no boot, disappearing external drive

[jmlilly]

Hello,

This is an excellent product. I use it often and it saves me a lot of hassle.

I ran into the following problem while trying to setup a backup scheme for a set of new computers. I have 3 new ibooks, and wanted to make bootable backups for them and several old world machines (running tiger) on a big 250 external drive with multiple (7) partitions. The hard drive is a Seagate Barracuda in an Ultra brand ATA 133 enclosure.

First problem: after making a backup copy of one of the new computers to its own partition on the external hard drive, everything looked great but I could not boot. Gray screen. I did this by choosing startup disk before shutdown.

Second problem: I then tried to boot holding down option, and that also failed. So I unplugged the drive or powered down (not exactly sure which) and now the external drive DOES NOT APPEAR when plugged into any of my laptops. Have tried powering down drive, computer, unplugging, replugging, and switching firewire cable for USB cable. It's not showing up.

Luckily since I am just setting things up, there is no risk of losing data.

If anyone has ideas about this I would be very appreciative. Does the scheme I descibed --- using Super Duper to make bootable copies of multiple machines on their own partitions of a single external firewire drive --- make sense in the abstract? Is any of my hardware known to be incompatible?

Thanks very much for your help,
Jonathan