Another "can't boot from cloned drive" problem.

[robgo]

I'm using Tiger on an iMac flat panel, running off several external Lacie firewire drives (not at the same time, of course), as the SMART status of my internal drive failed quite some time ago--everything got backed-up thanks to SuperDuper. I'm a registered user of SuperDuper, love the program, and haven't had any problems until yesterday.

I cloned the external drive I use the most to a partition ("backupboot") on another drive so I could partition this "main" drive, using Apple's disk utility, just 2 partitions, the same way I partitioned my other drives. Then I cloned this "backupboot" to the new partition of this "main" drive. It mounts just fine, all the data is there, I can drag it out, etc. But when I select it in preferences (it is there, and can be highlighted, and the computer says it will start-up on this drive when I restart), and then restart, the computer will not boot from it. It always has in the past, so it's not a problem with the drive.

And when I press "option" after restart, it does not show up to select.

I looked around a bit, and looked in the drive folders of both the drive I'm running off of now (also cloned some time ago with SuperDuper), and this newly partitioned drive, and noticed the folder called "System" on my current drive has a "X" icon on it, but the folder called "System" on this newly cloned drive (partition) does not. Now, according to some sites, the lack of the "X" means the folder is not "blessed" as a start-up folder (but then why would it show up in preferences?). But for the life of me, I can't figure out their instructions for getting it "blessed".

I searched the best I could here, and couldn't find an answer.

Any suggestions?

[dnanian]

The "X" is assigned dynamically by Finder when it's actually the startup drive, so that's not an issue: the folder is blessed if your copy was successful.

Are you sure that the drive is properly partitioned using either GUID or Apple Partition Map?

[robgo]

Copy / pasted from disk utility:

Disk Description : LaCie Group SA Total Capacity : 76.7 GB (82,348,277,760 Bytes)
Connection Bus : FireWire Write Status : Read/Write
Connection Type : External S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
Connection ID : 58629422072480183 Partition Scheme : Apple Partition Map

Thanks for the answer about the "blessed", that makes sense, good thing I didn't try mucking around with that.

[dnanian]

Is this an Intel iMac or a Power PC? If the former, the drive should be "GUID", not "Apple Partition Map".

Also -- is this a "Porsche Design" drive? LaCie has indicated in the past that these drives don't always work properly during boot when Journaling is on. Why that would be, I don't know.

You can also see if this works:

- Disconnect all external drives.
- Get to the "Option+Boot" chooser
- Wait for it to become "idle"
- Connect the external drive
- Wait for it to spin up
- Click the "refresh" arrow
- If it appears, immediately select and click "boot arrow"

[robgo]

It's a Power PC, so I believe Apple Partition map would be correct.

I tried your suggestion a few time, and it didn't work, that drive just doesn't show up on the option-boot menu. Shows up immediately when connected while another drive is the boot drive, though. And I have a large video file on there, and it plays just fine.

Repaired permissions, used disk utility (showed no problems), zapped the pram, even used DiskWarrior.

It's not a Porsche design drive. It's been my main drive for over a year, always worked. Like I stated, it's not a "crisis", the data is still all there. If I can't get it bootable, I'll just have to figure out how to get my Firefox and Safari bookmarks off of it.

ummm...speaking of journaling, I have journaling turned off. Was turned off when I cloned it, and turned off when I cloned it back after partitioning it. Now you'll probably yell at me and tell me it says somewhere in BIG LETTERS that journaling must be turned on.

At least that's another thing to try.

[dnanian]

No, I'm not going to yell anything at you: if the drive is configured as proper for boot, and shows up in System Preferences as a legit choice, I'm not sure what else I can suggest other than the above.