Boot Problems

[hugh1988]

Hi! I tried to install the OS on the external firewire drive, but it said it could not be installed on this volume. i just cloned the internal drive with carbon copy cloner to the external drive and trying to boot from that and the comp wont start up.. its just on the grey screen with the grey apple forever. what i am doing wrong? i have other files installed on the external drive as well.. would this be a problem?

thank you

 

[dmetzcher]

Not all FireWire drives are bootable. It depends on the manufacturer, and many manufacturers don't even know for sure if their models will be bootable on a Mac, especially if they deal mostly with PC users and don't cater to a Mac audience. (At least, that's what I've read in a few places.) Generally, if your FireWire drive cannot have the OS installed on it, it is not bootable, even if you clone your drive to the FireWire drive via Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper!, or some other similar cloning app.

 

[hugh1988]

ok thanks, thats a bit of a shame i didn't know that before i bought the drive!

 

[bobw]

Did you use Disk Utility to format the drive before installing OS X?

 

[hugh1988]

no i didn't format it.. like i said i already had some things backed up on it. the drive is 'Mac OS Extended' not 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' would this make a difference?

are you sure this will definitely work because i am coping OKish atm.

thanks very much

 

[jbarley]

no i didn't format it..

In order to boot from a firewire, (or any drive) with an intel mac, the drive MUST be formatted using the "Guid" partition table rather then the Apple partition table used by the PPC macs.
I got caught on this one when I first got my new intel mac.

jb