Won't boot from USB hard drive?

Hi, all. My daughter has a brand-new Aluminum Macbook a week old, with all Apple software updates applied and everything running smoothly. She has a Seagate FreeAgent Go external USB 2.0 hard drive divided into two HFS+ Journaled partitions using the GUID partition scheme: a large partition on which to back up her internal drive, and a small partition for use as an emergency boot "disk." We've used the latest version of SuperDuper to make a bootable clone of her internal drive on the large backup partition, and I've just begun installing Leopard from her MacBook installer DVD onto the emergency boot partition as I write this (using my own computer). After 25 minutes, the installer DVD is still being "checked for consistency"; I hope things will finally begin to move along faster when the installation actually starts.
We'll see what happens when that installation is done, but before I began it, I checked to make sure the SuperDuper clone on the backup partition would boot the MacBook. To my dismay, it did not, although I held down the Option key during startup, selected the backup partition in Startup Manager, and clicked the arrow to proceed with booting from that partition. The MacBook booted from its internal drive anyway.
You'll note that I'm not a Leopard or Intel Mac user myself, so I'm not familiar with any issues that may be more familiar to regular users of that OS or of Intel Macs. Can anyone tell me whether SuperDuper has problems creating bootable USB clones that work in Leopard or on those machines? Is there something else I should be doing to boot from the clone we made, instead of using the Startup Manager? Any other thoughts on why this hasn't worked?

I have noticed that the start-up disk appears just about anywhere except in the upper right-hand corner. I too, was convinced once that I was booted from the wrong drive. However, I have implicit faith in SD and since it has never let me down, I searched and found the boot drive hiding amongst some files littering my desktop.

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IMac 24 Aluminum won't boot from USB Hard drive

I just got an iMac 24 from the Apple Refurb store. It comes with Snow Leopard, but I need to install a Leopard partition for my wife to ensure 100% compatibility with Photoshop CS3, among other things. I created a partition just for Leopard, so that's good to go.
I can choose the boot partition on my Leopard install drive when starting by holding the "alt" key, that's no problem. However, after I choose that USB drive, it reboots... over and over and over and over. To be sure it isn't the drive, I tested it with my Macbook Pro, and it booted up just fine. I tried another USB drive, same exact problem.
I don't have a Firewire external that I can repartition for the purpose of installing Leopard. I only have it on hard drive. Then I tried making a DMG with disk utility and burning it to a DVD+R DL, but it tells me the disc isn't large enough, even though it's 8.5GB and the image is 7.6GB.
Pulling my hair out here guys! Is this refurb a lemon?

The Leopard install DVD I used to make the image is not available, it got stolen along with laptop bag it was in last Spring.
Is it this "image" (clone) of the installation disc that you are trying to boot from a USB drive, or a full installation of Leopard? If it's a clone of the installation disc on a USB drive, there are a few considerations.
First, what type was the original Leopard disc (the one you lost)? Was it a retail disc (the type sold separately in a box) or one that came with another Mac model, such as a MacBook Pro. If it's the disc from a MacBook Pro, it will not work because your iMac is a different model. Those included disc usually only work with the model it came with.
If it's a retail disc, the other consideration is the version on the disc. If you look at that everymac.com profile page, it says that the (earlier) pre-installed version of Mac OS X is 10.5.6 (9G2030). If that retail Leopard disc was earlier than 10.5.6 (such as the original 10.5.0 disc), then it will not boot that iMac because, as I said in the first reply - +Macs can generally boot the version of Mac OS it came with, or LATER (up to hardware limits), but NOT earlier.+
If that USB drive you are trying to boot the iMac from has a full installation of Leopard, please post back.

My PB G4 won't boot from any hard drive..stucked in apple icon..

At first, it didn't boot from the internal hard drive...
I could see the apple icon with grey background, but the little runing icon under apple icon didn't appear. There is no sound from the hard drive either...
I tried removing and replacing the RAM, didn't work either...
I have the powerbook CD with apple hardware test, I ran it. It went though a detail test and showed no errors or problems....
And then I tried to start up from the powerbook CD, it works and I was able to go to disk utility. However, I cannot complete verifying disk permission because of a lot of problem, sometimes it said "communication error with disk manager" and sometimes it got frozen and sometimes it just simply stop moving (not frozen, but just not moving, the disk is quite also too).
then I tried to boot from my USB external hard drive, I had my backup in it. However, it is the same as booting from internal drive, no running icon below the apple icon. Also, the external hard drive did not make any sound.
I have never experienced this problem... please help...

Have you added any hardware or new software recently?
Have you tried a safe boot? Hold the shift key while you boot - this does some disk maintenance and doesn't load login items. If this works, try booting normally.
If you can't run Disk Utility verify permissions from the OS X CD did you also try to verify or repair the disk? If this won't work due to errors, you may want to consider a program like Disk Warrior to attempt to repair the hard drive. You can find it at http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

MacBook won't boot from new hard drive.

I'm trying to upgrade my hard drive, but my macbook will not boot to the new hard drive. I have erased and cloned the hard drive about three times now, using both Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper. It won't boot while it is in the macbook and it won't boot from an external hard drive case. All I get to is the screen with the mac logo and the spinning wheel. I have made sure the drive is GUID formatted, but it still doesn't work. When I put the new drive in an external case and plug it into the USB port of my macbook I can see and access everything on the drive. Can somebody please tell what I am doing wrong?
By the way the new hard drive is a 500gb western digital Scorpio blue drive.

I got a new hard drive recently 500gb seagate. I followed the directions on this page http://www.ehow.com/how2063795format-hard-drive-mac-os.html , Mine was a little more complicated since i had 2 partitions windows and mac on mine. Initially the process took a day and it started getting to the same thing as yours where it would get to the mac logo and not find the hard drive. I reformatted several times before i got to the point where i could boot up.Eventually I just figured out all the info was there the drive was formatted i could boot into windows 7 but not mac. So i put old hard drive back in the computer booted up with that. Attached new hard drive via usb in external case i was trying to put in the mac. I was able not to boot up but it would show the drives that have been formatted into the new drive and i simply copied my existing Disk by dragging it onto the new hard drive. Than turn off your mac keep your hard drive plugged in. Press and hold the option key in start up and you should see the 2 seperate hard drives and be able to boot into the new one. Was a long process for me took several complete deletes of the new hard drive and reformatting before it would work. once you get to the mac logo and spinning wheel its just saying mac cant find your boot up disk though. Sorry its confusing a bit any questions email me.

Panther is installed but won't boot from iBook hard drive

Hello,
I made a similar post in the iBooks colors section of Discussions on this topic not quite knowing whether this was a hardware or software issue. I finally got Panther to install after using Disk Doctor to check for and fix errors on 9.2.2 (I would never use with OSX) and also rebuilt the directory while booted from an OS 9 CD and running Disk Warrior from a floppy and taking out the airport card. The Panther CD told me to restart the computer after installation. During the OSX start up from the hard drive I saw a gray screen and the dark gray Apple logo with the spinning gear then the computer crashed and a message appeared that I needed to restart the computer. After restart, the same sequence of events happened again. I have tried to restart from the OSX using the full retail CD used for intallation and the computer also crashes. I cannot start up from the Disk Warrior CD either. I have also tried make a Safe Mode start up and the iBook again crashed with the restart message appearing again. When I restart in OS 9 everything works perfectly, OS, airport and applications. I did have Jaguar installed on this iBook until five months ago, but incounterred issues with it and decided that more RAM would solve my problem. I then decided to initialize the hard drive and reinstall OSX after purchasing 256 RAM. The 256 stick of RAM was bought from ifixit.com and a guy there told me he thought that the logic board needed to be replaced. I explained to him that the computer works perfectly fine in the OS 9 mode, but he said that 0SX is more demanding and 9 can get by on less than perfect logic board. I also reinstalled the 128 MB RAM that was in the computer when Jaguar was running on it, but that didn't help either. I have scoured the iBook and Panther OSX sections of Discussions for any others having a similar problem, but not such luck.
I would appreciate any information or suggestion that you might have as to what may be causing this issue on my iBook.
Thank you.
Greg
iBook Mac OS X (10.3.5) 300 mhz 320 MB RAM

Greg:
You have probably already tried this, but the first thing I would do is reset the PRAM.
1. Shut down the computer.
2. Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
3. Turn on the computer.
4. Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
5. Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
6. Release the keys.
Also, check out this Apple article Your Mac won't start up in OS X.
Good luck.
cornelius
PismoG4 550, 100GB 5400 Toshiba internal, 1 GB RAM; Pismo 500 OS X (10.4.5) Mac OS X (10.4.5) Beige G3 OS 8.6

My mac won't boot from the hard drive

Hi Everyone
Yesterday, I tried to dual boot my mac using the Bootcamp Assistant. The hard drive partitioned fine & then started the Windows setup. About half way through it found a corrupt file & cancelled the install. It went back to OSX absolutely fine & was working perfectly. I deleted the partition that had been created & then noticed that the amount of free space on my hard drive was missing the 20GB that I had partitioned off for Windows. I used OnyX to try & find the missing 20GB; it finished & then I tried to open Safari & received an error message. I tried again & received the same message so tried to restart the mac & ever since it hasn't wanted to boot using the hard drive.
It will boot from the CD & I can use the Disc Utility to see the hard drive (which makes me think that the mac is seeing it) & can verify & repair both the disc itself & the Disc Permissions but if I click Startup Disc I only get 2 options: The DVD itself & Network Drive. I also can't re-install OSX onto the Hard Drive as it comes up with an exclamation mark & wont let me go any further in the process.
I'm hoping that someone will have an answer other than erasing my hard drive & starting again (which isn't that big a problem as I backed up all the important bits before starting any of this!)

Why did you wipe the drive?
Were you having problems?
If you were those problem may be related to a failing hard drive and that is why the TM backup could be restored.
In you topic header you say the system won't boot from the SL DVD, But it di for you to wipe the drive. Then it should again boot from the SL DVD.
Insert the DVD and reboot, hold down the Option key and select the Optical drive, SL DVD, as the Boot source.

Lion won't run from usb hard drive

I downloaded Lion yesterday. Took 7 hours, from 5:30pm to 12:30am. I bought a new 500GB USB hard drive to load it on. I had previously upgraded the SL OSX per instructions. The Lion install went fine. It told me to reformat the drive, which I did (to get rid of MS-DOS formatting). The Lion installer recognized the drive and went through a 20 minute install.
Upon restart, it defaulted to SL on my internal drive. I went to Preferences/Startup Disk and clicked on the "Mac OSX 10.7 on 500G HD" and clicked Restart. Again, it defaulted to my internal SL drive.
I restarted the computer and held down the Option key to pick a boot drive. When the window appeared, the external drive was not in the list, only the internal SL drive and the Windows partition for Parallels.
Repeating the above gets the same results.
I understand that the Lion installer is now gone and I can't install it again.
What do I do now?

The new hard drive is a Hitachi Lifestudio and it has one of those annoying "disks" that pop up on the screen wanting you to install some "Lifestudio" app. Erasing the disk and reformatting does not stop that message, so it must be in hardware.
It is. Return it for a refund and get the below.
I ALWAYS build my own drive (takes 5 mins). More storage and less money.
Use FireWire not USB.
USB is packet oriented and data transfer is managed by the CPU, Firewire is a streaming protocol and data transfer is managed by the CPU only to initiate transfer, after that, Firewire handles the rest dropping CPU load to nearly 0%.
Put the drive below, in the enclosure at the bottom. Note how the enclosure has a cooling fan, and that the drive is mounted on vibration mounts. I know of no other hard drive enclosure with those features.
A hard drive has three enemies 1) Heat, 2) Vibration, 3) A Windows 7 installation.
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Intellipower-Desktop-WD20EADS/dp/B001RB1TI S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1258862242&sr=8-1
http://www.cooldrives.com/ox93saiihadr.html

Hard drive crash in G4 - won't boot from 2nd hard drive

Hi,
My G4 has 3 internal hard drives: 2 on the ATA bus and one on a SCSI card. The main drive crashed yesterday. At least I assume it crashed: the first error was not being able to store a CD imported into iTunes, followed by a system crash and a request to restart. On restart it failed to boot, showing a floppy icon with a ? and repeatedly beeps twice. In an attempt to fix this I booted from my OS X software install CD and installed OS X on other ATA hard drive, however it refuses to boot from the second drive and shows a broken folder icon and is still doing the double beep thing. All suggestions gratefully received!
Thanks,
Andy

I do indeed. Here's what happened when I ran the extended test:
No Airport present. Logic board, mass storage and RAM all passed. I couldn't see if the modem test completed, but somewhere between the end of that and the video RAM test the screen was filled with a multi-coloured grid. Eventually there was a default catch:
code=300, %SRR0: 00000020, %SRR1:00081010
with the option of mac-boot or shut-down.
mac-boot also caused a default catch:
code=900, %SRR0: 01c10ffc, %SRR1:00003030
mac-boot then brought an alternate happy mac / folder with a ?
A reboot from there finally brings up the broken folder. All of these icons are very small OS9 style icons in the centre of the screen.
Phew!
Bearing in mind your suggestion about a blown stick, I have tried a swapping out each stick (1x512, 1x256) and rebooting with the same results. I also tried them in different slots and that made no difference either.
Blown video RAM perhaps?

Qosmio F20-136 - Boot from USB Hard drive

Dear All,
Is it possible to enable the Qosmio F20-136 to boot from a second hard drive connected one of the USB ports? I know that you can hit F2 during the boot to get 4 different boot options, but this isn't one of them.
Thanks

Hello
As far as I know it is not possible and I didn?t find any topic where someone can confirm this possibility. Anyway it will be very nice if something like that can be possible.

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.

Won't Boot from Internal Hard Drive

I received the "Startup Disk is Full" message and neglected to do anything about it before my Mac stopped booting. To remedy this, I installed and booted from Snow Leopard (10.6) on an external hard drive, found what was eating my space on my internal hard drive (currently Mac OS 10.5.8) and freed up about 35 GB of space.
I then went to my System Preferences to change the default Startup Disk back to the internal drive. It's not booting past the gray screen.
Any ideas on how to fix this? Do I now need to update my internal hard drive to Snow Leopard? If so, will this erase anything on my internal drive?

Hmm.
Do you have your external drive connected?
Try booting with the ALT key held down. Is your internal drive an option here? Choose it, then give the computer 5~10 minutes to boot.
If that doesn't work, try holding the Shift key and starting up in Safe Mode, which will take 5~10 minutes.
Do you have your OS X install discs for 10.5?
~Lyssa

G5 Tower won't boot from other hard drives

I have recently purchased a used G5 tower and cannot get it to boot from a second internal drive nor from external Firewire Drive - all running system 10.5.8. My G5's primary boot is a Western Digital Serial ATA on Bus A. On Bus B is a Samsung Serial ATA drive, and attached via FireWire is a Western Digital 1TB Mybook (with 3 partitions - one with system 10.5.8). When I go to System Prefs and choose Start-up disk, the Samsung on Bus B *does not appear* (although it shows up on my desktop). My FireWire WD shows as a Start-up drive, but when selected as my startup, and I reboot, the machine starts from the WD on Bus A again.
I've been with Macs ever since the 80's and served as system and network manager for all our units--installing, upgrading, and troubleshooting dozens of Macs in our unit. I'm now retired and this is the first time that I've encounter a problem like this. I've tried switching buses and jumpers but nothing seems to work.

It doesn't say anything about APM
Sorry, that is the Partition info, highlight the Whole Drive's icon just above & inset to the left a bit, then do the blue Info icon, look for info like this...
Name : CVBRaid0
Type : RAID Set
Disk Identifier : disk3
Version : AppleRAID version 2.0
*Partition Map Scheme : Apple_HFS*
Device Tree : IODeviceTree:sata/k2-sata@1
Universal Unique Identifier : BFEC2D8B-1525-307B-ADF3-1D95952E6C58
Writable : Yes
Ejectable : No
Location : External
Part of RAID Set : Yes
RAID Set Master : Yes
RAID Name : CVBRaid0
RAID Identifier : E42F5AD8-1BD2-4F7E-8BA2-79876F9112E9
RAID Status : Online
RAID Set Type : Striped RAID Set
Member List : disk0s3
: disk1s3
Total Capacity : 1.2 TB (1,280,001,507,328 Bytes)
Free Space : 706.9 GB (759,077,679,104 Bytes)
Disk Number : 3
Partition Number : 0

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

HP Pavilion 500-210 QE Can't boot from any hard drive.

Good Evening. As you can see from the subject, my computer just can't boot from any hard drive that I put on it. I tried swapping the power supply, the SATA cable, resetting the BIOS, enabling legacy boot, changing from AHCI to IDE and RAID...
When I get to the BIOS setup, I can see the hard drive and its specifications, but it just won't boot or show up when I'm trying to install a new OS. I'm not an expert, but I think the problem might be in the motherboard SATA ports, but I'm not sure. Just to make sure, I did try another hard drive and it didn't work aswell.
I was also thinking about buying an external hard drive and instaling my OS on that, but I don't even know if that's possible and I would really like to have my computer working again.
Thank you for your attention!
This question was solved.
View Solution.

What is the installed operating system?
Did you make a recovery disk set?
Did you happen to make a Windows 8.1 startup disk or USB recovery thumbdrive?
Have you tested the hard disk?
Press the power button and then immediately tap the Esc key. In the Startup menu, choose F2 for Diagnostics. In the HP Basic System Diagnostics menu choose hard disk. Run the test and post the results here.
The issue you are facing has nothing to do with the SATA ports. It is a configuration issue. Your PC is a modern one and its BIOS (UEFI) is far more advanced than what you may have seen before.
If you want to install a different operating system then you will have to make a few changes in the BIOS configuration. Secure Boot is turned on by default for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. If you try installing a different OS without turning this off then your system won't boot up. You may be running into this if you are trying to install another operating system.
The image below is what will be seen in the BIOS of your PC in the security tab --> . In the secure boot configuration options do not clear the secure boot keys! Those keys are your operating system license activation keys.
****Please click on Accept As Solution if a suggestion solves your problem. It helps others facing the same problem to find a solution easily****
2015 Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience Consumer

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

Won't boot from USB hard drive?

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