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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Used Carbon Copy Cloner, then changed "startup disk" and now nothing...

Michael Totten

Michael Totten

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I'm not sure how to fix this. Everything seemed to transfer just fine (message from Carbon Copy Cloner said transfer was successful, and indicated it was a "bootable drive"). I used laptop in "firewire mode" for the transfer.

I powered down my desktop and restarted from the old drive. Went into "startup disk" and changed the boot drive to the new drive and restarted.
I can hear the disk spinning... but the monitors never come on. I waited 15 minutes (three times) and nothing.

Any idea how to get my system back?
 
1st step disconnect all drives except your boot drive including internal and external drives. Then attempt to boot.
I don't understand why you have a laptop in target mode?

Take me through the steps you took to clone your drive...
 
Ok. I removed the new drive which I cloned and restarted. Everything seems to be working fine on the old drive. I went back into "start up disk" and changed the startup disk back to the old drive (so when I put the new drive back in OSX won't try to boot from it).

I reinstalled the new drive and restarted computer successfully. The new drive shows up on the desktop. I verified disk in Disk Utility and ran disk permissions. The disk appears to be working just fine.

Is it possible that OSX isn't recognizing the new disk as a bootable startup disk?
 
Try pulling the old drive and booting from the new without the old connected. If that works then OSX has an issue with the two identical drives and doesnt seem to want to have both in, try renaming the old as a start.
 
Jay Gannon said:
1st step disconnect all drives except your boot drive including internal and external drives. Then attempt to boot.
I don't understand why you have a laptop in target mode?

Take me through the steps you took to clone your drive...
Click to expand...

In the Carbon Copy Cloner manual it says the best way to clone (when it's to be a bootable drive is via target mode). Beyond what I read I really don't know the technical details.

Steps:

1. Installed new drive into MacPro.
2. Used Disk Utility to format drive to Mac OSX extended Journaled.
3. Shut down MacPro
4. Plugged laptop into firewire 800 port on MacPro (800 to 800)
5. Restarted MacPro in target mode (held down "T" on MacPro during startup).
6. MacPro drives showed up on laptop
7. Opened Carbon Copy Cloner and selected "source disk" (which is the old startup disk on my MacPro).
8. Then Selected "Target Disk" in Carbon Copy Cloner (which is the new drive which was installed in MacPro).
9. Clicked option "backup everything". Carbon Copy Cloner gives a message saying "This volume will be bootable.
10. Executed the transfer. Next day CCC say's "successful transfer" drive is bootable.
11. Unmounted MacPro drives from Laptop desktop (ejected properly).
12. Powered down laptop
13. Powered down desktop
14. Powered up desktop from old drive (everything looks good so far... new drive shows up on desktop and all files seem to be intact).
15. Went into "start up disk" in system prefs and selected the new drive as start up drive and clicked "restart". At which point the computer never restarted...
 
Yeah pull the old drive and see does it boot from the new one.
Hold the CMD/Apple key when booting and it will show you the list of bootabe drives.
 
Michael,

You seem to be doing everything right in the procedure. Things to look into would be to see if the Carbon Copy Cloner is the latest that matches the OS version you are using.

In my past experiences, certain drives did have compatible issue to be boot drive.
 
I skimmed your steps, but seems OK. Holding down the option key when you start the Mac will let you pick which volume to boot from.

When you partitioned and formatted your drive, which partition type was it set to? Having the drive set to Apple Partition Map instead of a GUID partition will produce this exact situation. Only way to fix it is to repartition and re-clone. Anyway, I'd say that's rather likely if everything is there and seems to be functional yet you can't boot from it.
 
First, use Super Duper to a drive with GUID partition, not Carbon Copy Cloner. I've had probs with CCC. SuperDuper creates a bootable back up, but it's very territorial and will erase the drive or partition every time it creates a copy of your disk. BEWARE moving files to that temporarily. It will delete them on next backup.

To the real answer, I agree with Jeff. Your disk may not be partitioned correctly.
Intel Macs can use USB/FW drives as boot drive if you set up with GUID formatting in the Disk Utilities>Partition tab>Options>GUID Partition radio button selected.
(You have to select the top level icon of the drive, not the indent, to see the partition tab. As Jeff wrote, you'll have to erase the disk to repartition to GUID. So partition to GUID, and then use SuperDuper overnight. If you AT ALL suspect your system drive may crash, please do NOT erase that clone. Buy a new drive, partition to GUID, and try SuperDuper. If your system drive craps out, you'd still have the Carbon copy clone to drag and drop onto the GUID drive using a second system.)

Also- are you using Time Machine? Please buy a cheap USB drive, partition for GUID, and use it as a Time Machine safety. Have another drive specifically for SuperDuper. Time Machine can't create a bootable copy, but it's great for back ups over time. (Very important if you keep your project files on your system drive, and media on external drives). SuperDuper only holds the LAST instance of your system drive. If you install crap software that ruins your system performance, you'd use TimeMachine to return to prior to the install. Likewise, if your system drive should crash, you use SuperDuper disk to start up and keep going.

Data Rescue 3 is awesome. However, data recovery can take 1-2 weeks of processing work. It is a multi-step process that requires 2 additional blank drives. Depending on the level of crash, you're recovery may be incomplete, if even possible.

From a cost standpoint, it makes sense to buy 2 drives now, than 2 drives later. If a failed drive is NOT visible in Disk Utility, Data Rescue 3 nor DiskWarrior won't work.
And if it is visible, you're down for 1 or 2 weeks recovering.

Good luck, Anthony
 
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