System Pref Start up Disk blank

So the computer is working, I can boot to either windows or OS X by holding option, but under System Preferences > Start Up Disk there are zero disks listed. any way to fix that?

We can try by forcing it to create a new System Prefs preference file; if that doesn't work, a reinstall by using your recovery partition is necessary I believe since System Prefs are part of the OS and so the only way to reinstall. But, first:
go to your User Library (which is now hidden): holding down Option key, go to "go" in File Menu and the library will show up. If you want, you can drag its icon into the side bar (I've done that for easier access); scroll down to Preferences and then to the two items that are shown here:
Throw them in the trash (do not empty yet).
Restart computer.
Open System Prefs and see if the startup disk now shows.
Doing this may return some changes you've made to the default state, so you'll need to check those Panes to see if the settings need to be redone. If everything is ok, you can empty the trash.

Similar Messages

After i install window 8.1, i can't see window icon in my start up disk, i see only mac icon 10.10, but i can see both mac and win icon in my window boot camp control. i want to see window icon in my mac Yosemite 10.10.2,system preference, start up disk

After i install window 8.1, i can't see window icon in my start up disk, i see only mac icon 10.10, but i can see both mac and win icon in my window boot camp control. i want to see window icon in my mac Yosemite 10.10.2,system preference, start up disk.

Third-party NTFS software interferes with the Apple NTFS drivers, which control whether you can see the Bootcamp partition in the Startup Disk option. As a test, can you uninstall all third-party NTFS software and check System Preferences -> Startup Disk?

Want to make a backup of system folder/start up disk

I have a PowerBook 4 that just gave me a start up scare. Things are working well again, but I realize that I need a back up plan.
It is running 10.4.11 and has had several upgrades to the hard drive and os, so nothing is original and I do not have original install disks. All the other computers we have are Intel with newer OS so they are not helpful as start up drives. And, the DVD drive does not work anymore so none of the OS disks I have are useful.
But I would like to make a back up of the start up software or system folder in case I ever have a start up problem again. I understand I could put a start up folder on a Fire Wire Drive and use that to start in target mode. But I don't know how to make that file, any ideas? Seems like when we were in System 9 you could just make a copy of the system folder.
Thanks for any tips!
Melanie

Basic Backup
Get an external drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
SuperDuper!
Synk Pro
Tri-Backup
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Although you can buy a complete external drive system, you can also put one together if you are so inclined. It's relatively easy and only requires a Phillips head screwdriver (typically.) You can purchase hard drives separately. This gives you an opportunity to shop for the best prices on a hard drive of your choice. Reliable brands include Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital, Toshiba, and Fujitsu. You can find reviews and benchmarks on many drives at Storage Review.
Enclosures for FireWire and USB are readily available. You can find only FireWire enclosures, only USB enclosures, and enclosures that feature multiple ports. I would stress getting enclosures that use the Oxford chipsets especially for Firewire drives (911, 921, 922, for example.) You can find enclosures at places such as;
Cool Drives
OWC
WiebeTech
Firewire Direct
California Drives
NewEgg
All you need do is remove a case cover, mount the hard drive in the enclosure and connect the cables, then re-attach the case cover. Usually the only tool required is a small or medium Phillips screwdriver.

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.

How to get windows partition back on start up disk

I have used boot camp partition (windows) for months without any problem. I recently installed VM ware fusion. But unfortunately it did not work properly so I had to uninstall it.
Now I can no longer reboot from 'system preferences / start up disk' since the windows partition no longer appears beside OS X.
Can somebody help me?
Thanks
Phalch
NB I can still reboot windows when I restart the computer with alt key pressed.

You probably want to post your question in the Intel-based iMac discussion area instead of here in the discussion area for the much older iMac G4.

I received the following message while i was on my macbook air "you do not have enough space in your start up disk - you must delete some files"-restarted; only got startup noise then blank screen. turned off tried to turn on no noise no screen load. thx

i received the following message while i was on my macbook air "you do not have enough space in your start up disk - you must delete some files"-restarted; only got startup noise then blank screen. i waited for a few minutes to see if it would load - nothing just the lit up screen but nothing loaded - held power button it asked did i really want to turn off - i selected shutdown -turned off and left it off for awhile tried to turn on no noise no screen load. the same lit up screen but nothing loading. please help thx in advance if anyone can offer some suggestions

You can get there from here (booting normally); it just may take you a few steps to do it.
If the disk is almost full and the system won't boot then sometimes it will boot in Safe Mode.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564?viewlocale=en_US
Empty the trash after it boots.
Then for hints on how to free disk/SSD storage see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5872318?tstart=0
If the Safe Mode boot does not do the trick then you can install OS X on an external hard disk, boot from that, and then delete files. You can also reach the disk via Target Mode. A third option is to take it to an Apple store where they can do a network boot and help you remove some files.

How much disk space does a typical system start up disk use?

I am trying to partition a 640 GB hard drive for my 17" MacBook Pro. I created a partition of 30GB for the "System Start Up Disk", and after installing the original Tiger OSX software, and then doing the Leopard Upgrade Install, It says that I am out of disk space on that partition.
Does anyone know how much disk space is sufficient for a typical System Start-Up Disk?
How about disk space for Applications?

molinasky wrote:
I am trying to partition a 640 GB hard drive for my 17" MacBook Pro. I created a partition of 30GB for the "System Start Up Disk", and after installing the original Tiger OSX software, and then doing the Leopard Upgrade Install, It says that I am out of disk space on that partition.
Welcome to Apple's discussion groups.
Why do you want to partition that disk?
Does anyone know how much disk space is sufficient for a typical System Start-Up Disk?
When not booted from that drive (meaning, I believe, that it's not allocating swap or page space) my OS X 10.5 system uses 68.4 GB, including 10 GB for applications, 2.5 GB for the Developer folder, and 25.5 GB for user folders.

System Prefs not showing all disks

It's been some time since I backed up and I've just copied over to my Lacie 500 drive the contents of my main drive. On checking with Startup Drive in System Prefs I note that I don't see the Lacie nor my second HD which I use with FCP editing content. (I was going to treat my Lacie to being the startup Drive as a test). What I have sshowing is the normal HD startup drive and Network Startup showing. No second HD nor the Lacie. In About This Mac, no Lacie drive is showing.
What have I cocked up, if anything?

I'm wondering why mine now aren't! I've cocked up something and maybe the drives need validating?
I thought this was answered. You copied over the contents of your internal either by dragging or using copy and paste. Startup Disc is looking for volumes that will boot the computer; that's why it's called "startup..." I'm beginning to think your drives were never bootable and therefore, never available in Startup Disc.
You can continue using these drives as data drives by dragging things over, but if you want a bootable drive -- and this can be very useful if your internal ever fails, and be up and running right away, or if the internal, startup Volume starts to show serious problems, in which case you can always do a reverse clone from a healthy external back to the internal -- you need to make a clone.
There are two distinct ways you have of creating a bootable, i.e. startup copy of your Internal. You can use Restore from Disc Utility, or, generally much more practical, you can use a cloning application.
There are several; the one I use, which is excellent and is freeware, is Carbon Copy Cloner. Once you do the initial clone, CCC offers the option of doing incremental backups. This will keep the clone looking exactly like the internal (or, since it's a MacPro, secondary drive.)
There is lots of documentation about using CCC and help for getting started at the site.
http://www.bombich.com/
You need to start from a clean, properly Formatted (this is done from the Partitioning area of DU) drive. See this about Formatting. (You have to find out if your MacPro is PPC or Intel. PPC will be Formatted APM (Apple Partition Map) and Intel will be Formatted GUID. For that, look in the Apple Menu> About this Mac>More info> Processor.) Note that Formatting will erase all the data currently on the drive.
http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/partitioningtiger.html

Cannot eject the start-up disk from my PowerBook G4 (laptop). Can anyone help me? My screen is blank too, that's why I'm using the start-up disk. MacBook Pro (17-inch 2.4 GHz), Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Cannot eject the start-up disk from my PowerBook G4 (laptop). Can anyone help me? My screen is blank too, that's why I'm using the start-up disk.
MacBook Pro (17-inch 2.4 GHz), Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Try holding down the trackpad button while starting up the PowerBook. Holding down mouse button during start up ejects the disc in the optical drive, so I'm guessing it would work the same with the button the the trackpad.

Disk System Prefs on a Mac Pro with SSD

I have recently installed an OWC 120 GB SSD on my Mac Pro in the 2nd Optical Bay and am using it as the boot disk. Should I leave the system prefs settings at the default, or should change them so that the disc does not go to sleep. I have had a few freezes when staying in one app for an extended period (Front Row watching movies, for example) and am guessing that the power down of the disks in the default settings is the culprit.
Unchecking the box seems to cure the problem, but imagine that the regular disks in bays 1-4 are now spinning. What is the answer.

Most likely it hung trying to spin down the SSD. You are better off disabling the spin down option anyway. Modern hard drives are designed to run all the time. The spin down option is just for energy saving or battery saving on a laptop.
The only time my drives stop spinning is if I turn off the computer. I haven't done that in since August and most likely won't until the end of April.

My system doesn not much the current uploaded software it shows on start up disk that i have mac os 1.8 where the system is asking for 1.77

my system doesn not much the current uploaded software it shows on start up disk that i have mac os 1.8 where the system is asking for 1.77. It doesn't allowe me to reinstal or access the drive>

I assume you don't have a backup on an external HD. You always should, because then you could easily fix your problem.
Boot in Safe Mode. See What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode? (Mac OS X)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107392 Takes a while to run, but it usually "fixes" problems.
Safe Boot takes longer than normal startup
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1884?viewlocale=en_US
 Cheers, Tom

My start up disk is full, and now i cant access my user areas, just a blank screen appears. Any ideas ?

My Start up disk is full, as it keeps telling me, and now i can't access my user areas. just a blank screen after logging in.
any Ideas. I've tried connecting to my Mac desk top, with a thunderbolt cable but nothing happened.

Try this.
1. Start up in Safe Mode.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11212
2. Empty Trash.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10677
3. Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
    Hold the option key down and click "Go" menu in the Finder menu bar.
    Select "Library" from the dropdown.
    Library > Mail > V2 > Mailboxes
    Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
    Empty Trash. Restart.
4. Repair Disk
    Steps 1 through 7
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5836

Cant start up on my Macbook pro. All I get is a grey spinning wheel. Tried all the Startup key combinations and nothing works. I reset the NVRAM and nothing. I booted with start up disk , ran disk repair and all is ok. Tried to re-install OS but when I ge

Can not start up on my Macbook pro. All I get is a grey spinning wheel. Tried all the Startup key combinations and nothing works. I reset the NVRAM and nothing. I booted with start up disk , ran disk repair and all is ok. Tried to re-install OS but when I get to designating drive its blank. When I go to startup disk there is a "?" mark. When I restart under startup disk search for a drive it still comes up with nothing. Before I got the grey spinning wheel I had a locked screen. Could not move curser or click on anything. Finally just shut down. Thank you in advance for any help!

Shouldn't still have a 'beachballing'... if the drive is being found and the system is trying to boot from it but is having problems, I would suggest looking over ds store's user tip - Step by step to fix your Mac.
It's likely either something corrupt in your system files or a failing hard drive. But follow ds's steps until you find the cause of the problem.
Good luck,
Clinton

System Prefs. problem. Application problems. Need advice.

The problems I am having:
1) Mail will not open. It hangs, shows beach ball and stays that way. All you see is the menu-bar. Force quit will not work. Only hard reset. Activity Monitor shows the app sucking up 87-95% of processor.
2) System preferences are not staying. Specifically, my mouse preferences for scrolling, keyboard illumination, Safari address bar buttons. This gets worse if I have to do a hard reset if Mail gets launched. It can clean the whole system prefs. sometimes. (update: My 2 finger scrolling goes off even when I haven't shut down, restarted, etc. I have to go into Sys. Prefs. and recheck it)
Let me start from the beginning of the problem:
I was on a website for a real estate company. It uses an active server application that never works right with a Mac. I almost always use Safari for it. What happens is that the sever app. usually hangs and won't go to the next page. I've tried all my browsers except Opera, so, I figure I would give that a go and see if it's better. BAD IDEA! Opera 8.6 hung. It wouldn't force quit. I had to do a hard reset like , 5 times, before it would restart. After that happened is when things got bad. My system prefs. were all gone. I had to reset all that. And then, Mail just went t1t5 up. It did what I said above. Hung. So I had to figure out how I was gonna get all my mail over into Thunderbird. I backed up the HD, and luckily, through Apple forums and Google, came up with the .emlx to .mbox converter. Tedious but worked. I deleted Opera off my HD as well as Mail. I am not even gonna bother with Mail again after having to deal with Apple's stupid file format and having no way to import a back-up. Thunderbird is way better and PGP actually works on it. Scr3w Opera as well.
At this point, my biggest problem I have is that my system prefs don't always seem to stick. I need to find out which files are associated with this and fix it. I am also paranoid that something got backdoored on my system and is causing havoc. Although I doubt this happened, I would like to see if someone can look at my processes and see if anything looks abnormal. All these problems have happened with my standard account with no Admin privileges ( unless I type in the Authorization on a per instance event). My Admin account is not having problems and my other standard account is OK. So I am pretty sure it's a local problem and not associated with root.
Anyone knowledgeable with some good ideas would be appreciated. I almost never have problems. I'm kinda p155ed this happened. Luckily I could still do a back-up and was not in a recording session or anything.
You can download my Processes List in PDF at this address:
http://badapplestudio.com/actmonscreen.pdf
Sorry for the long description,but there are a lot of factors that lead up to this.
Thanks,
~sKot
1.67 G4 Pbook , 500 G4 Pbook,Dual 2.7 G5 Tower Mac OS X (10.4.7) Also Dell P4 for Gigasampler

I'm having similar problems to those described by ~scot. The apps that won't launch are (so far)
Mail
Address Book
Safari
Safari gives the spinning beach ball, but Mail and Address Book merely show the black triangle indicating they are running (though they are not.)
Force quits are fights. I haven't had to restart but I have to use the force quit menu command or the "three fingered salute" four or 5 times.
Have deleted plist for Safari but hesitated to do so for Mail and Address Books because of fear of losing more than settings - perhaps too cautious but if anyone knows of another way I would prefer that.
Rebooted from original discs and ran Disk First Aid, ran TechTool Pro and Disk Warrior to no effect. Had run Onyx for regular maintenance the week before the problems began but have not done so since.
Suggestions gratefully welcome!
ceedee
Quicksilver G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Want to erase HD but don't have start-up disk

I'm in Disk Utility, have selected the disk on left but Volume Format dropdown and Erase buttons are greyed out so I cannot complete the erase function.
I've noted similar questions that direct the user to boot from the start-up disk but I cannot find mine :-(
Thanks in advance for your help.

Or...
Open System Preferences>Accounts, unlock the lock, click on the little plus icon, make a new admin account, log out & into the new account.
In the same pref pane highlight your old account, click the little minus icon, then use Disk Utility to Secure Erase Free Space.

System Pref Start up Disk blank

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