanied my attempted diagnostics.
Finally, I ran the Apple Hardware Test, version 1.2.6, that came with my G4. First, I removed all peripherals except the monitor, keyboard and mouse (plugged into the keyboard), the Adaptec SCSI card, and a 3rd party FW/USB2 PCI card (OrangeLink+). I ran the Extended Test and an error code was generated during the logic board test: Error Code fire/5/2
That gave me some hope. I next removed the 3rd party FW/USB2 PCI card (OrangeLink+) and re-ran the Apple Hardware Test and no error were reported. Both the logic board and memory passed. I ran the extended test twice, each time no error.
Ah, did that solve my problem? I rebooted and I still cannot get my A drive to be the Startup Disk.
Next, I ran the Rember software (a GUI app for Memtest) and the RAM checked out as fine.
At this stage I don't have a clue. The white towel is about to be waved.
If the problem is the Adaptec SCSI card, I don't know how to test it since it obviously has to be installed to enable drive A to mount.
Does anyone have any suggestions?

I am the original poster on this thread.
Turns out that the culprit behind all my boot problems was the battery on my 5 year old Quicksilver G4. Replaced the battery and all is back to normal.
FWIW, for any Quicksilver owners with SCSI cards, be aware that you can create boot problems for your SCSI drive by zapping your PRAM. As part of my diagnostics I did zap the PRAM but that turned out not to be a problem.
Adaptec's site does include a workaround should you have problems after zapping the PRAM. This specifically covers the PowerDomain 29160 SCSI card/2930U card, which I have.

How to use ssd as boot drive and hdd as storage on a macbook pro 13

Does anyone know how to use SSD as boot drive and have HDD in optical bay as storage on a Macbook pro 13. I mean in that both drives work as one . by formatting using mac software . I would like to run all programs and OS but would love to have my downloads and useless data on run on my 1tb 5400rpm hdd without me have to manual send it there..

Does anyone know how to use SSD as boot drive and have HDD in optical bay as storage on a Macbook pro 13. I mean in that both drives work as one
Each drive mounts as a separate volume. There is no convenient way to make them look like one contiguous volume.*
Franky, with an hdd and a ssd I would recommend you put your home dir on the hdd and leave the ssd for the OS and your key applications. It's relatively easy to do and I think better than moving only portions of your stuff.
How to Move the Home Folder in OS X – and Why
* There are ways to to make musltiple volumes appear as one large drive but I think it is beyond the scope of this discussion and not appropriate to this configuration.

I have one 120GB SSD and one 1TB SSHD, how do do I make one of them my boot drive and the other my data drive?

I'm currently upgrading my mid-2010 Macbook Pro 13", I've purchased some new RAM and also a 120GB SSD and a 1TB SSHD (Hybrid SSD and HD) with the intention of using an OWC data doubler to get rid of my dvd drive and place the SSD drive there instead. So after I've placed everything into the Mac, how do I make the SSD my boot drive with the OS on it and everything, and the SSHD where all my data (music, photos etc) are stored?

Youll need to CLONE your internal HD to your target (temporarily) external drive.
1. grab carbon copy cloner or (my fave) superDuper CLONE app.
2. attach target clone drive via USB in an enclosure or HD dock. Firstly format the target (external new) HD in disk utility in “Mac OS extended journaled”
3. clone internal HD to target HD (external) [takes about 40 mins depending on size]
4. Boot ONCE from external (go to sys. preference to boot from external) to TEST the new Clone
5. open bottom (see videos on ifixit or youtube on same) and remove old, install new.
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Replacing+MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2012+Hard+ Drive/10378/1
Done
(FIRST TIME after installing, boot will be SLOW,...normal and ignore that).
Clone APPS
Superduper does not clone the recovery partition, but that is NOT necessary if you keep the original HD as a “backup clone”. Most don’t bother with the recovery partition in a clone, however that is your prerogative.
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
(Free superduper APP above)
CCC App
http://www.bombich.com/

Using External Boot Drive with New Intel Mac Mini

I have a 1st Gen MacMini and use an external 7200 RPM Lacie drive as the system boot drive along with all the applications.
If I were to purchase a new Intel Mac Mini, is it possible to use the current external drive as the system drive or is there some conversion steps that would be necessary ?
Thank you.

You can use the hardware, but will have to repartition and reinstall the OS from the disk shipped with the new Mac Mini.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303220
If you create a disk image of the Lacie on your Mini, you can later use setup assistant to restore users and applications from that image.

Lost Boot Drive

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