external startup-disk unseen on macbook

R

roninsmurf

Registered
hey everybody. hope all's well.

my powerbook g4 needs to go to the shop - logic board prob.
so i used SUPER DUPER to copy my drive to an external hard drive. super duper reported that the EXT DRIVE was bootable. i then used my ext drive as a startup disk with my powerbook g4 (making the g4 just a screen and a keyboard, basically), and it worked fine.

but now i have to ship off my powerbook, so i borrowed a friends MACBOOK.
for some reason the macbook can't use the EXT drive as a startup disk. dunno why.
the macbook can SEE the EXT drive -- i can look at files, etc. but when i go to system prefs/startup disk,
the macbook doesn't list my ext drive the way my powerbook does. and when i restart and press option -- it only shows the macbook internal system as the one it can boot from.

what gives?

the macbook is
1.83 intel core duo
512 mb ram
osx 10.4.6

the powerbook is
g4 1.67 powerbook
2 gb ram
osx 10.4.7

thanks for taking the time.
rs
 
The drive you cloned doesn't have the necessary files to boot the Intel Mac.
 
Also, the volume format is different. You have to use a GUID partition map on a drive that would be used to boot an Intel Mac. Your drive, used on a G4, would be partitioned with the Apple Partition Table. So, it can't boot an Intel Mac.
 
so is there a fix? i don't quite understand the GUID stuff
i have another EXT drive that i can do whatever with -- is there any way to make it Intel-MAcbook compatible?
 
If you can handle loosing the data from the other external HD, open Apple's Disk Utility on the MacBook with the extra external connected. Highlight the external in the left column then click on the "Partition" tab in Disk Utility. Click the "Options" button and select the GUID partition option. Then partition the drive. Once the drive shows up on the desktop, clone over your PowerBook data to the newly formatted drive. Then using the disks that came with the MacBook, install Mac OS X on top of the extra external (the one you formatted and cloned to). You should then be able to boot the MacBook from it and have all of your PowerBook data/software in place. Once you get the PowerBook back, you'll have to clone over the data from the external to the PowerBook and then reinstall Mac OS X 10.4 again to make your PowerBook bootable.
 
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