MBP upgraded to Mavericks won't boot off of external drive

Now that I have upgraded my MBP to Mavericks I can not longer boot off of extrenal drives like I has in the past. I hold down the option key at boot up and it display the external drive as a bootable option but once clicked....it just hangs.
Has anyone else experienced this?
Thanks,
D

Well, want to rule out drive case,, as those do come up with EVERY new OS, just hit Lion 10.7 forum when it came out, or when 10.6.0 came out 3 yrs ago.
Maybe the power adapter is the weak link.
As I said, and goes back yrs, not a fan of FW/USB/eSATA case from major vendors (LaCie, WD, Seagate etc).
And you could try another case. Be sure to buy a case that lets you swap in your own hard drives though.
http://www.macsales.com/firewire - look for bare drive case "0" capacity hard drive

Similar Messages

When I check my boot SSD drive using Disk Utility under Mavericks, I often get "Incorrect number of extended attributes" errors. But if I boot off an external drive and check the same SSD, no errors are reported. Is this a bug in Mavericks?

When I check my boot SSD drive using Disk Utility under Mavericks, I often get "Incorrect number of extended attributes" errors. But if I boot off an external drive and check the same SSD, no errors are reported.
This happens not just with the SSD in my Mac Mini, but with another SSD in my MacBook (both now running Mavericks). So far as I know, all of the kit I am using is in good order (despite the file corruption reports). So I am beginning to wonder if it could be due to a bug in Mavericks? Both SSD drives have been formatted to MacOS Extended (journaled) format. Should I have used a different format, I wonder?
Has anyone else encountered this issue?
Does anyone have a solution?
Or an explanation that might help my investigation of the issue?
Thanks guys,

I understand that the Corsair Force 3 is not one of the SSD drives that are supported on Apple Macs.
I did try downloading and using Trim Enabler, but the error message came up both when it was off and when it was on.
I understand that not everyone thinks Trim Enabler is a good program, though there is a new version out now, so I may give it another try.

Mac Mini i7 (Mavericks) will not boot from the external drive

Mac Mini i7 (Mavericks) will not boot from the external drive with Disk Warroir 4.4. or Drive Genius or Lion.
Not even from the external Firewire hard drive with Mavericks

Does the external HD have a GUID partition table?
Is the external drive formatted Mac OS X Extended (journaled)?
Is this a 2011 or late 2012 Mac?
How was Mavericks installed on the external drive?
Who is the builder of the drive mechanism in the external drive?
Who is the builder of the external enclosure?
What type of interface does the external drive have USB2, USB3, Firewire 400, Firewire 800, thunderbolt?
Is the external enclosure directly connected to the mini?
Have youtried a different interface cable?

My G4 won't boot off a firewire drive cloned from properly-booting drive

I've got a G4 that normally boots 10.3.9 off an external firewire drive. I cloned the drive onto a WesternDigital "MyBook" external hard drive, and connected it via firewire 400. I cloned the 10.3.9 boot drive using SuperDuper to a partition on this drive. But, the G4 refuses to boot off it when I choose it as a startup disk. I see (very briefly) the following
....couldn't read it.... @d/mac-io@7/ata-4@1f000/disk@0:5,\\:tbxi
anyone know what this is, why it won't boot off the clone, and how I can check whether the drive contains a proper 10.3.9 system and is set to be bootable?
Mike

Hi Mike-
How did you know?
I "Googled" it. It's been reported many times, and is included in a couple of reviews.
Problem is, "bootable" can be claimed in Mac's, as it will boot with Intel machines.......
Don't ya' just hate that?????
This review is from a writer for Mac-Centric.

Too bad mini server won't boot from an external drive

It won't. Enterprise TEch support confirmed this. I bought thew new mini server to get a good value fast machine with a quad i-7.
What's the purpose of Thuderbolt if my apps and doc folders have to reside on a SATA disk?
They really should have non server version with the i7 quad.
Even better Apple should make it clear that this is the case. Even the guy in the apple store said I coud boot it form an external drive!

Yes this will all take some time for sure.
If you want to keep lion server on your current machine, then yes, that is correct. It doesnt hurt to have a few spare 500gb+ hard drives to help the long process.
See there was previous controversy with the mac mini servers with the dual cores (the one I have) because we all wanted the better processors but to not run the server version and some also wanted to be able boot from other drives. Same as you..
In non lion versions of OSX you would normally put the SL Server DVD or SL DVD into your mac and instead of installing a fresh OS, you would select utilities , then restore from time machine backup. You could also obviously use an external drive or SD card with SL or SL server installer loaded on it to install the OS or perform the restore.
That being said
I personally only know how to use a Snow leopard Server or Regular snow leopard installer DVD (or disc imaged external hard drive partition as just mentioned) to use time machine to restore an OS. I personally dont have experience with the lion disc repair for using its utilities to restore from a backup. Im sure it works the same way though when you hold option and boot from it..
If you are looking to go NON server on your OS you must have a Snow leopard retail version DVD (not leopard upgrade version) to be installed on to an external drive.
So what you would do is Set up a partitioned external hard drive and load it up with Snow leopard, upgrade it in app store to lion ($29 ) , then update it with software update, back it up to another partition using time machine, then boot from the install dvd (or disc imaged partitioned installer of SL) , go to utilities, and select restore from backup, when its asks wher eto install choose the external you want to boot from (must be partitioned using GUID partition table) and install. When you want to boot from that drive, hold option right after you power up your machine until it gives you the option of the drive you want to boot from, select it and boot.
Unfortunately like I said you will have to have a snow leopard retail installer (no longer at the apple store only online or ebay for $30) and then would have to 'upgrade' to lion in order to NOT have lion server version on a mac mini set up for server.
If lion server version is good for you then yes do what you wrote in the reply would work. My experience with server snow leopard was that it was slower than snow leopard regular and it extremely interfered with my music production even though I was not running any of its server options..
I hope this helps..

Xserve Crash - Now won't boot off either SAS Drive

Hi all,
My Xserve (2008) just crashed about an hour ago - turning on the screen connected to the Xserve showed the entire thing had ground to a halt, meaning I had to hold the power button down, thinking it just needed a reboot.
Upon re-booting, it just started flashing the "No OS" ?-inside-a-folder icon.
Booting off the system DVD doesn't seem to work, it loads as far as the first blue screen and gets stuck.
I've successfully managed to boot off a MacBook Pro via Target Disk Mode, and upon startup was presented with two dialogue boxes saying the disks I had inserted were unreadable by the system.
Can it really be true that BOTH my SAS drives have failed at the same time?
One was the boot drive, the other a cloned backup updated every other day.
Unfortunately I don't have a backup of the backup, though somewhat luckily this is just the OS. All the 'data' is stored in RAID5 arrays.
Any ideas what might be happening? Something inside the Xserve itself?
I'm currently installing Snow Leopard Server onto a LaCie FW800 drive through a Mac Mini, should be done in about 25 minutes. I'll then plug that into the Xserve and try to alt-boot off that, see if I can get to DiskWarrior.
Any help is appreciated,
-Robert

Nicolas, welcome, did you boot from OS 9.1 or 9.2 for the firmware update. And exactly what happens when you attempt to boot from the external.
Joe
Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet Mac OS X (10.3.9)

G4 Sawtooth won't boot off of firewire drive

I have a G4 Sawtooth that I connot get to boot from my firewire external drive.
The machine is running Panther(10.3.9) and the firewire drive has Tiger(10.4.5).
Don't know if this is the problem, but don't believe it is.
Just updated the firmware to 4.2.8 and still won't go.
What should I try now?

Nicolas, welcome, did you boot from OS 9.1 or 9.2 for the firmware update. And exactly what happens when you attempt to boot from the external.
Joe
Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet Mac OS X (10.3.9)

OS X Mavericks won't complete install on external drive

Hi. I have the new Mac Pro (late 2013) with all software updated. I have a 2TB external ATA drive attached with USB 3.0.
I wanted to install OS X on the external drive and had to use the Command R method. The computer restarted and started the install process. I used disk utility to erace the external drive. I did exactly what Apple instructed. I created a new single partition and set everything as instructed by Apple.
I then ran the install and it took 30+ minutes to install OS X. It said the computer would re-start at the end of the download, which it did. BUT, it didn't restart on the new drive. It's as if it couldn't then find the external drive and it rebooted on my normal internal drive. I did EVERYTHING all over again and got the same result.
There are now files on my external drive in a folder called "OS X Install Data" but I don't see the OS X installer file. I think the computer was supposed to detect the external and complete the install but it didn't.
What is wrong and what do I do to avoid this problem or fix it? Can I continue the process with the files on the external drive?
PS - I first tried to install the OS X Mavericks installer file from the App Store but it told me that I could not install Mavericks on my computer. I believe the version on the new Mac Pros is differnent and I read you have to get it from the Internet using the Command R method.
I've used the Command R method on my old Mac Pro and it worked fine. Something is wrong here.
Thank you in advance!

BTW, clarification: The hard drive is in a USB 3.0 enclosure made by DAT Optic. It works great as an external drive but can't figure out why I can't get the OS installed on it.
Given that the files were downloaded to the external drive, I then tried this approach:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/apple-in-the-enterprise/how-to-create-a-bootabl e-usb-to-install-os-x-mavericks/
It didn't work. WhenI booted I got the null sign error. Even though all the files are on the drive just as described in this above link, it still doesn't work. And the files on the drive are not the typcial folders that indicate a full OS was installed. There are many files that look like they are used to create an OS.
How the heck can I get OS X Mavericks to install completely on a hard drive that is in a USB enclosure?

27" (Late 2012) iMac won't boot from any external drives.

I just got my 27" iMac (late 2012) with Fusion Drive. I can't get it to boot off any my external LaCie drive. I just get an "Ø" symbol. tried this so far:
Ensured the OS on my external drive is 10.8.2 - didn't help.
Updated (reinstalled) Mountain Lion on the external drive, using the Recovery HD that comes with the iMac, just in case it's a "special verision". - didn't help.
Connected via Thunderbolt-to-FireWire 800 adaptor - didn't help.
Connected via USB2 port on HDD to USB3 port on iMac - didn't help.
Used "Startup Disk" system prefs - didn't help.
Used "hold doen ALT key" after startup chime. Can see the drive but - didn't help.
So - has anyone had any luck booting a new iMac off an external device at all?
I might try a Carbon Copy Clone of the Fusion Drive - but I'm thinking it's a waste of time - instinct tells me it's a Firmware limitationin the machine that prevents booting from externals.

trying a clone after all due to this discussion https://discussions.apple.com/message/20938457#20938457

Trouble booting off DVD/external drive. wierd boot screen

My new iBook G4 has been working fine by itself.
I have an older external firewire drive and when I try to use that as the startup drive, it seems to boot up fine but the cursor remains frozen in the top left corner. The keyboard seems to work fine. (I haven't been able to get keyboard commands to drive the menus. That's another problem I guess).
I can run the original install disk and I can run the hardware diagnostics on it. All is fine.
Then I tried to reinstall Tiger on the external hard drive using the install DVD that came with our family pack.
When I run the installer on my new iBook G4 and the computer restarts, the screen that comes up after the gray Apple logo and spinning gear is a blue border and white rectangle with graphics showing what look like a two-step process, numbered 1 and 2 at the bottom. The graphic depicts an oval shape with what looks like a cover removed and two AA-type battery icons linked to the graphic. The picture is much the same for each step with differences the communnicate the idea of inserting or replacing. The second step has a small blinking red circle, like a screw head.
I have no control over the arrow cursor in the top-left of my screen. No action I can perform onscreen from the keyboard.
What is this screen?
I tried resetting PRAM, went into Open Firmware to reset NVRAM and all.
No devices are attached and it still does this. I don't use a wireless mouse, which is sort of what the oval shape reminds me of. Given the frozen cursor in both cases, it makes me think there's something going on with the information it's getting about what pointing device is being used.
The DVD runs fine on other computers and is right now completing the installation I was trying to do, using a Powerbook G4.

Thanks. Makes sense. I'll try that. I had checked the drive firmware with the most recent LaCie updater. So I didn't think it was the drive.
I did manage to use the keyboard shortcuts to open the Keyboard Preference Pane while booted off of the external drive. I enjoyed learning how useful it is to type the beginning of search terms (like "trac") into the Search box and use the menu of matches returned to navigate by Mouse to the Trackpad pane, only to be told that the Trackpad Tab wasn't loaded because my iBook doesn't have one (wrong). It had loaded only the Mouse tab.
Learning a few new tidbits today. Thank you very much.

Power Mac 7200/120 won't boot off new hard drive. Says HD "not supported"

I just recently came into possession of a PowerMac 7200/120. The only thing it came with is a boot cd with Mac OS 8.1. It booted fine off the cd with only the date/time issues of a dead PRAM battery, but when I tried to boot the internal HD on its own, it was a no-go. Flashing ?. When I tried to verify the HD, the software would not even find the HD. Not even listed on the program. You can't initialize what isn't there, so I ordered a new HD from an online vendor. I replaced it according to the directions on the Apple .pdf file I googled. I also reset the logic board and replaced the PRAM battery. Upon booting after all this ... still flashing ?. I run the same verification process as before and I actually DO see this HD listed, but it says it is "not supported" and doesn't allow me to initialize it. It's virtually the same quantum fireball HD with the Apple logo as the old one I just took out, just a different GB size. Connections and slots are all the same. Is this just not the right HD for my computer? Is there something I need to download? I just rebuilt a Performa 6300cd with ZERO issues.

Ok ... a couple of mistakes on my part which of course could change EVERYTHING. I'm embarassed with the amount of mistakes in my own question. A couple of forgetful omissions on my part ...
#1. The drive DID start up just fine upon first switching out the HD. Original software on HD was 8.1, but as I needed to run older programs not compatible with 8.1, I initialized and installed 7.5.3 clean. (I know ... HUGE omission here, but be kind as I've been working on multiple computers and it has been a couple months since I did this). It worked fine after download. After coming back to this computer a couple of months later, I get the flashing ? again (like before the HD switch).
#2.The HD the online vendor sent me was not the one I ordered, but ended up being a carbon copy of the one I took out except the GB size (which was actually larger than the one I ordered). Didn't physically count the pins, but it plugged in fine. Everything fit.
#3. I also forgot to mention that while the CD drive worked, the floppy either spat my disks out at me or asked to initialize them. These were the same floppies that I took out of my Performa literally a minute earlier (which worked).
#4. The 8.1 cd is a mistake on my part again. Turns out it's the black-faced 7.5.3 cd (7200, 7500, 7600, 8500, and 9500 series). Got confused with the 8.1 drive.
UPDATE
The strangest thing ... I just booted up off the cd and it's now reading the HD. I ejected the cd and booted it up on its own ... and it works just fine. I did NOTHING since I asked the question. In fact, I just booted the computer back up in response to your response.
Before I delved into these boards and bothered to ask for help ... I had opened it up, cleared out a TON of dust bunnies with my can o' air, pressed the CUDA? chip, and then replaced the PRAM battery. Restarted holding down cmd-opt-p-r until it chimed again and it was still a flashing ?. You could hear it clicking as if trying to start the drive up at regular intervals. I restarted the computer well over 10 times hoping it was just something jammed up in the HD (though just bought) and it was the same flashing ?. And now today ... did nothing and it boots up just fine. I check the drive setup lite and it now shows macintoshHD there (instead of unsupported drive - original showed nothing at all).
Does it take time for the PRAM battery or logic board to reset? Did it just needed a thorough internal cleaning? Or should I chalk this up as just being a really old comp?
I really don't want to go delving back into it now that it's working to check the SCSI terminations, jumpers, etc. I'm going to assume those are ok now it's booting.

MacBook Pro won't boot off Tiger CD

I installed a larger drive into my MacBook Pro. I inserted the Tiger OS X cd, and pressed the 'C' ket to boot off the cd. It doesn't recognize the start-up disk and goes to the "? Folder".
I zapped the PRAM, etc. with no change.
I can boot off an external drive with OS X installed by holding down the "option key" at power up, and selecting that external drive, BUT it doesn't recognize the OS X CD in this mode either.
If I use the external drive to boot from and insert the Tiger CD, I can only go so far in the installation process before I get a window that says "You can not install OS X on this computer". I've only seen this window when trying to install a lower version of os x onto a drive that has a higher version installed. As my new drive is blank (OS extended), it seems I should be able to install Tiger on the empty drive. Right?
Any suggestions?

The MBP is an Intel based computer vs. the PPC based G4 or G5 or anything earlier. They started being produced in 2006 (which for me is new, with my 2000 model ). Texas Mac Man provides some history as to the OS versions, but all the early ones came with their own version of Tiger. You can't even use a retail installer version of Tiger since it wasn't considered necessary to provide a retail version of Tiger for a computer series that came with it anyway.
If you are using a G4 installer it is definitely the wrong disc and you're getting exactly the message we'd expect. Sometimes it won't even get that far.
If you can't find the discs it may be possible to clone your old drive to the new drive. This is assuming the old drive is still viable and you have an enclosure in which to put the new drive while attached to the computer with the old drive inside. If you use a tool such as Carbon Copy Cloner it will place a bootable complete duplicate of your one drive onto another.
Message was edited by: Limnos
Message was edited by: Limnos

Can you boot off a usb drive or external hard drive (usb 2.0) on an iMac?

I have an intel iMac that will not boot off of a USB drive with Ubuntu installed (my PC netbook boots off the usb drive fine) or my external hard drive with Ubuntu installed. I heard somewhere that you cannot boot off of usb on iMacs even if they are Intel, but a Genius bar guy told me diffferent. Then why won't it work for me, and how can I make it? Thanks.

I should have been more general in my post - I don't believe any Mac can boot off an external drive with Ubuntu. I could be wrong of course (and if I am, hopefully someone will correct me), but as Mac hardware is so specific that it demands a specific install disk for each build/model/generation, it would be unable to boot with just a "foreign" OS such as Ubuntu installed. As you may know, you can't boot an iMac with an install disk from a different model iMac, Macbook, or any other Mac (unless it is exactly the same build/model), so it doesn't surprise me that it won't boot with Ubuntu.
Edit: and this question begs to be asked: why would you want to boot/use Ubuntu when you have a superb OS to work with already?
Message was edited by: Barbara Daniels1

Booting Windows Off An External Drive

I have (access to) an Intel Mac Mini which is quite capable of running Window in Boot Camp, although it doesn't currently have Windows installed or Boot Camp set up.
I have a Macbook which runs Windows XP in Boot Camp.
I have an external hard drive that I can use to make a bootable clone of my Windows XP boot camp partition.
Can I use a bootable copy of Windows XP on the external hard drive to boot the Mac Mini, which doesn't have a boot camp partition of its own and hasn't had Boot Camp set up yet?

Oh well. I'm familiar with booting Mac OSX from an external drive; I make occasional bootable backups in CCC and make other backups by creating a disk image clone in Disk Utility; since DU can't make an image of the startup drive, I boot from my previous CCC backups to do it. (It also means I can boot Leopard rather than Tiger on my PowerPC box; I've found Tiger is very slow to identify my USB backup drive, while Leopard mounts it instantly.)
It's a pity Windows doesn't boot of an external drive; I can't install Boot Camp on the machine in question because it's not mine and its owner wouldn't let me. If I could boot off an external drive and not touch its startup disk (which Windows wouldn't be able to see anyway due to lack of HFS+ support), I'd be able to use it.

How do I boot from an external drive?

I've just Carbon Cloned my 60GB drive to a firewire external drive. I'm about to replace the 60GB with a 160GB drive and the CCC instructions say boot from the external drive I'd just created once the new disk is installed. Then CCC the cloned drive back to the new hard drive.
So, how do I boot from an external drive? Do I have load anything to the new drive? Will the macbook detect the external drive and boot from that? Or what??????
Thanks
Dick

Thanks DWB. Being the rash impetuous guy I am I didn't wait for replies and just switched on the macbook after installing the new disk (which was so easy it was unbelievable - had to go and buy a a little torx bit though) to see what would happen.
Blow me down with a feather if it didn't just boot off the external drive all by itself :-O It did come up with the disk was unverified and I could see it in FINDER and I was prseented with a screen to ERASE/RESTORE etc.
When I went to CCC the external drive back to the new hard drive it didn't give show me the new hard drive so I guessed I'd have to do something to format (?) the hard drive.
I don't know if I did the right thing but I went to disk utilities and chose ERASE in the vague hope it would maybe format the disk in some way.
Seems to work now and the CCC replaced the system perfectly as far as I can see.
Basically very impressive all round. Piece of proverbial to replace the disk and CCC made life so easy.
Thanks again.
Cheers
Dick

MBP upgraded to Mavericks won't boot off of external drive

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for