The Amazing Disappearing Yosemite

P

Pierce Butler

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Context: ~2008 iMac (2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) running Snow Leopard (10.6.8).

Wanting to experiment with Yosemite, I downloaded the installer and ran it on a copy of my startup HD. Then I rebooted, played around a bit, and restarted from my usual boot drive. Next time I felt like exploring it, I opened System Prefs, clicked "Startup Disk" - and could not see that volume listed as an option.

So I repeated the process: copied the working disk, installed Yosemite, launched it, poked around, went back to Snow Leopard. And, again, the "Startup Disk" panel just does not see the Yosemite volume.

The Finder sees it, Disk Utility sees it (and gives it a clean bill of health), but once it's no longer virgin "Startup Disk" refuses to acknowledge it exists. What the #*@&???
 
Important questions:
Does the copy of your HD have a different name than the original? Does this copied HD sit on a different drive or partition?
 
For the record: "Kappy" at discussions.apple.com <a href="https://discussions.apple.com/message/29110817">partially answered my question</a> by pointing out I could restart and hold down the Option key after the chime: this presented a set of potential startup volumes, which did include the Yosemite volume.

From there I could go to System Prefs:Startup Disk and make the startup selection permanent, as the Y volume did show up in that panel then. (If I didn't do that, the Yosemite partition - though not the Snow Leopard partition on the same disk - disappeared again.)

Alas, "Kappy" did not explain why this happened - but at least I got a functional workaround!
 
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