Why won't my iMac 27" boot from external hard drive?

I have a new 27in Intel i5 dual core 3.6GHz iMac. It works wonderfully.
My question is this. I have a Pleides Ice Cube external hard drive with a USB 2.0/Firewire enclosure with a 500GB hard drive. I used diskutility to format the hard drive as a GUID Partition Table. I then used SuperDuper to clone the iMac OS 10.6.7 and Apps over to it.
I can select the external drive in System Preferences/Startup Disk to boot from, but when booting the iMac gets as far as the white screen then just stops loading.
I have tried both the USB connection and the Firewire connection (with a Firewire 800 to 400 cable).
I have run Disk Utility and repaired the disk and the preferences.
I have used Disk Warrior to rebuild the directory as well, but the iMac will not boot from the drive.
It does boot from the original DVD's and its own hard drive.
My old 24" iMac had no trouble booting from this hard drive or any of the others I have collected over the years, so I am reluctant to think it is the external drive. It is something to do with this particular processor Snow Leopard and external drives.

It sounds like something in the SuperDuper clone might not have copied well. To get the full answer on that I would check with Apple or SuperDuper to see if they support each other.
As a quick test, if you restart and immediately press and hold "option" on your keyboard do you see your external HD as an option to boot from? If so, click it and see if the boot runs any differently, but if you don't see it at all that could show that the problem is more deep rooted.
Personally, if looking in to either of those didn't give me any other info to go on, I would reformat and start the clone again. BTW, do you know for sure GUID Partition is the format you'd want to do this on? Generally macs use "Mac OS Extended" and some external HDs can use "FAT32" (if you want them to work well with Windows)
Hope that gives a little direction
Alex

Similar Messages

  • Booting from external hard drive on intel-based MacBook Pro

    Good day everyone. I know similar questions were raised in this community, but I still have some questions.
    I have MacBook Pro(late 2011) with OS X 10.7.5 and external hard drive with Ubuntu 13.04, from wich i can boot succefully on my PC. But MacBook Pro will not boot from my external drive, no matter which key/combination i use during restart.
    After googling I found some answers to my initial question, how to boot from external hard drive
    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1852633?start=0&tstart=0
    http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/faq/macbook-pro-boot-from-exte rnal-firewire-or-usb-drive.html
    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1948
    As I understand I need to format my external hard drive into GUID partition type and this will be enough to be able to boot from it on my mac?
    With this new partition type, will I be able to install ubuntu again on my external drive?
    Does GUID partition type supports NTFS, ext4 and FAT32, linux swap?(I use ntfs for big files, ext4 as partition for ubuntu and fat32, because i use windows, linux and osx)
    Will I be able to boot from my pc from my external drive with this new partition type?
    What are downsides, if any, to GPT?
    here is info on my e-drive

    LowLuster wrote:
    The only OS that will boot from an external drive is Mac OS X or maybe Linux. For OS X to be installed on any drive it need to be formatted Mac OS Extended and have GUID partition table.
    As for Linux I'm not that familiar with it but again for a Mac to boot it need an EFI partition on the drive and I don't think that is possible with NTFS or FAT32 let alone the native Linux format.
    Went to wiki to learn more on efi but found artice on uefi.
    Operating system loaders are a class of the UEFI applications. As such, they are stored as files on a file system that can be accessed by the firmware, called EFI System partition (ESP). Supported file systems include FAT32, FAT16 and FAT12, and supported partition table scheme is GPT only. UEFI does not rely on a boot sector, although ESP provides space for it as part of the backwards compatibility.[26]
    Here is FAQ on official uefi website.
    Can UEFI Secure Boot be adopted and implemented by a variety of operating systems?
    UEFI specifications are platform-independent, supporting multiple platforms and architectures. In addition, UEFI specifications are designed to promote cross-functionality, as well as to support broad adoption across multiple operating systems, including Windows as well as Linux-based operating systems. The specifications are robust and can potentially complement—or even advance—other distributions, such as Linux-based distributions.
    And here is wiki article on GPT expaining OS support.
    It is obvious both uefi and GPT are ok with Linux and file systems such as FAT32, ext4 and NTFS.
    I guess there is no much difference(or is that the same thing?) between uefi and efi used in Macs.
    In your answer to Stark Industries you said that mac can boot linux from external hard drive, well this is not the info i got of official website and it is still my question, because your answer is very inconclusive and your info is partially incorrect

  • G5 won't boot from external hard drive

    I have installed Leopard on my external hard drive, but have not gone through the 'setup'. I want to boot my G5 from the hd now, but when I restart holding down the option key, the internal hard drive is the only option that appears. When I do boot from the internal hd, the external hd is recognised perfectly and I can see all the files and everything - I just can't seem to boot from it. The newer iMac I used to install Leopard on the external hd will boot from it, but the G5 refuses to recognise it in the boot options.
    Any help much appreciated.

    No. If you boot an installer disc on an Intel Mac it will only install an Intel version of OS X. You would need to boot the installer disc on the G5 then install OS X onto your external drive. However, if you do that you will not be able to boot the Intel Mac with the external drive. The only solution to using one external drive on both computers is to partition the drive. Install OS X on one partition using the G5, and install OS X on the other partition using the Intel Mac.

  • Boot from external hard drive

    I have just loaded Leopard 10.5 wonderful but not overwhelming. It deleted OS 9 and now ALL my cool classic games won't run. I have a eMac G4...Can I add an external hard drive..load OS9 on it and boot and run my games???

    Bill W wrote:
    If your eMac was capable of booting directly into OS9 before,
    I suspect that any eMac which could boot OS 9 would have to be 800 or 700 MHz units, and therefore will have problems installing Leopard. (Min speed: 867 MHz, and the installer checks.)
    then yes you can install it on an external drive (firewire), assuming the OS9 installer sees the external drive. I think you might also be able to reload OS9 onto your internal drive without partitioning. If that doesn't work, another option is to partition the internal drive and install 9 on a separate partition.
    The OS 9 System Folder may still be around. (I don't know, I haven't installed Leopard yet.) However, Classic is dead and gone on Leopard.
    His best bet would be to get an external drive, install a pre Leopard version of OS X (and Classic) on it, and reboot from that drive when he wants to run Classic. I have already set up an external drive to do just that in the event that I need to run Classic on my iMac. My eMac will simply stay at Tiger.

  • Hard drive dead/Boot from external hard drive?

    My hard drive failed and I need a new one. For the time being, I'd prefer not to open up my iMac and replace the internal hard drive. I have an external USB hard drive and I cannot install OSX onto this drive (strangely, it takes the first disc but not the second).
    Is it possible to boot and run an iMac G5 from an external hard drive? If so, what is required for hardware and what steps need to be taken?
    If not, what course of action would you recommend?

    It is very easy to boot an iMac from an external drive, but the drive should be a Firewire drive. Get one, then get SuperDuper!, which will enable you to clone your data and system to it. You can then choose the external firewire as your boot drive and operate without any problems.
    Apparently, there are ways to boot from a USB drive, but they are complicated and a firewire drive is very straightforward and fast.
    Let us know how you make out,

  • Did 10.4.6 break booting from external hard Drives

    Hi
    This afternoon, I tried to clone my internal Hard Disk to an external drive. I do the regularly using Disk Utility, and I have not had and problems doing this until today. In fact, when I acquired my Power Mac three weeks ago I cloned my iMac's drive to the same external drive, and then cloned my Power Mac's drive from the external. I did have one hiccup during that last step - I had cloned to the PM's drive while running the PM off the external drive, and the clone was flawed, so I booted using my Tiger DVD and re-cloned the drive using Disk Utility off the DVD. All went well, and my Power Mac's been running flawlessly since.
    That was before the 10.4.6 update. Usually, when I have a good known bootable external hard drive, I will only back up my home folder onto the drive. If I've gone through an OS update, or have some major application changes, I will opt to re-clone my internal drive. I did this today.
    I tried restarting from the external drive. Yes, I did remember that 10.4.6 did offer that lovely second chime before truly starting up after upgrading, so I waited to see if spotlight was indexing the external drive. I waited 25 minutes. That only thing I saw was the grey apple and - maybe this is a clue - a couple seconds after showing up, that moved an half an inch down screen.
    Has anybody been able to clone 10.4.6 to an external hard drive and successfully boot off it? Is my problem of today related to my problem of a couple weeks ago, and I need to run Disk Utility of the Tiger DVD to get a good clone?
    My internal drive = 128 gigabytes, external = 118 gigabytes, about 29 gigabytes being transferred.
    Thanks in advance.

    Wish I figured out I was in the mail and address book forum before I posted. Oh Well.
    It seems that there might be some sort of weird thing going on between my computer and Disk Utility when booted in the full OS. Earlier, I tried cloning my internal Hard disk using Carbon Copy Cloner, and it worked. My Power Mac boots off the external disk fine and everything runs flawlessly.

  • Can't boot from external hard drive with Snow Leopard

    I bought a new Macbook Air with Lion. I have my old Snow Leopard installation cloned onto an external hard drive, and I want to boot from it. I can choose my external hard drive during boot, it shows the Apple logo, but after that the screen goes black and nothing happens. Is there a way to fix this?

    Can't be done.  Snow Leopard does not contain necessary drivers and perhaps other items required for OS X on the 2011 MBA.  In fact, the version of Lion on the App store won't install on the 2011 MBA.
    This is totally normal in Apple's world.  A new version of MAC hardware that comes with a new version of OS X installed usually will not operate correctly with previous versions of OS X.

  • Booting from external hard drive problem

    Hi,
    I recently bought a Firewire external hard drive which I had intended to install Mac OS X from, as my internal hard drive had failed and I was not in a position to get in fixed.
    I plugged it in and booted up from the Mac OS X install DVD and went to install Mac OS X on it. However, it tells me that I cannot install Mac OS X on it as Mac OS X cannot use it as a start up disc.
    Can anyone help me?
    Thanks,
    Joel
    I am using an Intel Macbook CD 1.83, and the hard drive is: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Premium-External-Firewire/dp/B000F6SGB4/ ref=sr17/203-8192978-6980723?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1174486803&sr=1-7

    Do the following:
    Extended Hard Drive Preparation
    1. Boot from the OS X Installer Disc One that came with your computer. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
    2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
    3. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Option button and select the GUID partition scheme. Click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
    4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
    5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
    6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.
    After formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed with the OS X installation. When you reach the screen where you select a destination drive select the external drive.
    Why reward points?(Quoted from Discussions Terms of Use.)
    The reward system helps to increase community participation. When a community member gives you (or another member) a reward for providing helpful advice or a solution to their question, your accumulated points will increase your status level within the community.
    Members may reward you with 5 points if they deem that your reply is helpful and 10 points if you post a solution to their issue. Likewise, when you mark a reply as Helpful or Solved in your own created topic, you will be awarding the respondent with the same point values.

  • Booting from external hard drive

    Hello.
    How do I install Mac OS X on an external hard drive, or have Mac OS X running on an external hard drive and boot from it? I tried to install to it and it says Mac OS X cannot be booted from this drive.
    What should I do?

    Remy,
    SuperDuper is another option, but...Note also that USB drives do not allow booting Power PC based Macintoshes under any version of Mac OS X: this is not a SuperDuper! limitation, but one of the OS. If you would like to boot from a backup stored on an external drive, and have a Power PC based Mac, please purchase a Mac compatible FireWire drive.;~)

  • [SOLVED]Booting from external hard drive

    Hi,
    My SATA controller seems to be dead, I put my hard drive in an external USB bay. I would like to boot from it so that I still have exactly the same system running, but I'm facing a few issues with grub :
    title Arch Linux
    root (hd0,1)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 resume=/dev/sda4 root=/dev/sda2 ro quiet
    initrd /boot/kernel26.img
    I was surprised to see grub show up right after power on, and starting boot sequence. It then stopped complaining that /dev/sda2 was not found, and I was left in a minimal shell environment.
    I tried replacing sda by sdb, since I was this was the new designator for my partitions since they are now mounted in USB, but with no luck.
    Does anyone knows what do I need to change in the menu.lst, or elsewhere ?
    Thanks in advance !
    Last edited by willy9 (2010-01-20 16:17:38)

    1. you need to rebuild your initramfs with adding the usb hook after 'autodetect'. You might need to chroot into your installation from ubuntu (for example) and then perform the rebuild.
    2. add rootdelay as gusar suggested.
    3. Hint: Due to you're booting from a external hard drive, I strongly recommend you to set labels to your drives. In this way, you can tell to /etc/fstab which are the proper partitions of your system avoiding the not-so-friendly-for-the-reader uuid string. This will help you to keep away udev messing with your drive's nodes.
    in my case, I have a /etc/fstab which looks like this
    LABEL="IOMEGA" / ext3 noatime,nodiratime 0 1
    for extX filesystems, you can set its label with tune2fs -L label. For other filesystems, RTFM.
    Last edited by kjon (2010-01-17 00:19:03)

  • Password problem booting from external hard drive

    I have an eMac and just installed Leopard. BUT now I can't use Photoshop and Quark from within Classic because it's not available with Leopard. I've installed my old 10.3 OS on my external hard drive, and when I boot up from that (using the Option key), after I choose the hard drive as the startup disc, I am asked for my admin password. When I type that in, the dialog box jiggles from side to side for a moment and blanks out the password, asking for it again.
    How can I boot up 10.3 from the external hard drive? Help -- I need to use the Classic environment for a job! Thanks for any help --

    Hi, Jeff --
    Well, I think my problem is finally solved, thanks (partly) to your help. Just to help other folks who have this problem, I'm going to state briefly how I fixed it:
    -- I did an Erase and Install on the Seagate AFTER spending all day burning 30 CDs with the archived files I'd taken off the Mac but didn't want to lose.
    -- After that, I could indeed boot up the Mac from the Seagate in 10.3 and all seemed fine.
    -- But I made the mistake of doing a full backup to the Seagate from the Mac (which took two hours).
    -- After that, I couldn't boot up the Seagate at all -- I spent two 20-minute periods waiting for it to get off the gray screen with the Apple log, to no avail. A friend of mine suggested that the backup program might be the problem.
    -- After some trepidation but knowing that I already had everything I needed on those 30 CDs, I decided to experiment and partition the Seagate (via Disc Utility) into one partition with only the 10.3 install on it and the other with whatever files I needed, including the applications I needed to open in 10.3.
    -- That worked!! I can now boot up the Seagate "10.3 drive" and access all the files and applications I need from the Seagate "Backup Drive."
    I hope this information helps someone else in the same predicament.
    Thanks for all your help and patience; your suggestion to do an Erase and Install was the right move to get me started.
    Eileen

  • OS booting from External Hard drive

    So I have searched high and low and I cannot figure out if the Toshiba Satillite's are able to boot an OS off an external Hard drive. I have found out that there are laptops that can do that but their BIOS must beable to do it. If Toshiba notebooks can do this which ones can?

    Hi
    some models now are able to boot from USB stick.
    I don't know if it is possible to make theese models also boot from an USB HDD.
    The models are right now: Tecra A6, A7, M4, M5, S3
    Other models might also support this.
    Then there is the possibility to add a 2nd HDD to certain Toshiba-models and boot from that drive. The models that support this are many.
    Tecra 9000, 9100, M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, SatPro 6000, 6100, M10.
    BR
    Tom

  • ITunes 11 won't import .mov video files from external hard drive but will from internal.

    Hi Everyone
    I'm having a problem with iTunes 11.0.1. I can't import .mov video files stored on an external hard drive. I can however import .m4v files from the same external drive. Using either the add to library option or dragging files from the finder.
    I can add .mov files from the internal though. Strange I know.
    The reason behind this posting is that I'm using iFlicks to convert my TV and movies from my external drive for Apple TV and add all relevent meta data, keeping the files on the external drive and having iTunes link to them.
    I would like to be able to simply create a general iTune compatiable file using iFlicks which only takes a minute or two per file to convert. I'm currently converting them to .m4v just for the sack of being able to import them into iTunes from an external drive takes 45 minutes per file.
    Has anybody else had this problem? Any ideas on a fix to allow me to import .mov files from an external drive into iTunes without copying it to the iTune library file.
    Many Thanks
    Dave

    This might be worth a shot - basically seeing if Vista permissions could be the culprit.
    Give yourself FULL control and ownership of the exHD, let's call it M:
    How to Take Ownership and Grant Permissions in Windows Vista
    Take control of the top level folder and ALL subfolders.
    Try creating a new blank ITL file on M: by pressing *and holding* the shift key while itunes starts. See if you can add everything again.

  • Booting from External Hard Drive (Time Machine)

    I just learned that my hard drive is failing. I haven't backed up my data for a while, so I bought a new 1 Terabyte Seagate Drive for Mac. It's one of the new models that don't need a power cord; you just connect it to your computer.
    Anyway, a guy at the Genius Bar told me that I can use Time Machine to create a virtual clone on an external drive. I later realized that I might be able to boot up with my external drive and work with my cloned hard drive if my internal hard drive. I've done that with Carbon Copy Cloner before.
    Anyway, that's my main question - can one boot up a MacBook Pro on a virtual clone created by Time Machine instead of using the internal hard drive? If so, how do you access it? I think I recall having to hold down a key (Option?) while the computer is booting up, which forces it to give you a choice of hard drives.
    One more question: I've backed up some files on my new external drive - about 200 GB in several folders. My internal hard drive is 750 GB, of which about 180 GB is free. In other words, I need about 775 GB space on my external hard drive (570 GB for a virtual clone of my internal drive and 200 GB for the files I've already copied to it. Since it has 1 TB of space, that should be a breeze.
    But can I use an external hard drive when it already contains files? In other words, will enabling Time Machine wipe out the files I've already copied to my external drive? Ordinarily, it wouldn't be a problem; I'd simply be replacing some folders with ALL the contents of my internal hard drive, including those same folders. However, I'm a little conerned because my hard drive is failing. I'm just worried that Time Machine might erase the files on my external drive, then poop out before it's finished creating a virtual clone.
    So those are my main questions - can I enable Time Machine without wiping out files already copied to an external hard drive, and, once I've copied my entire internal hard drive to the external drive, can I boot up with the external drive and work on it? Thanks.

    Hmmmm...I don't know what you mean by "restored," but it sounds like I'm out of luck (my OS X version is 10.7.5). It sounds like I need to purchase another external hard drive and use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable clone on it, right? And could someone remind me how you access multiple hard drives when booting a computer? I remember you have to hold down a particular key(s) while it's booting.
    Thanks.

  • Can't boot from external hard drive

    I have a 250 GB OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Firewire drive that I use for backups for my MacBook Pro (running 10.4.8) and iBook G4 (running 10.3.9). The drive is partitioned into four parts, two of which I use for bootable clones of the MBP and iBook. I've been able to boot from the MBP clone, but whenever I try to boot from the iBook clone, after a few seconds of the gray screen with the Apple logo on it and the spinning circle, the Apple logo turns into a gray circle with a diagonal line through it, and the spinning thing keeps spinning, and it never boots up. (For lack of a better description, the circle with the line through it is a gray version of the symbol you see, for instance, in the Ghostbusters logo.)
    Here's a few things that aren't (or don't seem to be) the problem:
    - I'm not trying to boot from the wrong machine--i.e., I'm not trying to boot the iBook clone from the MBP
    - Since I've tried creating the clone with both EMC Retrospect Express and SuperDuper and get the same result with both, it doesn't seem to be the backup software
    - I've tried completely erasing the partition (including erasing the free space) from both the MBP and the iBook before creating the clone
    - Just for good voodoo, I've also repaired permissions, reset the NVRAM, and run a disk repair on both the internal iBook disk and the clone
    - The iBook definitely recognizes it as a bootable drive, since it shows up when I hold down the option key during boot, and also in the Startup Disk section of System Preferences
    I'm a little stymied at this point. The only other things I can think of would be that (a) I need to completely reformat and repartition the drive (which I don't really want to do, since I also have other backups and data on there), or (b) for some reason the fact that I initially created the partitions on the MBP is preventing the iBook from using those partitions (i.e., I can only create Intel-only or PPC-only partitions, which I hope isn't the problem, since that would mean I'd need a whole separate drive just to back up the iBook).
    Anyone have any idea what's going on?

    The MBP and iBook require different partition schemes to be bootable. You won't be able to boot both computers from the same drive.
    I can't install Mac OS X on a hard drive
    If the installer won't let you install Mac OS X on a hard drive and gives as the reason "Mac OS X cannot start up from this volume," the drive may not have the partition scheme that the Installer requires. The needed partition scheme depends on the type of processor in your Mac. The installer installs Mac OS X for Intel-based Macintosh computers only on drives with the GUID partition scheme. It installs Mac OS X for PowerPC-based Macintosh computers only on drives with the Apple partition scheme.
    To check the external drive's partition scheme, open Disk Utility, select the drive in the list, choose File > Get Info, and look for the "Partition Type." If you can't see the "Partition Type," you may have selected the volume instead of the disk. (Drives are flush left, with their volumes indented to the right below them.)
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh2315.html
    John

Maybe you are looking for