Start-up disk issues

I thought I finally had everything working but today I noticed that I can no longer boot into windows. The partition is still there and formatted correctly but it wont give me the option to boot from it at start-up and it's not recognized in the start-up disk manager.
I should note that getting XP to install correctly was a bit of a challenge as I wanted to have 4 mac partitions and the 1 windows. I finally managed to do it and had bootcamp as the 3rd partition. My guess is the issue came in when I used carbon copy cloner to put the back-up of my old system (10.4.11) onto one of the mac partitions (so I have 10.6.8 on one partition and 10.4.11 on another) or when I created the last 2 partitions after installing windows. The bootcamp partition is still in the 3rd spot so I'm not sure what to do. I tried removing the last 2 partitions I had made but to no avail. I will try a repair of XP when I get home but I thought I would pool the masses to see if anyone has any thoughts on this.
My guess is that when I put my old system onto the partition it somehow replaced the bootcamp start-up option, so I'm hoping a repair of XP will fix it. Does this make sense?
I can provide the refit information if that helps at all.
Thank you everyone for your help!
Geoff

Check that your start-up disk is partitioned with Apple Partition Map not GUID.

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Random shut down and Start up disk issues

My MacBook has started spontaneously shutting down. It's happened while running iDVD, Safari and iPhoto. I am also gettign messages that my start up disk is nearly full and to delete files. Could the two issues be related, is there anyway to increase memory, and how do I fix the random shut off issue?

How full is the disk?
Reset the SMC
Memory and disk space are different. Memory is RAM and disk space would be your hard drive. Sorry if I can't make that clear enough. Google it for more info.
Chris

PS5 won't start Scratch Disk Issues

I would really appreciate some help - I'm working to a deadline and got it into my head that I could speed things up if I reallocated my scratch disk to a bigger HDD (I have a Mac Pro with 4). So in a brain-fade moment I assigned the 3 non system disks in priority order BUT deactivated the Scratch Disk on the System drive. Photoshop will not now restart and gave the following error messages: "Could not open a scratch file because the disk is not available". followed by "Could not initialize Photoshop because the disk is not available". I went back 24 hours in Time Machine expecting that to fix things but, alas, no change. How can I reassign the scratch disks with the program off?

Yes, because I managed to fix the problem with Mac Command+Option+Shift .... DOH!
Thank you all very much.

TS1440 I followed all of the directions after seeing that my laptop flashed the folder with the question mark. But when I went to disk utility to repair/ verify issues w/ start up disk it would not allow me to.button to repair/verify is there but cant be

I followed all of the directions after seeing that my laptop flashed the folder with the question mark. But when I went to disk utility to repair/ verify issues w/ start up disk it would not allow me to. The buttons to repair and modify we're there but they were grey and couldn't be pressed.

Were you trying to repair the disk you were booted from? You can't do that - you need to boot from your install disk, and choose 'Disk Utility' from the 'install' menu.

I have an MacBook Pro 10.6, using disk utility I tried to verify my disk, but it came up with the message, please use your start up disk, I tried this, starting the computer up and pressing C, but it ejected the disk, the same thing happened while I runni

I have an MacBook Pro 10.6, using disk utility I tried to verify my disk, but it came up with the message, please use your start up disk, I tried this, starting the computer up and pressing C, but it ejected the disk, the same thing happened while I running the computer. Is the hard drive damaged as laptop doesn't seem to recognize the start up disk ? If so, I presume I will have to put in a new one.
There haven't been any problems with the computer, apart from a sticky curser,I have run a permissions programme from disk utility, there were a lot of different ones, but it seem to be able to fix them.
Any comments or ideas ?
Thank you in anticipation.

First backup your users files off the machine to a external storage drive (not TimeMachine!)
Most commonly used backup methods
Next to startup from the disk, have it inserted, hold c or option/alt (wired or built in keyboard) and then boot the computer and or select the disk when it appears and click the arrow.
Disk Utility is under the Utilities menu on the second screen.
Step by Step to fix your Mac
If you used the wrong 10.6 disk, it will spit it out or have issues, use the one that came with that machine or if it's defective, call Apple for a new one.

Restore Files & App's From Damaged Start-Up Disk (10.4) to New Disk (10.5)

I appreciate any help all of you can give me. This is kind of a weird one, so I'll try and be brief. I have a G5 that had problems with a malfunctioning start-up disk. I purchased a new hard drive and went to install 10.4 and found that it was an upgrade disk, not an original install disk. As the computer had a former owner, I originally purchased it and all of its software from him but evidently I only got the 10.4 Upgrade disk from him, not the full install. I have since purchased Leopard and installed it on the new start-up disk. Diskwarrior and Disk Utility will both allow me to open my old disk in a read-only manner, but I'm wondering now if there is an easy way to move all of my app's, files, email's, etc. over to the new disk.
I did partition the disk so that I could make an image and copy over the old disk to the new partitioned volume, but since it would then have a copy of 10.4 on it will this cause issues with my start-up volume running 10.5? Will my app's run alright under Leopard? What about running the files from that disk? Also since I had directory issues, I'm worried that by making an image and copying to the new one I may create more issues (Diskwarrior would not replace the old directory due to a disk malfunction).
I could reinstall most of the app's (include Final Cut Studio, Adobe After Affects, etc.) but I'm just not looking forward to going through each one individually. Also, is there an easy way to copy over my user files (doc's, email's, etc.) from that old drive?
The biggest thing is I just don't want to screw up the new drive and install. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!

Did you do the Super Duper clone before you tried to reinstall the OS? If so, the original install disc is likely earlier than 10.4.11, and that may be why you are getting the message.
When trying to reinstall the OS, did you select the "Archive and Install" option? If not, you might try that. Here's a link that might help:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1103.html
Good luck!

Mac Book Pro 15" mid 2009 after installing new hard drive and 8 gb memory, start up disk is still full, start up from power off is very slow, and programs open immediately after start up EX. word, excel. Help?

I installed a new 1tb WD hardrive in my mid 2009 macbook pro along with upgrading from 4gb to 8 gb.
My start up disk is still almost full, booting up is extremely slow, and programs open up by themselves once booted up ex:word, excel.
New TB drive shows up alng with 8 GB but, new hard drive not updating somehere? What am I missing? See screenshots below

Thanks for the response, but I'm looking for answers to a few of the other answers before I look at completeing the steps above.
1. Whyis the new TB drive recognized in image 1 but still have the original 256GB size still recognized(and almost full) in image 1 also? The HD should now be 1 TB, not 256 correct? If this were the case, the HD, would only be fraction of full capacity, Where is the disconnect between reconizing the installed tb HD but, it not being used?
2.Image Number 2 shows once again that the new tb internal HD is recognized. However, in image 3, the HD 256GB drive is still shown underneath the new HD. Does this show that I am misssing something, some step, related to confirming the new HD should be fully reconized instaed of this old 256 that still remains?
3. In image 4, the SATA heading, shows the TB hardrive, However, in image 5, the 256GB drive is still being shown under the storage heading? Once again, seems like I've missed some simple step to make this all the same?
4.Why is the start up from boot up soooo slow now. I was never even close to this slow(slower than PC startup slow) before the new HD was installed. IS this common when updraging to a new HD? Doesn't seem right?
5. Why now all of a sudden when the computer finally boots up are certain programs automatically opening up, word, excel, when they have never opened up like this before?
Summary: 1. New memory issues, 2. Very slow start up, 3. Programs opening up automatically at startup.
Until I address these issues, I'm not going to worry about loking through and deleting heavy folders.
All responses welcomed!

HT4790 My Mac OS Lion 10.7 FileVaulted HD does not boot, prohibitory sign, stop sign appears some minutes after boot starts. Disk Utility repair shows four error messages: Unable to bootstrap transaction group 2517: inconsistent crosscheck (the same with

My Mac OS Lion 10.7 FileVaulted HD does not boot, prohibitory sign, stop sign appears some minutes after boot starts. Disk Utility repair shows four error messages:
Unable to bootstrap transaction group 2517: inconsistent crosscheck
No valid commit checkpoint found
The volume xxxxxxxxxxxxxx(here it shows physical volume number) was found corrupt and can not be repaired.
Problems were encountered during repair of the partition map
Error: Storage system verify or repair failed.
(the same with 2518, 2519 and 2520 transaction group)
I suppose it is serious bug in Mac OS Lion managing FileVault and wonder what the help could be?

Most likely culprit is your Lacie drives which are notorious for flaky power supplies which cause just the sort of erratic behaviour that you describe. Have had similar issues myself. Lacie has been good about replacing my power converter-- twice. If you have seven of them, good luck finding the bad one or more. Like I said, the behaviour is erratic. Sometimes it'll work sometimes not. I can't comment on Samsung drives because I've never used them and have never heard anything about them. Same with Softraid. Why not just use Disk Utility. Sounds like you're ready for an external hardware raid. This will be much faster, much more reliable, and may even be cheaper than seven firewire drives. Check out G Tech, and Maxx Digital for starters.
Best of luck
Terry

Mountian Lion does not recognize Yosemite in Start up disk

Greetings All,
I recently installed Yosemite on the partition of my HD (1TB) I ran Mavericks on.
On another partition of the same HD I run Mountian Lion (I use Pro Tools 9.06 on it).
When working within Mountain Lion, I used to switch to Mavericks (and vice versa) via System Preferences / Start up disk. Now Mountain Lion apparently does not recognize Yosemite as a bootable disk: in System Preferences / Start up disk Yosemite does not appear (as Mavericks used to do).
Does anyone know what's the cause of Yosemite not being available as Start up disk in System Preferences in Mountain Lion?
Kind regards,
Gerrit
MacBook Pro mid 2010
2.4 dual core intel cpu
1 TB HD; 3 partitions: Mountain Lion; Yosemite; Data
8 GB RAM

gerritfromnijmegen wrote:
...Another thing is a language issue: what you call the "media" line I can't translate with accuracy into Dutch. I guess it is called "Naam" (Name) in the second line of the information panel in Disk Utility and this says: Volume. I'm adding a screenshot here, maybe you'll be able to make out what what is by the way subjects are ordered in it?...
Your hard disk drive is shown divided up into three partitions: Mountain Lion, Yosemite, and the Data partition, all of which are indented in the list on the left in Disk Utility. The "media" on which the partitions exist (your Western Digital hard drive device, which is not indented), is shown in the traditional configuration we've known for years (so I apologize for introducing "Logical Volume Groups" to the discussion). It's been my experience that sometimes, installation of Yosemite will take the partition arrangement you have and convert it into a Logical Volume Group which becomes much more difficult to work with, and much, much more difficult to explain.

Why does start up disk lose/gain memory?

I keep getting the "Your start up disk is almost full" message.
I delete (+empty trash) or transfer files to an external HD freeing up space (then delete/trash).
Often when I delete files my HD memory decreases! but reappears if I restart. I don't restart regularly preferring to sleep my computer.
Sometimes the HD memory decreases when I haven't downloaded anything.
Any hints please

Hi Stephen!
"13GB HD...try to leave 1GB free...but rapidly fills up."
If you are running Panther 10.3.x with only 1GB or less, of available free space, on a 13GB HD, I fear that may be your problem.
During everyday use, you are crossing the safe threshold.
You need to create additional free space.
Insufficient available space, can cause performance issues, system corruption, and possible loss of data.
Depending on Mac system usage habits, it is a general recommendation, to keep 10% to as much as 20%, of the Total capacity, available at all times.
Review the suggestions, in the documents that I have linked to below.
Authored by Dr Smoke:
Problems From Insufficient RAM And Free Hard Disk Space
Freeing Space On Your Mac OS X Startup Disk
Have you ever run any routine Maintenance procedures, as suggested in the articles linked to below?
Mac OS X 10.3/10.4: System Maintenance, authored by Gulliver
Maintaining Mac OS X, authored by Dr Smoke
Is the Mac shutdown overnight, or does it run 24/7?
If you turn the Mac off nightly, the Background Maintenance Tasks, are never run.
These can also be run, using a Third-Party utility, or manually using Terminal, to run the CRON Commands.
I use MacJanitor, when necessary.
INSTRUCTIONS TO RUN CRON MANUAL COMMANDS
Quit all applications/programs.
Navigate to HD > Applications > Utilities.
Double click on Terminal, to open.
At the prompt, type:
sudo periodic daily
Press Return.
Enter your Admin password when prompted, then press Return.
This will execute the daily script that is sheduled to run every night.
When completed, repeat this procedure, but change the command to:
sudo periodic weekly
This one rebuilds a database or two, and usually takes somewhat longer to complete. It is scheduled to run once a week.
Repeat again, with command:
sudo periodic monthly
Or they can all be run in one pass, which is preferable, with this command:
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
When the tasks complete, and return to the prompt, you may quit Terminal.
Restart the Mac, and run Repair Permissions.
TO REPAIR PERMISSIONS ON THE STARTUP DISK
1.Open Disk Utility, located in Applications/Utilities, and select the startup disk in the left column.
2.Click First Aid.
3.Click Verify Disk Permissions to test permissions or Repair Disk Permissions to test and repair permissions. (I never "Verify". Just run "Repair".)
Rerun RP, until the only messages reported, are listed here Spurious Permissions Errors Using: 10.3.x, authored by Michael Conniff.
When "Repair Permissions" is complete. Quit "Disk Utility".
ali b

Start-Up Disk

My Air has the Start-Up Disk is Full issue, which I'm positive has to do with my mail. I'm trying to clean off files but now I can't even start it in Safe Mode. Help?

Start the non-working Mac in target disk mode. Use the working Mac to mount the internal drive and delete some files. According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.

Start up disk almost full

hi all. I am a new user for the ibookg4. I just received an error "start up disk is almost full, delete
files. I am now sure what or where to do this. can anyone advise.
thanks all and good day to everyone

tony:
A too full startup disk is a serious issue as it can cause directory issue which can result in data loss or corruption. It is therefore an issue you cannot afford to ignore.
Your startup disk can be too full either because you have too much stuff which you have put on the disk, or because the system is repeating processes and creating entries in the console. If the former is the case there are two things you need to do. First, you should backup you drive immediately, using an external HDD and a utility like SuperDuper. Second, you need to lighten the load by removing some files. Third, even if you delete some files, you will probably run into the same issue again as your computing habits seem to indicate the need for a larger HDD.
To determine exactly what is on your HDD, and where your disk space is going, download and run either WhatSize 10.3.91 or Disk Inventory. Either one will scan your HDD and list your files/folders by size. Then you need to look over the list and see if you see any very large file that looks suspicious. Post back with your findings.
Here are a couple of article you may find helpful:
Where Did My Disk Space Go?
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
Good luck.
cornelius

Migrating Leopard Server software to new Start-up disk

I have a new Xserve that I had configured with 3 -15K drives and the internal raid card and striped all 3 drives into one datapool for max performance. I am running the OS on this raid pool along with our rip software that loves lots of disk space and speed, thus the reason for the striped 15k drives. Lately I have noticed that while this software is running, it basically locks out access to a lot of the Finder functions or mounted drives on our network as well as clients have some hiccups to the shared out folders from this Xserve as well as the folders that are mounted locally on their machines. You basically have to either stop the software or wait until there is not activity before you can even access anything on the machine.
I would like to migrate the O.S. to an external 1tb firewire 800 drive I have and boot from there as I believe the issues are coming from the amount of disk activity that our rip software is causing, basically gagging the O.S. from doing it's job to it's fullest being on a shared raid volume.
So my question finally is, what is the best way to migrate my O.S. as it is set up now to the external drive and then just change start up disks and be back in business. I will break up the raid if I have to and go down to a striped volume of just 2 - 15K drives and leave the other for the O.S. if needed but I wanted to give the rip software as much spool space as possible.
Sorry for being long winded but any help would be appreciated.
thanks,
Dan

It sounds like you've setup a RAID 5 array using the three internal disks, right?
RAID 5 is great for data protection against a failed drive, but it has an overhead for any writing (every write requires a read from all disks in the array so the controller can recalculate the parity data). Therefore is is not a good choice for disk-intensive loads.
If your RIP software is using the drive as spool space there's no advantage in RAID 5 because the files are temporary, anyway (if a drive fails you just restart the job and move on - there's little or no loss of data).
Even so, it should have to do a significant amount of activity to stall other processes, so I'm not sure it's your problem.
For best write performance, RAID 0 is your best bet - you get to drive all disks at their full speed and there's little or no delay in waiting for other drives in the chain.
RAID 1 offers good read speed (reads alternate over the separate disks to increase throughput), but has a write overhead (data has to be written to both disks simultaneously), so it might not be a good option for temp files.
what is the best way to migrate my O.S. as it is set up now to the external drive and then just change start up disks and be back in business?
Yes. That's your best bet for the OS, but it doesn't fix the data on the RAID 5 array.
If you don't want to depend on an external drive, you could also use one drive for OS/applications and stripe the remaining two drives for scratch/data.

Mini says start up disk full

I have had my mini for about a year now. I do like it but here recently it has been causing issues. I installed the leopard operating system when it came out. I do like it but i really dont need it. I cant download bigger files anymore. On startup and opening different apps it reads " start-up disk is almost full". What do i need to do in order to resolve this? Here are the specs of my mini
Model Name: Mac mini
Model Identifier: Macmini1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 1.83 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 2 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MM11.0055.B08
SMC Version: 1.3f4
Thanks for any help!

Hi blueballin-
Greetings and welcome to the Apple boards
Your Mac is telling you why you are having problems.
Have you emptied the trash? Have you emptied the trash in individual programs like iMovie and iPhoto (they have their own trash cans)?
If you have emptied trashes and still have the problem I would suggest that you get an external hard drive and move some of your files to it.
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

I have an old Mac OS 9.0.4 - bought it used, no start up disks! HELP??

I want to know what my options are for wiping the hard drive clean and starting fresh? There are several issues with this iMac:
**The extensions folder has 250+ items in it, I have no clue what should be there or not. Extensions go on and off without me changing anything..
**To download anything off of the internet seems impossible.
**I cannot update without an original start-up disk??
Sorry, I am very new to Mac. I have only been a PC user. I bought this iMac desktop for my kids, and I am definitely in a whole new world!!
Specs for this dinosaur:
Mac OS 9.0.4
64MB Built in memory
Mac OS ROM 5.5.1 (nothing on this memory)
Help??? Please????

The highest release of a g4 is 10.5 -- leopard. If you meet the leopard requirements.
http://support.apple.com/kb/sp517
You can run the latest Firefox with the PPC version of firefox. Max out the memory on the machine
TenFourFox -- It's a port of the latest FireFox to run on older hardware and software.
"World's most advanced web browser. Finely tuned for the Power PC."
-- works for me on 10.4. Supports 10.5
http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/
alternative download site:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/37761/tenfourfox
Turn on pipelining. This will allow Firefox to make simaltaneous requests to the server. Chrome has pipeling turned on. Some sites could fail to load with pipeling set on. The site will be old. See "Increase pipelining" in:
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/firefox-optimization-tips/
OmniWeb uses the lastest Safari framework. The open source WebKit. Other browsers like Safari and iCab use the OS version of WebKit. The OmniWeb downloaded dmg includes it's own copy of the latest WebKit.
http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniweb/
Safari 4.1.3 for Tiger
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1069

Start-up disk issues

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