OS X will not boot if External HD is connected...

Hi,
I am running an iMac with Leopard, and Windows Vista through boot camp. My system works fine when nothing is connected, but if my external hard drive is connected, the system hangs on start up. I cannot even get into the boot camp menu until I power off my external hard drive. It seems like the system is trying to boot from the external hard drive, but there is nothing there. If it makes a difference, my external HD is formatted as FAT32 so that both OS X and Windows can read it.
Any ideas on how to get my mac to ignore the external HD when booting would be appreciated. My HD is behind my computer, so it's not convenient to reach back and power it off and on again every time I want to boot up.
Thanks.

Turns out it wasn't the external HD at all.... It was my Canon printer....
I tried a different external hard drive (no usb hub) and the system worked fine... So I tried my original external again with nothing plugged in, and it worked fine... Then I started plugging a bunch of things in (ipod, smart phone, etc) and it still booted. As soon as I plug the printer in it won't boot.
I unplugged all of the devices from my mac and plugged the printer directly in, and it won't boot. So whatever the issue is, it's actually caused by my printer... Canon Pixima MP130... The only reason I can think of why it would cause the system not to boot is maybe because it's trying to read the card reader? Strange.

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Windows 8 and Canvio Desk 3TB: System will not boot when external hdd is connected

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Operating-Systems-e-g/HP-PAVILION-A6109N-amp-windows-8-System-w...
Hi,
just recently upgraded to Win Pro on my HP PAVILION A6109N. I also bought a toshiba canvio desk 3TB. What I notice is that if I reboot my pc with the extermnal HDD connected, my system will not boot.
I have check my BIOS boot settings and the order of the boot.
I have tried disabling USB Legacy Support in the BIOS
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I am at a loss....*** scratching my head ***

Update: The only solution for me was to format the drive as ext3 and plug it into one of my Asus RT-N66U USB ports, as most routers don’t yet recognize 3TB drives as NTFS. It’s not much help to people who don’t have a router with this capability, and it also slows transfer rates to ~12MB/s.
Given the short length of the cable, your only other options are to have the 3TB Canvio sitting right next to you so you can unplug from a front USB port before each boot, or place it towards the rear of your desk and crawl under the desk to disconnect it from your PC prior to each boot.
It's a pity because Toshiba produce great internal HDD's, but my experience when it comes to external drives is they're simply junk. I wish I had read the reviews before purchasing.

P67A-GD65 (B3) will not boot with external USB DVD connected.

Damnedest thing... just put the build together last night and this was the biggest issue. If I connect my external Samsung USB DVD RW the system stops booting and only displays (B3) in the bottom right corner of my display. If I remove the USB plug the system boots and operates normally. If I connect it to the USB port after boot the system recognizes it and it works fine. The same issue occurs no matter which USB2/3 port I plug it into. I've banged around the BIOS and cannot see any issues in the boot sequence that would indicate an issue. Anyone else in das same boot?

Quote from: cadhopper on 24-March-11, 07:19:08
I just came to the forum for the same reason. I'm glad you had a thread already going. Mine is a Seagate 1.5T USB 2.0 hard drive and the screen reads 98 in the lower right corner. Hopefully MSI will get this fixed soon. Other than that the new system is running great.
They are working on it. They sent me a BETA BIOS to try out. The BIOS v1.10B3 was dated 3-17-2011 and it nearly bricked my system though. Here is the response I sent to them the other night after a few hours with a massive headache trying to bring my system back up:
Quote
Tried the new BIOS. While it did indeed fix the USB DVD boot issue and let me boot into windows it created a few new issues. After flashing the new BIOS would not recognize my old overclocking profiles from the v1.8 BIOS.. "hole" error. So I manually adjusted all the settings and saved the new settings. I copied them EXACTLY from my previous settings.. I had screenshots which I had printed out as a fool-proof guide. After rebooting I could no longer get into windows. BSOD. If I tried entering the BIOS by tapping the DEL button while booting the system would freeze at the "entering setup...." screen and never progress into the actual BIOS. I unplugged the power, waited a few minutes and held the clear CMOS button on the back panel down for a few seconds. After rebooting I no longer had video output. After much trial and error I ended up having to also unplug my LCD and cycle power on it as well to get video back. But could still bot get into the BIOS by tapping the DEL key during boot. Luckily I have a laptop with all the files on it and I was able to finally re-flash back to the v1.8 BIOS from a USB drive. I'm not sure what exactly you changed.. but I don't think this new BIOS version should leave BETA status.
To their credit they promptly responded the next AM:
Quote
There were some changes to the CPU voltage, so your overclock settings may not work properly. We are still working on a 1.A release version. It will be updated to our website soon. http://www.msi.com/product/mb/P67A-GD65--B3-.html#/?div=BIOS
I only wish they had informed me of the changes to the CPU voltage up front or included a change log so I could have made an informed decision as to whether or not I wanted to try the BETA BIOS. I was under the impression (mistakenly) that it simply addressed the USB DVD issue. I'll wait for the new release BIOS. I can live without the external USB DVD being plugged in at boot. Bricking my MOBO and having to RMA would be a far less desirable outcome. :p That said.. I'd still recommend this MOBO. It has relatively few issues and MSI support is responsive so far.

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Welcome to Apple Support Communities
If you made a backup of your files with SuperDuper, use Migration Assistant (in /Applications/Utilities) to transfer your files from the external drive > http://pondini.org/OSX/MigrateLion.html It will create a new user account with the transferred files, so you may want to merge both user accounts > https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-5472
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Hi Ryan,
it might be a wild guess, but is it possible, that the external harddisc is a 'Dynamic Drive' and not a 'Basic Drive'?
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Robert,
I have no idea what you mean by Apple is not responsive to the issue. If you want help, please start a new topic thread so someone can help you identify the problem without the distraction of other people's problems around yours. Blaming people does not solve problems.
This is the link to post a new topic on this board:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1149&start=0
This is a user to user board. If you need help from Apple, call AppleCare directly here:
http://www.apple.com/contact/phone_contacts.html

Will not boot to external media?

So i have a white early 2009 model (9400m) and i put the HDD from the previous refresh macbook in the new one. It booted to the OS fine, but id like to do a fresh install with the new macbook. the problem is; it wont boot to the install DVDs. i attempted a techtool pro DVD.. wont boot either. also tried external USB drive with an image of the install dvds restored on it.. no luck.
i cleared the pram, no luck.
boots to the OS fine off the internal drive.. but wont boot to other media- it just bootloops. if i insert my OSX dvds in OSX and tell it to install from there.. it will reboot and just bootloop till i designate it to boot to HDD..
any ideas?

That's interesting. Has that TechTool DVD worked before? Are you using the correct install discs?
With either the TechTool DVD or one of the install discs in your optical drive, restart the computer and hold down the Option key. Does anything other than your computer's HD show up?
~Lyssa

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Hi,
I just bought a new 2.0 ghz mac mini 1 gb ram. 120gb hdd.
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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.
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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.
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Thanks

Macbook Pro will not boot on external Firewire drive. Mybook with 2 partitions containing 2 OSX images using CCC. Volumes will not display when booting but do display when the internal drive is running OSX using Startup utility.

I've reset SMC and PRAM several times. Activiatng Terminal from Recovery HD displays the following:
-bash-3.2# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *250.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            249.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *1.3 GB     disk1
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         30.7 KB    disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Mac OS X Base System    1.3 GB     disk1s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS MyBook1                 999.8 GB   disk2s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS MyBook2                 767.2 GB   disk2s3
Any comments are greatly appreciated.

Applejack is just a command-line "front-end" for a number of different command-line tools you can use in single-user mode, and I'm not sure whether it's Lion-compatible. You can always try booting into single-user mode and executing:
/sbin/fsck -fy
That's unlikely to solve your problems, though. Since you can't boot from two different hard drives and your optical drive, that indicates there's a more serious hardware issue, or multiple hardware issues.

My MacBook is hung up on "safe boot mood" and shuts off. I have tried everything on this site to fix and no go. Will not boot from external start up disc either. Any help, please.

I also just installed 10.6.3 Leopard.

Hey Don, did you try to shut down the MBP (if necessary by forcing it to, done by keeping the power button pressed for more than 5 seconds) and then restarting while keeping the Command-button pressed to bring up the available boot disks, then select the install CD?
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OS X will not boot if External HD is connected...

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