Mac Pro trying to boot from external drive instead of HD?

my osx was recently reinstalled at the Genius Bar due to a boot problem caused by a power outage. Now if i want to boot up
i have to unplug time machine first; it is possibly trying to boot from the external drive till i unplug it. What should I do?

I would have:
not let you go home without also buying
a 1500VA UPS
a new system drive
other drives as needed
start with a clean install of the OS to a new drive
Clone your system when you do get a good install and update (Apple only)
then clone again when you have all your apps in place
Don't assume anything works, in fact assume nothing will for now.

Similar Messages

Mac Mini Will not boot from external drive or install disk

Hi,
I just bought a new 2.0 ghz mac mini 1 gb ram. 120gb hdd.
I have a separate external HDD attached and wanted to boot from this. It works with my MBP and IMAC.
When i plug it into the Mac Mini and start up with Option key. It recognizes it.
I then click on it. It automatically reboots.... then grey screen comes on. It goes black after about 10 seconds. then boots into original operating system.
I also tried to use the MAC install Disk, thinking it might be a corruption in the shipped software. It does the same thing.
I have MAC Install DVD on an external drive too. Same issue.
I partitioned the HDD and installed a copy of the Mac install disk onto that with disk utility... Same thing grey screen, then black then back to original operating system.
Not sure what is going on?
thanks
Chris

Hi,
Thanks.
It is running 10.5.8.
I am trying to boot up an external drive with 10.5.8 on it. It works on my Macbook Pro which is running 10.5.8, runs on my IMAC running SL. But doesnt work on the mac mini?
It had been running SL, however there are a number of programs I have like Windows Live Sync which are not yet compatable with SL so i downgraded to 10.5.6 which came with the Mac Mini then loaded all updates.
It seems to just go into an auto reboot as soon as i click on it.
i thought it might be the firmware? Is it possible to downgrade them and then re-install?
I have reset the PRAM.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

Trying to boot from external drive using Startup manager

Hello forum geniuses
I would first like to make an announcement...my loved and cherished iMac G5 has moved on to the next life. Something to do with the motherboard. Your thoughts and prayers are welcome...
But some part of her may live on! You see, we had the hard drive taken out and put into one of those Hard drive shells, so it now works as an external hard drive. I plugged it into another iMac G5 and it works fine as an EXHD. However, I have been working with some very complex Final Cut pro projects so I ideally I want to boot the computer from my original hard disk to preserve all of my file paths. Since it is the original system disk, it should contain an installed copy of Mac OS 10.4 and the original system folder, and it should work as intended, correct?
The problem is, when I hold down the "option" key at startup, I don't get my old hard drive (which is now an external plugged in through firewire, for those playing at home) as a bootable option.
Does anyone know where I'm going wrong here?

Thanks for the reply. A couple of things...
Using my iBook laptop, I booted from the original drive from my old computer and it worked perfectly. Startup manager allowed me to select it and it preserved all my settings and data without a hitch. Exactly what I WANT to happen on the other G5
Remember, this isn't a clone or a copy of my old hard drive - it is the ACTUAL hard drive with an enclosure that allows me to plug it in as an external - so it has to be made bootable, since it is the original.
Also, I can't transfer my data from the original hard drive to the other iMac because there is more than 200GB of data on the original and the other one only has a 120GB hard drive.
So I think the question is, if the standard startup procedure works on my iBook why isn't it working on the iMac G5?

Trouble Booting from External Drives - MBA 2012

Hello,
I have a brand new 13" MBA which I'm working on building an image to use for deployment using Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.5. For whatever reason, I can't boot the new 2012 MBA from an external LaCie FW800 or Thunderbolt 1TB Little Big Disk that is running either 10.7.2 or 10.7.4. As soon as I select the drive to boot from when holding the Options key or from selecting the partition from Startup Disk in System Preferences, I get the do not enter icon(circle with the diagonal slash). I tried both plugged in through a Cinema Display and plugging the Thunderbolt drive directly to the laptop. I confirmed both LaCie drives boot properly on an iMac and the last gen MBP/MBA.
Laptop Specs:
13"
1.8GHz Dual-core i5
8GB
128 SSD
10.7.4
Curious if anyone has run into any problems booting from external drives on the new 2012 MBA.
Thanks,
Paolo

Please be sure you have prepped these external drives correctly:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
My suggestion for cloning is to use Disk Utility. This will also automatically clone the Recovery HD, as well:
Clone Lion using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Select Disk Utility from the main menu then press the Continue button.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.

Mac Pro doesn't boot from any media

Hi,
We have a Dual Xeon Mac Pro that has been running fine since 2007 the person that uses it reported that it started making loud banging noises (how loud I do not know as thats quite subjective although it was loud enough to warrant other people in the office going to see what the noise was) and then the desktop crashed and now when it boots we get the folder with a flashing question mark.
I've put it down to disk failure but due to them having a Mac Pro (intel) and a Dual G5 PowerMac I think at some point in time they binned off one set of disks believing that one set would work for both machines resulting in none of the disks they have will boot the machine.
Oddly I haven't been able to boot it from any other media though, I downloaded the live version of Ubuntu for Netbooks to try to get it to boot from that but it wouldn't boot from that either and when I put it in selective startup mode it detects the CD in the drive as Windows.
So here I am with a Mac Pro an old G4 Mirror Doors era Apple Keyboard, no media that will boot the thing for diagnostics and wondering what my next move is. Back in the day when I admin'd a network of Mac's it'd be selective boot from a firewire drive try a repair do some cloning if required slap a new disk in reimage and off we go.
I haven't actively worked on a day to day basis on Apple kit for about 4 years though so I'm a bit rusty and have no experience with the Intel Architecture Macs other than my Mum and Dads iMac and MacBook and I'm pretty sure the media that came with them wont boot the Mac Pro, different media sets never used to work across ranges, not sure how true that is now though.
Any help with this much appreciated. Stats below
Sean

I had a quote from the local Apple Service Centre and Media for this machine was £70.
Luckily we found the Media for the Mac Pro inside a box for some other software.
I have since been able to retrieve the data by inserting the disk into a SATA equipped G5 and using disk utility on that machine to repair the volume and disk.
I've retrieved the data and the disk, volume and permissions structures all check out.
However the Intel Mac Pro will not boot from the now repaired drive, or from the original DVD shipped with the computer.
So off to the Apple Service Centre it goes for hardware diagnosis. I expect this to be expensive
Cheers
Sean

Problems booting from external drives

Ever since I got this 6-core 2013 MacPro (January 2015), I have had strange problems and glitches, but for this posting, I am talking about problems being able to boot up from external drives. I took the 4 external drives out of my old 2009 MacPro and put them into a 4-bay Thunderbolt enclosure. This enclosure can be configured as a RAID if all drives are the same (which they are not) or it can just be a place to be able to access all 4 drives. I used to be able to boot from each of those drives on the older MacPro but I am unable to do so now. They show up in the System Preferences/Startup Disk but if I choose one, it just reboots into the new MacPro drive. I even tried pulling out a couple of the drives and mounting each into a USB 3.0 (Sabrent) dock and still I could not boot from those drives which have the latest version of Yosemite. Yes, they are formatted correctly. I used to boot from them. I was able to clone one of the drives to a Seagate USB 3.0 hard drive and boot from that. Although, the clone was not perfect. It didn't transfer all my settings so I could recover some logins and serial numbers I wanted that I have never been able to retrieve since I got this new Mac.
Yesterday, I formatted a 32GB flash drive and tried to install Yosemite on it. I planned to put DiskWarrior on it. When I started to install Yosemite (from a saved download) it let me choose that drive, but when it restarted before installing, I was right back where I started on my MacPro's hard drive.
Is this normal behavior for the 2013 MacPro? Or is it just mine? I am beginning to think I may have a lemon since I have had other strange problems that don't go away.

Not all external devices are bootable. First stop would be involve whoever handles the 4-bay Thunderbolt. Seeing how it has a bridge most likely in order to support RAID mode that may not have the correct frmware or other reasons.
https://bombich.com/kb/ccc4
https://bombich.com/kb/ccc4/search/bootable%20volume
CCC is the only program I would be using.

External Drive with Time Machine, booting from external drive with utilitie

I'm using Time Machine now with
a LaCie 1TB external hard drive.
Everything works fine.
But, I've been wondering:
Can I place a program like TechTool
on the external drive (that Time Machine uses)
and boot from that external drive.
I would like to be able to do that,
because diagnostics and repair programs
only works properly and fully when they run from
external drives. Anything on the internal drive can be repaired
and examine. Impossible to do if Techtool is on the same
drive that's been examined.
Any thoughts as to what I should do?
Thanks
iMac, Leopard, Time Machine, Lacie Quadra 1TB drive.
P.S. Stupid question: If my computer crashes, and I reboot from Time Machine
(from the external drive) how does the computer know which backup to take ?!?
Isn't there many versions of the OS on the Time Machine backup taken at different times?

pitou wrote:
P.S. Stupid question: If my computer crashes, and I reboot from Time Machine
(from the external drive) how does the computer know which backup to take ?!?
Isn't there many versions of the OS on the Time Machine backup taken at different times?
As V.K. says, you can't boot from TM backups.
But you can restore your entire system from any one of them, per the procedure in #14 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
You can also selectively restore from them, while running normally. See #15 in the FAQ Tip.
You might want to review these:
Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine 101
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
Apple - Support - Mac OSX v10.5 Leopard Time Machine
and perhaps browse the rest of the FAQ Tip.

MacPro can't boot from external drive

Running 10.7.3 and a MacPro which gets backed up each night with SuperDuper. Can't boot from this drive (black screen). Yet I can take the same drive and start up my Macbook Pro! So it isn't the drive or the data on it. I'm stumped. Could this be related to an issue where I can't get this same MacPro or system to successfully backup to Time Machine without error? The boot drive seems OK (ran Disk Warrior and Disk Utility).

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
The purpose of this exercise is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party system modifications that load automatically at startup or login. Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Boot in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. The instructions provided by Apple are as follows:
Be sure your Mac is shut down.
Press the power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple icon and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).
Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including wireless networking on certain Macs.
The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
Test while in safe mode. Same problem(s)?
After testing, reboot as usual (i.e., not in safe mode.)

Problem booting from external drive

I'm having trouble booting my MacBook from an external USB drive.
I've created a bootable backup of my hard drive, using SuperDuper! (in order to be able to install a bigger hard drive and restore my current drive state). If, with the drive attached, I restart and hold down Alt (which I understand should offer a choice of drives from which to boot), I get nothing but grey screen (ie. the first grey you see before the apple logo comes up right at the start of startup). I have been able to boot from the external drive by changing Startup Disk settings, so I'm sure there's no problem with the external disk volume.
The drive is an Iomega 80GB USB 2.0 drive, and I'm running 10.4.10 on a 2GHz Core Duo MacBook.

Hey guys,
Thanks for the feedback... here's my update (still no joy):
• I'm not sure about the GUID table - how do I check? Does the fact that I can boot from the drive having selected it in my System Preferences mean that it is? It is definitely HFS+ formatted, however. (I gave bad information about the drive type, however - it's a Freecom 400GB, not Iomega 80GB, not that I suppose that makes a difference.)
• After holding that Alt key for a very long time, my MacBook did show me something other than a plain grey screen: a single, large, internal HD icon in the middle of the screen, above a vertical arrow icon. I take this to mean that the MacBook is recognising the internal HDD and no other volume. The external drive was still plugged into the USB port.
• The external drive is in fact partitioned as two volumes.

Mac Pro will not boot from cd or external drive

My Mac has an issue whith the boot drive, and I would like to format the drive and reinstall OS-X Mountain Lion and then use Time Machine to resore the Data. When I try to boot my Early 2009 Mac Pro (OS-X 10.8) using the option key, it loads the scrren that allows me to choose among the bootable drives. Once I choose either an external drive or CVD, it loads to the apple screen, stays there for about 5 minutes, then loads the OS on the main drive... Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Bill Mueller

At first I was just going to say it sounds like you have a bad optical drive, but then you had to go and say that it also won't boot from a HDD.
That just makes things a whole lot worse.
Start by removing the side cover and checking the RAM to see if any of the LEDs are lit up indicating bad RAM. Usually if there's any bad RAM found, it will just automatically disable that stick, but maybe yours isn't for some reason.
Look for any other LEDs that may be lit. Generally speaking, the only time you should see an LED (outside of the power LED) lit consistently is if there's a problem.
You should also see if you can get Apple Hardware Test to run, which may or may not find some problem.
But sorry to say, it's sounding very suspiciously like a bad logic board.
One other thing to try, is putting the SL drive into a different slot. So if you were putting it in slot 2, try slot 3 or 4. If you just have a bad SATA port, you might be able to just work around that until you get a new system.
If by chance this system is still under warranty, do not walk, do not pass go, do not collect $200, RUN to the nearest AASP or Apple store to make it THEIR problem to sort out.

Trouble Booting from External Drives; Trying to Defragment from External

I have a Verbatim External Firewire 400/USB 2.0 hard drive that has Leopard installed on it. I have installed Drive Genius and Disk Warrior on the external drive. I boot holding the Option key and see the list of drives, and the External does appear. When I select it, the computer just reboots and loads the loads the internal hard drive. I'm trying to defragment the MacBook Pro from an external drive, but I can't do much if it won't boot from an external. I know with Intel Macs, you can boot from USB 2.0 and FireWire. Why won't it work? To be more advanced, I made a disc image of the MacBook Pro Restore DVD and restored it to a new partition of the external, thinking the operating system might be different in the new MacBook Pro because of the new settings in the System Preferences that control the glass trackpad. I'm stuck. Please help.

No, I would not recommend making a disc image. I would recommend cloning the drive to a freshly erased external drive. Cloning is not the same as making a disc image. Disc images cannot be used to boot the computer. They are large and unwieldy. They are intended to be burned to an optical disc and not used as a system backup.
Clones are exact file copies of everything on the source drive such that the destination drive is a mirror of the source drive. You can boot clones, you can update them, and you can access them directly just like any other drive.
How to Clone Using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (journaled, if available) and click on the Erase button. This step can be skipped if the destination has already been freshly erased.
4. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the drive to which you will restore or backup.
Source means the drive you are restoring from or backing up.
There are many alternatives to using Disk Utilities Restore option. Any of the following can create clones as well as perform regular backups, and they can incrementally update a clone:
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)
10. MimMac (Shareware)
11. SilverKeeper 2.0 (Freeware)

My macbook pro only boot from external drive

Hi, my macbook pro had a problem, some day way extremely slow, and i restarted it, when it was booting the little apple turned into a a circle with a slide cros and then into a folder ... and then into the apple.. and so.. many times... i tried to start in text mode.. and it said fail loading kernel..
and i tried everythin but couldnt make it work... until i extracted my hard drive, and plugged it in the same macbook pro using a usb adapter... and it worked.... does anyone knows what the **** is going on??.. and how can i fix it.. is a middle 20009

Did you run fsck while booted into single user/verbose mode?
Run Repair Disk:
First check the S.M.A.R.T.status on your HD: Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility > in thepanel at left, select the first item in the list/your HD mechanism > look atthe bottom of the main window next to S.M.A.R.T. status and see if it says“Verified” or something more ominous like “Failing.”
If S.M.A.R.T.status is "Verified," run Repair Disk: Boot from install disc (insertdisc > restart > immediately hold down c key and keep holding it untilyou see “Preparing Installation”) > at first screen select the language andclick Continue > click on the Utilities Menu in the menu bar > open DiskUtility > select your HD in the panel on the left side> click Repair Diskat bottom of main window. Run this at least twice, and keep running it until itsays “appears ok” twice in a row. If that doesn’t happen, you may need astronger utility such as DiskWarrior or if the directory is damaged beyondrepair, you may need to reinstall the OS, or you may have a damaged HD (repairutilities can only repair the directory structure, not the HD itself). Whenthis is finished, quit Disk Utility, quit the installer, and restart. Oncebooted normally, go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility and runRepair Permissions.

Mac Pro Won't Boot from any HDD

My system:
2008 8-core Mac Pro running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard
4 HDDs installed, 2 of them are a striped RAID 0 that is the bootup volume, a couble of external hard drives (1 of them a bootable clone), a DVI display
backed up with Time Machine; thanks for the concern.
Problem:
I came home one day, and my computer was acting funny. It was fine earlier in the day. Time Machine had failed a backup, an AFP mount had unmounted with an error, Dropbox was trying to sync but couldn't because of bad access permissions for a file, and Terminal wouldn't open, giving me a message about an invalid shell. I restarted, and it failed to restart, so I turned it off. I thought it was a corrupt filesystem (and striping is unstable, so it would make sense), but no, no other bootable disks worked.
Boot chime plays, grey screen comes up with Apple logo, wheel spins forever.
ATI graphics card fan runs pretty fast after a minute or so.
Light is solid, not blinking to indicate a RAM problem.
What I've tried:
Googled the problem. Got results about MacBook Pros. Did "-MacBook" in the search. Got similar questions but no solutions for my Mac.
Tried booting from an install DVD and the clone. Same thing happened.
Reset the PRAM (twice). No effect.
Reset the SMC (twice). No effect.
Unplugged the monitor. Graphics card fan wasn't loud, but the computer still wouldn't boot.
Unplugged all USB and FireWire devices. No effect.
Left the computer unplugged for an hour, which also resets the SMC. Who knows, this sometimes works! It didn't.
Any ideas?

Booting in Safe Mode did not help, but it did show a grey circle with a cross through it instead of an Apple logo like before.
I remembered that there's an Apple Hardware Test (a bit hard to figure out how to do on your specific machine ), and I booted into it. Before I even ran the test, it told me that there is an error. The error message was just the name of one of my RAM slots. So... a piece of RAM might be dead. I ran the extended test, and it was halfway through after 30 minutes, but I stopped it because I don't have enough time. I have to continue this tomorrow.
As for the GPU, its fans might just be running because the system runs them at a high level by default when it's in certain states. I know older Macs did this in Target Disk Mode with every fan, and the GPU fan was running during the AHT too. At least I hope this is the case. Right now, it seems beyond a hard drive problem. Maybe booting from a DVD works because it only uses 1 RAM slot or something. I'd much rather have a piece of inexpensive RAM be dead than my GPU, and besides, I've kinda wanted to upgrade the RAM anyway.

Boot from external drive

I used Carbon Copy Cloner 2.6.1b to clone my imac hard drive to an external drive,(as a backup). However I find the external drive will not boot the imac, (holding down option on startup). The external drive icon shows up but is not an option as a startup disk. I tried booting from the Mac OS X Install DVD and using the Startup Disk utility to point to the external drive on restart but I get the gray curtain, "You must restart" response. Why won't the external drive clone boot the computer? How can I get it to do so?

APPLE YOU ARE WONDERFUL!!
I just ended up buying a 250GB USB drive from Fry's to backup my Mac Book Pro. I was going to purchase a FW drive, but they are as uncommon as hen's teeth now! My previous external FW drive is only 60GB, and I have to clean my 100GB drive down to 60GB to back it up.
I love having the option to boot from an external drive - it was something I NEVER had with PC's. It, without a doubt, proves that my backup is complete, bootable, and reliable. I've had this as a backup method for the 6 years I've owned Macs.
Thank you for adding USB support for booting to your Intel Macs!!!

Problems Booting from External Drive

I have a 2009 era Mac Mini (refurb) 2GHZ, 2GB RAM and 320GB internal hard drive and running Snow Leopard. I have been using a 1TB NewerTech miniStack V3 drive to boot from.
Last night the computer froze up while watching a show on Hulu.com. Nothing would respond so I had to shut it down with the power buttons. Now, when I boot from the NewerTech drive it boots but shows a blue background, the hard drive icons (Mac HD, NewerTech and Boot Camp) and the menu strip at the top. No dock, spotlight won't look up anything and trying to shut down through the Apple icon in the top left corner causes the whole screen to go solid blue, spinning beachball and then back but nothing opens or drops down to show choices. I can look in the hard drive icons but all the files show "0 bytes" and nothing can be done.
I can boot fine from the internal Mini drive and everything shows up that should. I can and have run various Disk Utility stuff on all the drives from there. No change when booting from the external:-(
I WAS able to boot from the external in Safe Mode which shows me that my files (over 300GB in iTunes alone!!) and applications are really still there!
I now have Drive Genius 3 at work along with the new NewerTech MiniStack I bought to do a clone backup (ironic isn't it?). No, I don't have a time machine backup either. I couldn't afford another drive until recently.
What has happened? It's like something has gone missing but I don't know what.
Thanks, AndyB, NH.

Well, I was afraid I'd have to do something like that. But I started it in Safe Mode (hold Shift down when restarting) and everything showed up like it should have (with whatever gets disabled by safe Mode). I ran repair permissions which I am sure did nothing else. When I got back this morning I restarted normally and everything was there. So I guess that fixed it.
I was really freaking and now have the other 1TB drive as a clone copy just in case something happens again.
Thanks, AndyB, NH.

Mac Pro trying to boot from external drive instead of HD?

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