MBP does not boot from a USB external hard disk (backup disk)

My MBP does not manage to boot from an external 1Tb LaCie desktop hard disk (USB 2.0) where I cloned my startup internal hard disk with SuperDuper! (I tried CCC too). Unfortunately, this is exactly the external hard drive I bought to clone my startup disk and I desperately need to have it bootable at startup.
As a matter of fact I cannot see anything at startup (option key pressed or not) without disconnecting it from the USB port. Just it seems that the system hangs up if I keep the drive connected at boot time!!!
Please, advice.
Thanks in advance,
Adolfo

Hi, thanks for the input.
I produced recovery media with the built in recovery media creator, and with ATI Home 2013. This was in the form of a usb flash drive for both types, and a cd as well in the case of ATI2013.
In all three cases when booting up with any of these media inserted, the boot hangs almost immediately and the Num Lock led lights and that's it.
I have set the boot sequence to
USB
CD
HDD,
Disabled Secure Boot in bios and switched off Fast Start in Power Options.
F12 does allow me to enter bios and change whatever settings I want.
This coupled with the fact that the option to go into recovery console has disappeared during the boot sequence leads me to think it is summat to do with the laptop settings rather than the assorted recovery media I have created.
Thanks again for coming back to me.

Similar Messages

  • My compaq cq62-214nr will not boot from a usb flash drive

    I have a Compaq CQ62-214 NR Notebook. When I enter the bios boot options screen with F9 there is a blank space where Boot from USB/Flash Drive should be. If I enter the bios setup and move usb flash drive up to the first option above Notebook hardrive and Internal CD/DVD Rom ,save the changes to the BIOS then Reboot. Enter the boot options screen again the blank line moves up to the first choice slot but still is blank. If I press enter over that black option the computer does not boot from the OS I have install on the usb flash drive it just starts its normal windows boot screen. YES I have upgraded the BIOS to the lates version F.37
    Can somone tell me what is wrong.

    Try booting into the one time boot menu.
    Step 1: As soon as you turn on the computer on the hp invent screen keep tapping F9 key.
    Step 2: you will get boot otions such as hard drive, optical drive, USb drive
    Step 3: You can hit enter on the usb flash drive. Should boot from the os on your flash drive
    *Although I am an HP employee, I am speaking for myself and not for HP.
    ****Click the White Kudos star to say thanks****
    ****Please mark Accept As Solution if it solves your problem****

  • Reset Password - System does not boot from DVD

    My System: Macbook Pro - 2Ghz Intel Core Duo - OS X - 10.6.8
    Hi everyone,
    i forgot my password. So i want to boot from install DVD to reset the password. Unfortunately my macbook pro does not boot from DVD (10.6.3).
    I press c all the time...but sometimes the macbook pro throws the DVD out...and sometimes nothing happens.
    The DVD drive is working fine...
    Any other idea?
    Thanks in advance.
    Fabian

    So when you boot holding option it shows a padlock with a password field? Is that correct?
    In that case we're talking about the firmware password, which you can't reset via the install disk. There is only one way to do this, I'm not certain if one is allowed to divulge that information publicly - might want to try googling "reset firmware password"

  • My Airport Extreme and Time Capsule both cannot do not mount my Seagate USB external hard.

    My Airport Extreme and Time Capsule both cannot do not mount my Seagate USB external hard.
    I am running OS 10.7.5
    Both the TC and AE are updated to 7.6.1
    The Seagate drive in formatted: Journaled HFS+
    I tried everything on Apple's Article: HT1331 and the basic reboots and restarts.
    "Next"

    It sounds like you may be confusing "mount" with "recognize".
    Connect the drive to the USB port on the AirPort Extreme
    Open Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities > AirPort Utility
    Click on the AirPort Extreme icon, then click Edit
    Click the Disks tab
    Does the AirPort Extreme "recognize" your hard drive?  If yes, it will be displayed in the window.
    See example below of a WD 500 GB drive connected to the AirPort Extreme.
    If your drive is formatted HFS+ and it does not appear here, then you will almost certainly need to use a powered USB hub with the hard drive.....even if the hard drive has its own power supply.  The USB port on the AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule is under powered.
    Post back when the drive is "recognized" and we will next "mount" the drive.....although you likely already know how to do this.

  • Hi, I have a hard disk failure so to recover my data I am using disk utility to restore the data on an external drive while booting from a second external hard drive. When I perform the operation it gives me an input/output error and stops. Any tips?

    Hi, I have a hard disk failure so to recover my data I am using disk utility to restore the data on an external drive while booting from a second external hard drive. When I perform the operation and after having selected both my destination and source drives, the operation begins but soon fails due to input/output error. If I try to create an image of the drive it gives me the same error message. Any help would be much appreciated.

    Disk Utility only creates a image of the drive, so it's no help getting exactly what you want, which is your files. If the file structure is messed up or the drive is failing then it's no help.
    If you have a external boot drive and you can't access the internal non-booting drive though the typical Finder and windows to transfer your files via drag and drop methods, then you need to install Data Rescue on the external boot drive and it will do as best as it can to recover your files. (works on non-encrypted/non-Filevaulted drives only)
    .Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
    Are you sure you have hard drive failure, or that OS X isn't merely not booting?
    Because if the drive is working physically, then there is a host of fixes
    ..Step by Step to fix your Mac
    https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents#/

  • [Solved] Installing on a system that does not boot from cdrom or usb

    I have a very old and stuborn gateway solo 5300 laptop that refuses to boot form the disk I burned for arch linux, as well it refuses to boot from the usb disk I made with dd acording to Usb Flash Installation Media on the wiki
    I also tryed UNetbootin: Install Arch Linux Without a CD From FTP. 
    It currently boots to windows xp, has two partitions and I wish to overwrite the entire hardrive.  Do you have any sugestions?
    Last edited by meschael (2014-06-27 02:03:56)

    ewaller wrote:... Even a fully loaded machine (512MB) would be of little (if any) use
    Really?  I have a netbook with a total of 1G, and I never get anywhere close to using even half of that.  Certainly this depends on the programs used - but for terminal only, 512MB would be more than enough IMHO.  On my 1GB, I boot into X with a simple WM, and can use lightweight (but fully functional graphical) web browsers like luakit and dwb without getting anywhere near half RAM use.
    If it is just 128MB, I agree that may be more of a problem.  I wonder if Slitaz is still going - that was my favorite "micro" distro, but I have not kept track of the development in some time.
    As for the main problem of the thread, I've reread your OP a couple of times, but I'm not sure I'm fully clear on your steps.  First, unetbootin is expected to not work for arch.  Have you made an iso using `dd`?  Can you boot other live cds or usbs on the machine?  In other words, is it a limitation of your hardware, or have the isos you've tried for arch just not worked yet?
    Last edited by Trilby (2014-06-22 23:41:36)

  • Clicking sound and MBP does not boot

    Two months ago, I upgraded to a MacBook Pro, which today suddenly failed to start. When it happened, I had woken it from sleep and started up EyeTV through its USB-powered antenna. The programme started up normally then the screen froze and the spinning ball appeared. I had to switch off the computer by pressing the main switch for 10 seconds, but when I switched it on again I only could see the grey screen. Suddenly, a light, repeated but irregular clicking sound was clearly audible under the left hand back side below the screen. I found a picture of an opened MBP on the web and it seems that this is not the location of the hard disk but there is no way to start up the computer again, not even from a CD. I cannot fathom why this happened since I never had a similar problem but I am worried that the Eye TV antenna, which has a magnetic foot, might have been too close to the computer, and has altered something inside the machine. As I am currently not close to a Genius help area or even in a country with easy access to an Apple Help Desk, any idea on how to solve this is welcome. Thanks!

    Hi,
    That sounds very encouraging. I was once able to get it into target disk mode as well, but I can't remember whether it was with the startup DVD in it or not. With the startup disk I can do all the technical check stuff, except anything that requires me to use the HD, which the MBP does not recognize anymore. Can you describe more in detail what steps you took to get it into target disk mode, I mean sequence of events: first connect the two MBPs by Firewire, then start the second MBP, then the first one in Target Mode by holding T when starting up - or in another sequence?
    I still believe that something substantial must be wrong with the machine and will give it into repair even I can manage to start it, but it would be divine if I could simply get my data off the HD. Please let me know if your surface scan surfaces anything.
    Just out of interest, what does "to send me a box for a repair" mean? In Europe, we have to bring the machine back to the Apple shop in person...
    Thanks, Alex

  • Satellite P840/016 does not boot from CD or DVD

    Using F2 enabled the BIOS to boot from optical drive, saved and re-started. Finds the bootable CD created from the same laptop using the repair disc from Windows 7 recovery but does not boot.
    Tried Ubuntu DVD which works as boot disk on all other laptops - still does not boot.
    Changed the setting in BIOS to non-secure - same problem.

    Thanks - tried this pressing F12. Message appears on the screen to press any key to boot from DVD. Key pressed, the DVD is read and then delay with blank screen. The laptop goes back to start screen and than goes to boot from the HDD. Also tried making USB as bootable. Pressed F12 and selected USB as boot device. Reads the USB and after a period of time boots from HDD.
    Checked DVD driver - it is the latest.
    Operating system is Windows 8 pro.
    RAM is 8GB, processor is I7 and HDD is 1 TB. Laptop is only 3 weeks old

  • Core i7 mbp will not boot from external disk

    One upon a time, I tried to boot my new:
    Model Name:    MacBook Pro
      Model Identifier:    MacBookPro8,1
      Processor Name:    Intel Core i7
      Processor Speed:    2.7 GHz
      Number of Processors:    1
      Total Number of Cores:    2
      L2 Cache (per Core):    256 KB
      L3 Cache:    4 MB
      Memory:    4 GB
      Boot ROM Version:    MBP81.0047.B0E
    from a bootable Carbon Copy Cloner backup on my external FW800 drive.  (This, after I used Migration assistant to move the user over from My MacBookPro 5,1 core 2 duo machine.)
    It didn't like it, booting from the CCC clone, that is.  There were problems with the boot of the new machine from that external disk and then problems with the boot from the internal disk.  I repaired disk permisssions and all seemed to be well booting from the internal disk for several months until I tried to boot from my SL 10.6 2Z691-6431-A CPU Drop-in DVD upgrade included with the initial purchase.  That didn't work.  I got the grey "restart your computer by holding down the power button" screen with a bunch of words and numbers in the background.  This also happened with the grey intsall disks that shipped with the machine with 10.5.7 on them. 
    Following this, the turning gear times are erratic, varying from 11 to 40 turns on boot up with an odd flicker happening for a fraction of a second during the turning gear screen.  From time to time I'll get some beach balling while the login is taking place and all of the icons are loading in.  After that, the machine functions fairly normally. 
    I know there's a problem though and I'm looking to resolve it with any advice the community can offer. 
    I have used DiskWarrior in the past but not for this machine which has not been used with this machine since it's incompatible.  I also have a full timecapsule backup. I also have a partition on an external drive with OS 10.6 on it.  Haven't tried to boot from it because I'm scared it'll mess things up worse.

    I'm trying to boot my core i7 from any external disk without success getting only the grey restart screen.  The machine will neither boot from the 10.6 upgrade disk, nor the external firewire disk.
    I'm not sure, but it seems that you're suggesting that I rebuild the OS as though it were a brand new machine without any of my s/w or data, and I cannot conceive of such a monumental task. If you mean that I should reinstall the OS, that would be fine, but I can't boot from a DVD, which is what prompted this query to begin with. 
    I would like to resolve the external disk boot failure.

  • MBP will not boot when a USB/USB2 Device is plugged into either USB port.

    MBP hangs on the initial Gray Screen when anything is plugged into either of my MBP's USB ports on boot and reboot. I've tried it with a USB mouse, USB2 Hard Drive, USB Memory Stick and USB RF Mouse. It DOES NOT happen when anything is plugged into the Firewire 800 port, only either USB port.
    It happens on reboot and a fresh start whenever something is plugged into either of these two USB ports. I've let the gray screen sit overnight, just to see if it would enter the Login Panel. Didn't happen.
    As soon as I unplug the USB item, the HD whirls up and a few seconds later the booting continues as normal. I have booted in verbose mode just to see what the system says. It stays on the gray screen, again, until I unplug the USB device. However, the screen does note the following:
    "The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device that has been plugged in. It will keep retrying. (Port 3 of hub @ location: 0x6000000)."
    The above error may or may not be related.
    ........AND BEFORE ANYONE SUGGESTS IT, YES I HAVE ZAPPED THE PRAM and reinstalled the OS from new MBP Install Disks from scratch! Still occurs.
    Hope someone can also validate what I've wrote with the newer MBP, as well.
    Many Thanks!

    JKosh wrote:
    MBP hangs on the initial Gray Screen when anything is plugged into either of my MBP's USB ports on boot and reboot. I've tried it with a USB mouse, USB2 Hard Drive, USB Memory Stick and USB RF Mouse. It DOES NOT happen when anything is plugged into the Firewire 800 port, only either USB port.
    It happens on reboot and a fresh start whenever something is plugged into either of these two USB ports. I've let the gray screen sit overnight, just to see if it would enter the Login Panel. Didn't happen.
    As soon as I unplug the USB item, the HD whirls up and a few seconds later the booting continues as normal. I have booted in verbose mode just to see what the system says. It stays on the gray screen, again, until I unplug the USB device. However, the screen does note the following:
    I'm having exactly the same problem with my MacBook Pro.
    It's either the usb hub or simply the iphone... every time I need to boot my macbook pro I have to disconnect every device. It's getting quite annoying.
    The previous 17" Powerbook G4 had no issues.

  • New Unibody MBP won't boot from DVD or external drive, just loops

    Hey
    We bought a new Unibody MBP on Monday, and loaned it to our CTO for a presentation. Having got it back from him now I wanted to nuke the installation and put a fresh copy of leopard on it, so I dropped the DVD in the drive, powered down, and booted holding the "C" key.
    I get the chime, screen lights up, thinks for a bit, and if you use your imagination you can almost hear the DVD spin up. Then the screen goes black, lights up, chime, thinks a bit, goes black, lights up, chime and so on
    I've tried booting from an external bootable clone I created with CCC (firewire external HDD), and same symptoms.
    I even tried swapping in a hard drive that I know has a working bootable copy of Leopard on it, and then all I get is the eternal cycle, without pressing any keys on startup.
    I also tried holding down the Option (Alt) key on boot to get the boot device selector. This correctly identifies the various boot devices - the DVD, on-board HDD and external firewire drive (if connected), and lets you select them, tries to boot, thinks, black screen, screen lights up, chime, repeat cycle endlessly until extremely frustrated.
    Is there a known cure for this or am I doomed to take the thing back to the Apple store on Monday?
    Thanks
    Konrad

    Raj wrote:
    That is not the reason it didn't work. Here is the actual clarity:
    *A retail Leopard DVD should be able to boot a new Macbook Pro unibody.*
    So you are saying even if the driver for the controller on which the DVD drive sits is not available in the Leopard DVD you are using because the hardware was not manufactured at the time the Leopard release on the DVD was made, the OS should magically just boot? How is that possible? Unibody MacBook Pros have entirely NEW AHCI chipset - for which there won't be any drivers on the older Leopard DVD and as such the DVD wont be detected once the OS on the DVD loads. In cases where the chipset used is same (as in previous generations of MBP) it will boot.
    The key difference here is that if you used an older version, some new hardware may not be supported - however, the computer *should still boot from the DVD*, which is the subject of this discussion.
    The OP said that his computer boots from the DVD that came with the computer - just not with the old retail Leopard DVD. Also - what should happen if the new hardware happens to be the controller on which the DVD drive is sitting? How will it be able to read the DVD? What about the graphics card? If the drivers on the old leopard disk do not recognize the new graphics card - how is the OS going to display on screen?
    On my way home, I stopped at a Mac store and asked them to test this. They successfully booted a new Macbook Pro unibody from an older Leopard DVD. And this is why Apple is replacing my computer, because it is a hardware issue, not a software one.
    Again - you fail to understand that whether or not the old DVD boots on a new machine all depends on how much hardware has changed and what hardware has changed. It may boot on some generation of machine because the basic chipset and graphics did not change or were handled generically by the drivers on the older DVD but it may totally refuse to boot on new gen machine which has totally different / incompatible hardware.
    So your claim that any old Leopard DVD must continue to boot on any new machine is not really technically explainable.

  • 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.

  • MBP will not boot up with USB devices connected

    I have a late 2010 MBP 15 10.7.2 that will no longer boot up if any USB devices are attached. A dongle, a hub, anything. It goes to the gray screen and stays there. Disconnecting all USB devices the MBP will boot up. Then connecting the USB devices they work. It just will not boot up with anything connected to the USB ports. I have reset PRAM, SMC and fixed disk permissions. Made sure login items are ok, and start up disk is correct. I cant really say when the problem started as it worked fine before, maybe on 10.7.1? Not sure.
    Any suggestions for a fix?

    I re-installed the 10.7.2 combo. It booted up with a non powered usb 4 port hub but it disabled it. Plugging it out then in again and it works. Looks like the USB firmware has changed somehow in 10.7.2, The hub works on PC's at work no problem, and it worked on the MBP without issue previously. Its not just the non powered hub its a powered hub, and other devices.
    Any solutions?

  • Macbook Pro does not boot from install CD, boots from non-apple live CDs

    This story begins with my macbook becoming entirely unresponsive while just sitting around with the desktop in focus. My current problems begin with the third of such freezing events. It felt like the hard drive had stopped responding since everything looked fine and I could move my mouse, but as soon as I attempted to access anything that depended upon the file system (ie everything not already in memory) that thing I attempted to access would freeze up as well. The only thing I can do when these happen is to force a shutdown.
    The three times I have had these problems I would be greeted with the flashing folder-and-question-mark. So, for the third time now I threw in a live CD I have and ran DiskWarrior and DiskUtility and fsck and everything I could possibly need to recover the system. Each of these programs ran through their routines and reported that it had either successfully made repairs or the disk needed no repairs and was A-OK!. S.M.A.R.T. reports that the drive is perfectly fine as well.
    Now, though, whenever I try to start up my computer I'm greeted with the normal grey apple startup image, the folder with the question mark, and also the prohibited sign (grey circle with a slash through it). This is the first time that running the disk repair programs has failed. Expecting a crashed hard drive or something equally fun I threw in the live CD again and attempted to recover my data. The thing is, I was able to navigate the file system perfectly with terminal and didn't even need any data recovery tools. So, at least my data has been safely backed up.
    I've tried booting into single user mode, but it seems that DiskWarrior helped my computer in an assisted suicide of sorts as boot.efi is sitting in a DiskWarrior recovered folder and the mach kernel has been entirely misplaced. Immediately I restart, throw in the first Macbook Pro installation CD, and hold down C in an attempt to reinstall the system.
    Here is my current problem: Whenever I attempt to boot from any of the installation CDs that came with my laptop, the laptop will begin to boot from the CD and show a grey screen as it begins reading from the disk, but before the spinning gear or grey apple appears the laptop simply restarts and attempts to boot from the disk again.
    This boot-restart process loops infinitely with every Apple-provided installation CD I have tried. The laptop never progresses past a grey screen, instead restarting and happily chiming. However, I have been able to boot from a non-Apple Live CD that I own every time I have tried; moreover, the hard drive is perfectly accessible and shows no errors from any program I run. When I hold option upon startup it shows the drive and lets me boot into it (but then the problems I have described pop up). I have also tried resetting PRAM and NVRAM with no success.
    Does anyone have any suggestions for how to boot into the live CD? Or would I be better off making sure I have backed up all of my data and then wiping the drive for a fresh install?

    I am having the exact same issue. I can only log into the system in safe mode. Holding down the Shift key when turning the machine on, until the log window appears.

  • T60p does not boot from new primary hard disk (Single-boot Linux/Fedora 14)

    Hi,
    I have just upgraded the primary disk in my T60p laptop (model 8742-C4G.) The BIOS recognised the disk fine, I partitioned it, marked the first partition as bootable, and then copied the OS (Fedora 14) and all my data back onto it. Then I installed the GRUB bootloader using the following commands:
    grub> root (hd0,0)
    grub> find /grub/stage1
    grub> setup (hd0)
    grub> quit
    I've also tried installing GRUB with "setup (hd0,0)" instead of "setup (hd0)", without success.
    This ran fine, exactly like with all the other PCs I've successfully performed this procedure on in the past. However, this laptop is refusing to boot from the new disk. There's no sign of any activity, either - just a flashing cursor in the top-left corner of the otherwise blank LCD panel. So I'm guessing that either the bootloader is failing immediately, or the laptop isn't executing the bootloader at all.
    The laptop is running the very latest v1.18 BIOS, and there are no beeps, POST errors or anything like that. My previous disk booted into Fedora 14 without any difficulty at all, of course.
    Can anyone suggest why the T60p is not booting, please? And also how to fix it? Is there any extra initialisation that I need to do in the BIOS, for example? (I haven't seen any...) The disk *does* appear in the BIOS's list of bootable media. Or maybe there's some special code that needs to be written into the MBR that GRUB doesn't know about?
    The disk is a 320 GB 7200rpm Western Digital drive, and the Lenovo/IBM salesperson assured me that it was fully compatible with a T60p laptop without the need for any extra firmware.
    Thanks in advance for any ideas, because I'm completely stumped at this point.
    Cheers,
    Chris
    N.B. This is a Linux laptop, and so Windows-centric suggestions aren't going to help me.

    You said you can't get into Windows safe mode, have you installed Windows on the hard drive?  Are you able to get into the BIOS for the controller?  
    If you aren't able to access the BIOS for the controller, it may be due to bad RAM.  If you are comfortable installing RAM and you have some extra laptop RAM of the same type (I think it's DDR3 for your controller) laying around, you can try swapping out the RAM.
    Was your hard drive damaged through some event, or did it just stop working?
    AC - LV Solver

Maybe you are looking for