Why can't I boot from external HD?

I made a bootable clone with Carbon Copy Cloner onto an external FW HD. I went into System prefs and changed the startup disk, and when I restart, I get a flashing "?" and then the Mac boots into the internal HD...
I've cloned internal disks a million times (OK, like 5 times) and it has always worked INTERNALLY...
Could it possibly be the FW enclosure? IT was a cheapie...
Any other explanations? Tips? Tricks? Hints?
Thanks

Bohemian
The term "My Book" is not sufficiently definitive. The link I gave, and the link that jsd2 gives, do not make a +"blanket statement"+ about all "My Book" drives; they list those "My Book" models that are unable to boot a PPC Mac. Either your model is not in that list or WD have got it wrong.
It is merely that WD does not 'support' the process, how could they with so many different types of chips out here...
The reply is in the link I gave:
WD then attribute the cause of the problem to Apple, but without explaining how it is that the problem does not affect other makes of drive.
Anyone interested should see the comment at the foot of that link for an explanation by "baltwo" as to the reason why those certain models will not boot a PPPC Mac.
=-=-=-=-
jsd2 is the "jd2" mentioned in the link I gave. Thanks (again), jsd2.
Andreas

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Why can't I boot from the OS X DVD on my Intel iMac?

I'm trying to boot from the Mac OS X Tiger CPU Drop in DVD that came from the Apple Refurb Store with my Intel iMac.
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Kathryn

Hi knittsings!
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If you don't find them in there, call Apple, or log into your account on the Store page and find your order's link for customer follow-up/issues.
Message was edited by: myhighway

Why can't I boot from an external scsi drive?

In a previous post, I mentioned that my hard drive died. While trying to find ways to work around it, I dug out an old 4 GB SCSI drive I used to use with my old Mac, and hooked it up. When I booted from the OS 10.3 install disk, I was aboe to install the OS on the external drive, and choose it as the startup drive before rebooting. When I rebooted, however, the Mac could not see the SCSI drive as a startup drive. I tried it several times, changed the SCSI ID, erased the drive and reloaded the OS, repaired the directory with Disk Warrior, all with the same results.
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What model SCSI card do you have installed? Some cards are driver-based, like the Adaptec 2906. Its driver is loaded from the boot drive, as the extensions are displayed across the screen during the startup process. As such, drives connected to that type of card can't be designated as the boot device. A newer SCSI card that's firmware-based, like the Adaptec 2930, can be used for booting the computer. If you have a card that's firmware-based, then you may need to update the firmware with a newer (Mac OS X) compatible version.

Why can I not boot from a disc or drive?

In order to repair my HD, I have tried to start from a DVD (a bootable DiscWarrior 4 disc), but when restarting holding down the c-key, the disc drive is not recognized and the iMac starts up as normal and my log-in icon is shown. I have the latest Lion update.
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Hi, StenErik. If I were you, I would forget about FireWire Target Disk Mode. I'd start the Powerbook from a retail OS X 10.4 installer DVD, open Disk Utility from the Utilities menu, select the hard drive, reformat it as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)", check the box for installing OS 9 drivers, and then install Tiger. I can't explain why this should make the resulting installation any different from what you have installed now. But it seems to me there must be some detail you've failed to mention and we've failed to think of, and that detail, whatever it is, is much more significant than it seems: significant enough to prevent your Tibook from booting. Therefore, reverting to the most basic installation procedure possible, with as few external variables as possible, seems a useful thing to try. To minimize variables even further, disconnect all peripherals from the PB while reformatting and installing.
As Hardy has suggested, the size of your drive is not the issue. A 120GB drive should be fine.

Why can I not boot from my new hard drive?

After replacing my hard drive (40 Gb) with a larger (120 Gb) drive the computer will not boot. I can boot from the 10.4 system CD and have managed to install the system without problems, but after restarting the computer I only get to see a folder with a flashing question mark in it.
My computer is the first of the Titanium series (400 Mhz). The hard drive is a Seagate momentus 5400 rpm. Is there a compatibility issue here? Any input would be greatly appreciated!
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Hi, StenErik. If I were you, I would forget about FireWire Target Disk Mode. I'd start the Powerbook from a retail OS X 10.4 installer DVD, open Disk Utility from the Utilities menu, select the hard drive, reformat it as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)", check the box for installing OS 9 drivers, and then install Tiger. I can't explain why this should make the resulting installation any different from what you have installed now. But it seems to me there must be some detail you've failed to mention and we've failed to think of, and that detail, whatever it is, is much more significant than it seems: significant enough to prevent your Tibook from booting. Therefore, reverting to the most basic installation procedure possible, with as few external variables as possible, seems a useful thing to try. To minimize variables even further, disconnect all peripherals from the PB while reformatting and installing.
As Hardy has suggested, the size of your drive is not the issue. A 120GB drive should be fine.

Why can't I boot from a USB stick Ideapad Laptop?

Hi
I just bought new Lenovo IdeaPad Y510P and i've got a problem with installation an Windows 7 64x from a bootable stick.
The OS on laptop is FreeDOS and from this level a cannot install the windows os. The DOS system won't boot from usb stick and there's no BIOS so i can't set the boot order.
As i try to run setup.exe from d: drive(which is flash drive) i receive message that i cannot open this file in DOS system.
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Team please assist.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hello and welcome,
Are you booting in UEFI or legacy mode?
IIRC if you want to boot and install in UEFI mode you need to format your USB stick FAT32 (which you did) and enable CSM support in BIOS.
You should also be using SP1 media. If pre-SP1 some additional file manipulation is required to get the installer to boot in UEFI mode.
Installing Windows 7 in native EFI mode from USB
If you're booting and installing in legacy mode (which I suspect you are if running FreeDOS - just a guess on my part) you need to format that USB flash drive NTFS.
(You don't say, but I also assume you've copied the contents of a Win 7 install ISO or DVD to that flash drive...)
Z.
The large print: please read the Community Participation Rules before posting. Include as much information as possible: model, machine type, operating system, and a descriptive subject line. Do not include personal information: serial number, telephone number, email address, etc. The fine print: I do not work for, nor do I speak for Lenovo. Unsolicited private messages will be ignored. ... GeezBlog
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Why can't I boot from an SATA drive on P6N SLI-FI?

I have a P6N SLI-FI, running XP Pro 32bit. Two sata drives are configured as a striped array and I boot from an IDE drive. It is stable but not as fast as I'd like.
I'd like to install XP-Pro 64 bit on another sata drive. The CMOS setup utility sees the new drive, but it is not listed as a drive I can boot from.
Must I configure it as a single raided JBOD drive? If so, I am a little confused about what utilities to copy to a floppy drive for windows to use when installing the new OS. The manual says to copy the contents of :\\nVidia\System\C55+MCP51\RAID to a floppy. Neither the original CD nor the downloaded utilities have a RAID subdirectory to C55+MCP51. There are subdirectories called :\\nVidia\System\C55+MCP51\IDE with subdirectories Win2K and WinXP. Both have subdirectories called raidtools, sata_ide and sataraid. Do I want Win2k or WinXP for XP64? Which subsequent directory should I choose?
I have ver 2.4 of the BIOS.
Thanks
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Quote from: Maesus on 07-December-07, 08:51:33
Try :\\nVidia\System\C55+MCP51\IDE one
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WinXP wants txtsetup.oem: it is within sataraid. I'll try putting the contents of that directory in the root of the floppy.
Did that, now WinXP reports that the driver .(..x64...) is corrupt. I'll try a fresh copy as soon as I can download from the internet.
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I have to say, life is much more convenient with a KVM switch between computers running WinXP and Ubuntu. This is a little frustrating, but it is much better being able to switch between the recalcitrant install and a working computer with a couple of keystrokes.
Quote from: MarkJohnson on 07-December-07, 15:20:54
I remember having a similar issue when SATA RAID chipsets first came out that you had to treat the single drive as a RAID and even load in RAID drivers. Maybe since the chipset is already in RAID mode it wants to be setup as a single drive RAID 0.
I also had this issue with my Intel chipset recently as it wouldn't work as a single drive RAID and I had to turn RAID on and off in the BIOS whenever I wanted to dual boot off my third hard drive. But I'm sure the nvidia supports the single drive RAID, at least the AMD chipset did.
also, one last thing is to make sure the drive is enable in the BIOS. It may not have enabled the drive properly.
Good Luck
-=Mark=-
Mark: I think that's the exact problem I have. Once you convert any sata drives to raid, they all have to convert to be seen.

Why can't I boot from my hard drive internally but no problem externally?

Being unable to 100% solve my problem based off solved problems I have decided to log in. I will start from the very beginning. The computer is the Macbook late 2009 unibody. I upgraded the ram from 2GB to 8GB. everything was going smoothly until like 2 months ago. My 250Gb Hard drive was geting maxed out and in the midst of downloading I was getting warnings to free space so I was deleting and downloading the same time.....and then boom...the computer froze. Couldn't forse quit or anthing only choice was to manually power off. when I powered back on the screen was grey and would not start. I reserched solutions and ended up resetting the PR ram. after that the screen changed to white and nothing happened for a long time I was stuck...until......:
I bought an external hard drive incasing. and like magic everything I thought I lost was right there booting externally. Now I'd be fine with that if not for the reason I bought the computer in the first place, which is to be ultra portable and kep me awake as I work nights as a security in various changing post on a nightly basis. lugging the external case around has complicated a system that was working fine to the point of death.
So over time I have acumilated these things:
a 16 GB hp flash usb currently holding the bootable snow leapard DVD installer
a 500GB wd scorpio blue hard drive from an old PC pased laptop
a 250GB toshiba hard drive (came with laptop snow leopard installed)
a 250GB can't think of the brand cause I'm using it now hard drive (mountin lion installed)
neither Hardive holding apple operating systems will boot internally but boot externally. I have tried putting snow leopard, lion and mountin lion on the scorpio blue but everytime I get the same result, an install failed error. So you may have guessed, I was hoping the scorpio blue as my last hope, getting an operating system on it maybe I could boot internally but for what ever reason it won't intall fully any mac os X. So at this point I want to know if it's possible for me to just put a windows operating system on it ad if it may be able to boot that way.
EXTRA INFO:
when partioning the hard drive, if I have it connected internally, the computer recognizes it but I get cannot unmount errors. externally everything moves smoothly but it won't install the operating system. Currently I'm running mountin lion externally and I have the big hard drive inside the computer and it shows up as "untitled 1" it contents is two folders "Mac os X Install data" (red icon attached) and "private" It tells me I don't have permission to look inside the mac os folder. if I drag a fle from my computer to untitled 1 it says "The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -50)."
HELP! whatever it takes I just want to boot something without lugging this external case everywhere.

Hi Too_Talls,
I'm not quite sure I have totally understood you. Please correct me if I am wrong but this is how I've read your symptoms:
MacBook not booting
Plug in external hard drive, choose that as the startup volume. MacBook boots.
Remove internal hard drive and replace with hard drive that has OS installed. MacBook not booting.
Remove replaced hard drive, plug it in to usb port. MacBook starts up fine
Does the above correctly summarise the problem?
If it does, then the fault can only be one of two things.
The SATA connector is not fully seated into the hard drive.
The SATA connector ribbon cable is damaged and needs replacing.
The good news is that, obviously, everthing else in your MacBook is okay (logic board etc) else it would not start up when an external hard disk is plugged into the usb port.

Why can't I boot from my windows install disk using an external dvd drive?

My internal disk drive is broken on my computer, so I'm using an external one, but when I put my windows install disk in, it shows up when I'm using the computer, but it doesn't show up when I hold ALT on startup. Why is this?

Alt/Option Boot code is all in ROM. It shows an Icon for each potentially-bootable Volume.
Your Windows install DVD is not directly bootable, and so it does not show an Icon. (An OS 9 Installer CD would not show an Icon either.)
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Why can't I boot from disk to re-install Lion?

After I stupidly moved some .kext files to a folder in my desktop in the hop it would help solve an ongoing problem, I now cannot get into my computer as it gets stuck on a screen telling me to turn it off and back on again. I am now trying to re install the operating system and for some reason I can't boot my disc, even by holding 'C' at start up. However, I am able to do the internet recovery, but when it comes to entering my apple ID it comes up with a message saying you must use the apple ID used to purchase Lion. This is the only Apple ID I have ever had and I have double checked via my email addresses! I am very confused as it is very frustrating but I accept that it is due to my own stupidity, but if anyone has any idea on how to help it would be greatly appreciated!
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Did you purchase this computer used?
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Combo Drive reading Dual Layer / booting from external DVD USB

I am helping a friend with an iMac G5. He has the combo drive which is not able to read the dual layer Leopard DVD. I have looked to see if there is a firmware update for the drive however no luck. I am able to put an external usb DVD and it reads the disk however I was not able to boot from the disk using keyboard commands I tried AppleOption+ShiftDelete, C, and also tried Option but no luck.
I have been reading that booting from usb external drive is a no no on older G5 iMac's unless you are using fire wire. If any one can give me some help with getting the USB drive to boot, or figuring out why the combo drive spits out the DVD every time I would appreciate it. I am also willing to make a bootable usb leopard thumb drive, but I don't want to waste my time if it's not going to boot from USB.
Thanks,
jtadmin

Do you happen to have a more recent Mac that can read the Leopard installation DVD?
If so, you may be able to start up your Mac in FireWire Target Disk Mode,
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661
and let the iMac G5 use your Mac's optical drive to boot from the Leopard DVD.
Also, it is true that PowerPC Macs can generally only boot from external drives that are FireWire.

Satellite L20-100 can be booted from external USB hard drive?

I recently bought Toshiba Satellite L20-100 and I wonder if:
1. is there any possibility to boot this machine from external usb hard drive?
2. it is possible to attach another internal hard drive?
Supposing that the both answers above are 'no', how can I solve the following problem: I need hdd space, I need to boot 3 separate Wxp Operating Systems onto the same machine (Toshiba Satellite L20-100).

Booting from external USB HD - "No" would be the official, mcrsoft sponsored, answer. However, it is possible. Not easy but it can be done. I've seen it done with my own eyes and there are guides how to do this. Just look for it with search engine. But if you have enough disk space you better do what was suggested here - create 3 partitions and use boot manager.

IMac with 10.6.6 will not boot from external with 10.4.11

My MacBook Pro with 10.6.6 will boot from that same external with 10.4.11 but the iMac does not. Why not?
1. When the iMac is starting up with the Option key depressed, the bootable 10.4.11 appears normally and can be selected. But when I click on the circle below the bootable icon, the computer freezes.
2. When I have the iMac running and try to change the startup volume via the Preferences, the bootable icons are present but are not active.
Is there a setting on the iMac I need to reset? Or, is it not possible to boot from the 10.4.11 external?
Specs:
MacBook Pro Processor - 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo, Memory - 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
iMac Processor - 3.06 GHz Intel Core i3, Memory - 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

The answer is dependent upon what version of OS your machines came with (and the install disks are machine/build specific) - no Mac can boot from a system older than what was supplied with the machine. So, if your MBP originally came with 10.4.x and you upgraded it since, it can still be booted from the earlier version. If your iMac came with 10.6.3 for instance, it can only be booted with 10.6.3 or later.

Tiger won't boot from external firewire

Installed 10.4.3 DVD on clean external firewire (Extended/Journaled). Before I installed Tiger, I ran updates, and repaired permissions. Everything looked good to me.
I'm keeping Panther on main system drive for now - so from System Preferences>Startup Disk>the external tiger drive appears and I select it. Then I select restart and the promt confirms that the computer will restart with 10.4.3. Looks good so far.
After restart, I'm looking at the desktop, guess what? It's 10.3.9, not 10.4.3. How could that be?
Also, when I restart and hold down the Option key for Startup Manager options - the firewire drive does not appear as an option.
So Tiger appears in System Preferences>Startup Disc as an option, but the option doesn't actually work, and that drive does not appear at all in (Option key) startup manager.
I'm Indexing the firewire drive now (OMG is that slow or what!), but I'm not expecting this to make any difference. I'm stumped. What am I overlooking? Please advise.
Muchas Gracias

R MacCool,
"What if I manually drag and drop the 4 folders (from the Tiger DVD) onto a second internal SATA drive without partitioning the drive first? Will I be able to boot off an internal SATA drive like that? When I installed Tiger on the external firewire I see that 4 folders are there - I could drag them from that drive onto the second internal drive. Does that work?"
No, this does not work. MacOS X consists of more then 20,000 invisible files, most of them somehow connected and referencing each other.
MacOS X DOES boot from external firewire drives, both hard disks and DVD drives.
Why don't you just upgrade your current 10.3.9 to Tiger using this procedure: 10.4 Tiger Upgrade: Decision tree+Checklist?
"Why does Tiger seem to install correctly, then System Pref>Startup Disc recognizes it, but then after selecting 10.4.3 it restarts into 10.3.9?"
I am not a technician, but it could be that the firmware is the primary source for connectivity. After MacOS X has booted the internal firewire drivers might take over and "overrule" the firmware (this is why you can see it in the startup disk preference pane) but at boot-time it exclusively depends on the firmware. This theory might be completely wrong though.

Cannot boot from external SSD ...

Hello,
I have just made a fresh install of Mavericks on a brand new Samsung 840 EVO SSD (I initially erased the drive and formatted it to Mac OS Extended Journaled, then created a USB installation drive and performed the installation on the SSD …). It all went well, the computer restarted during this 30 min or so process … However, the problem is when I try to boot in the Samsung SSD at startup having the ALT key pressed, I can only see the 10.8.5 and its recovery partition … Any ideas as to why it doesn't show up the SSD which is connected via USB 3.0 to my laptop ?
Also, even if I go in Mountaion Lion at the Start-up disk option and select the Samsung SSD with 10.9 it still boots into ML … Has anyone encountered this before ?
Thank you.
*non-Retina Macbook Pro 15 inch, mid-2012

Hi Ralph,
thanks a lot for the helpful information! But the problem still persists, and I don't know what's wrong about the installation. I again checked the case and device are fully compatible with Windows 8 on USB 3 and the current boot camp drivers are installed - so everything should work perfectly fine as Windows 8 does natively support booting from external USB-3-devices.
I personally still assume it's rather a driver related problem as the external SSD doesn't even show up whilst booting into the boot menu with "Alt" pressed - I can only choose to boot from the external SSD within the "start volume" menu in OSX (which then doesn't work out when rebooting, unfortunately). I mean, if there was a chance to boot from the external SSD with the configuration I got right now, but OSX/the iMac just "doesn't know" it shall boot from the external partition and therefore rather chooses the internal boot camp partition, the SSD would at least show up in the boot menu when pressing "Alt" on start-up, or do I go completely wrong? I even tried to rename the internal bootcamp partition (which did not work out) or disable it in order to prevent OSX/the iMac to boot from the internal bootcamp partition, but it didn't help: After rebooting it again chose the internal boot camp partition to start from.
Might the deletion of the internal partition be worth a try? Meaning is there a realistic chance that the issue might be caused by that? I would give it a try although I really don't wanna loose the internal boot camp partition for no good reason (btw: would it be possible to clone an image back from the external SSD to the internal HDD then?). Or do you maybe have any other idea what driver could miss resp. could be wrong about the installation so the boot process from the external SSD fails...?
Again MANY MANY THANKS in advance for your further assistance, everybody!!

Why can't I boot from external HD?

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