La Cie Pocket Drive & sys 10 problems

M

markmac

Registered
I purchased the La Cie PocketDrive. On box it says as the "Mac System Requirements: Apple Macintosh Computer with built-in Firewire or USB port; and Macintosh OS 8.6 or later.

Here's the problem that even the tech guy at La Cie didn't have the answer to today. I'm hoping one of you may know what to do so I don't have to bring this back for a refund.

I have a Imac DV SE running 9.2.2. So I wanted to use this pocket drive, which I must say is nice and small, as a startup drive to run OS X every once in a while because I like Safari, Apple mail and other programs. So I load it on to the PocketDrive and because it is OS X, one does not need to restart the drive once the software is loaded on the PocketDrive. And it runs OS X perfectly on my imac. And I use this for several days, putting the imac in sleep mode overnight. The yesterday we have a short blackout and when I restart the computer using the PocketDrive designated as the startup disk from the control panel startup disk, I get this gray sceen with a big circle and a line through the circle telling me there is no system startup on the PocketDrive. So I reboot using the imac and when I look at the system 10 folder, it no longer has that letter on the folder telling me that it is an active system folder.

So I reload it all over again and it works just fine until I shut the computer down and again it doesn't recognize the OS X.

So I'm beginning to think that when it says system requirements on the box that it probably infers that it will not recognize OS X because when I did load system 9.2.2 on it, it did then recognize that system folder as a startup folder even after I shut down the computer.

So here are my questions: am I right in that I firewire drive needs to say on the box that it does support OS X for it to recognize it as a startup drive for OSX?
I don't need a big drive. This one was 40 gig for $247 out the door. I'd like something small and reliable as a backup. Any recommendations would be helpful but only if you have actual experience with one.
Lastly, I really don't want an ipod but I would like to know if they can be used as an OSX startup drive.

Many thanks for any answers or advice.

mark
 
When you installed OS X on the Pocket Drive, did you format the drive? What format? You need to use HFS Extended and nothing else.

Also, Run Disk Utility on the little thing.
 
I did use HFS extended in the first place throughout this whole process. I am guessing that because it did not say OS X on the box that that is why it is not recognizing the system folder after the computer shuts down. I think I'm going to return this one and go with one that says that it supports OS X on the box. Any ideas for other small firewire drive companies?
 
And did you install OS X using the CD? You can not copy OS X from one drive to another.

Try a test. Do an install of OS 9 on it - make sure you update the drivers using Drive Set up on the OS 9 CD. Now give it a shutdown-start up test.
 
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