Failure to start up from full backup

[equill]

Background: I've just acquired my third LaCie d2 external drive, which is also my second Triple Interface. I use FireWire exclusively for backup connections to FireWire-capable Macs (about 10 of them) because I also use a bootable partition on each external drive, as I do also for SCSI Macs (more than 30 of them). I format ATA drives for internal use in an external Zynet Polar (Prolific) enclosure. The expected failure to boot into OS X from the Zynet drive takes the form of a perpetually spinning gearwheel. The two older d2s were formatted from Silverlining versions of the time, but now updated to 6.5.8, and continue to function faultlessly for backup, with either Dantz/EMC or SuperDuper! I had not, however, so far had need to restore from SuperDuper!, or to boot from a SuperDuper! copy.

The problem: Whether I format the new drive (30, 100 and 110GB) from OS 9.2.2/Silverlining 6.5.8 or OS 10.4.10 (Safari betaUpdate 3.0.2)/Disk Utility, in four attempts so far, a fresh full backup of 10.4.10 on the 30GB partition will not boot the iMac CRT Indigo/500MHz/1GB/40GB from which it came. The result of attempt to start up is the spinning gearwheel for about a minute, supervened by the prohibitive sign for up to 10min without further advance. Neither will the same d2 30GB partition with 10.4.10 boot either of two other CRT iMacs: 2001 Indigo/500MHz/768MB/30GB and 2000 Snow/500MHz/1GB/40GB. Although these latter have 10.3.9/9.2.2 and 10.2.8/9.2.2 installed, they are fully capable of supporting Tiger. You can take it for granted that the source 10.4.10 is maintained with DiskWarrior 3.0.3, MacJanitor and ClamXav, and is up-to-date with System software. The source files add to 8.88GB, SuperDupered down to 8.49GB in the copy.

Any insights or suggestions, please?

de

[dnanian]

Assuming the drive is partitioned as "Apple Partition Map", as I'm sure it must be, what happens when you boot into "verbose" mode (Cmd+v during power on until text appears on the screen)? Can you get into Single User mode (Cmd+s) or Safe Boot (Shift)?

[equill]

A small update while Retrospect winds its weary way through an archive of the source volume (10.4.10) and re-install to the second (100GB) partition on the new d2 external drive ...

On the offchance that a firmware update might be wanting, I compared the new d2 with an older d2 (in Silverlining 6.5.8 under OS 9.2.2), and found that the older drive had LaCie's firmware 1.02b (Dec. 2006), while the new one showed 1.02 (2004), which was undoubtedly the rage when 250GB d2s were in production. However, updating the firmware of the newer d2 changed none of the behaviour reported above.

de

[equill]

Neither the SD nor the Retrospect backup, respectively on the 30GB and 100GB partitions, booted the source iMac. Attempts to warm boot from both startup volumes ended with the prohibitory sign. Both volumes had been massaged with DiskWarrior and Disk Utility first.

Verbose cold restarts in both cases gave more than a screenful of text, followed quickly by default to the internal HDD of the source Mac for startup. Is there a way to capture that text? Recant. Of course there is. It's in the system.log.

I am impelled at this stage to savour the nasty taste of a faulty 912 bridge board in the d2, although this diagnosis does not account for the ability to copy from internal HDD to either partition. I noticed during the DW Directory repairs that copying by SD produced 31% of disorder, and Retrospect but 23%. I cannot, however, see any diagnostic value in the numbers. The disk space used by the Retrospect copy, at 8.44GB, was very close to that of the SD copy, at 8.49GB.

There is a final test that may resolve the matter: I shall use SD for a full and bootable backup to a known good d2 Extreme, and see whether I can get any sense from that.

de

[dnanian]

It's possibly a bad bridge, sure -- but what does the system log on the destination say toward the end? Does it give a specific reason for the failure? Does Safe Boot help?

[equill]

First, the partition scheme is APM throughout, as Dave supposed.

I copied, with SD, the source volume from the Indigo iMac with 10.4.10 to the 111GB partition of an older d2 Extreme 160GB external drive. I ran DiskWarrior 3.0.3 and First Aid over the target volume. The iMac started up from the target volume without demur. It seems beyond doubt that the new 250GB d2 Extreme external disk is faulty. Given the drive's contents, an HDD and a bridge board, it is the board that has to be suspected.

I'm not sure what part of the system.log record is of interest in this context, but I quote the last lines of the log for the two last attempts to cold boot from an SD and a Retrospect copy on different partitions. In each case start up defaulted (although it was not selected in Startup Disk) to the internal Seagate drive.

SuperDuper! copy on 30GB partition:
Jun 29 10:53:49 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: setting hostname to "iMac-Indigo-1.local"
Jun 29 10:53:51 iMac-Indigo-1 loginwindow[55]: Login Window Started Security Agent
Jun 29 10:53:51 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: executing /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/Kicker.bundle/Contents/Resources/enable-network
Jun 29 10:53:51 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: posting notification com.apple.system.config.network_change
Jun 29 10:53:51 iMac-Indigo-1 launchd: Server 0 in bootstrap 1103 uid 0: "/usr/sbin/lookupd"[57]: exited abnormally: Hangup
Jun 29 10:53:51 iMac-Indigo-1 lookupd[89]: lookupd (version 369.5) starting - Fri Jun 29 10:53:51 2007
Jun 29 10:53:55 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: target=enable-network: disabled
Jun 29 10:54:06 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[43]: disk1s6 hfs E807615C-9536-3548-A813-F9DC173C0151 LaCie 37GB /Volumes/LaCie 37GB
Jun 29 10:54:07 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[43]: disk1s7 hfs 45350DB2-644E-313B-893A-CDE5687FBCD5 LaCie 111GB-O /Volumes/LaCie 111GB-O
Jun 29 10:54:07 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[43]: disk2s6 hfs 08CCA637-0C81-3801-A09E-C19DFE9A1A6F LaCie 30GB /Volumes/LaCie 30GB
Jun 29 10:54:07 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[43]: disk2s7 hfs 08CCA637-0C81-3801-A09E-C19DFE9A1A6F LaCie 100GB /Volumes/LaCie 100GB
Jun 29 10:54:07 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[43]: disk2s8 hfs 08CCA637-0C81-3801-A09E-C19DFE9A1A6F LaCie 111GB-N /Volumes/LaCie 111GB-N

Retrospect copy on 100GB partition:
Jun 29 11:06:15 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: setting hostname to "iMac-Indigo-1.local"
Jun 29 11:06:16 iMac-Indigo-1 loginwindow[56]: Login Window Started Security Agent
Jun 29 11:06:16 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: executing /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/Kicker.bundle/Contents/Resources/enable-network
Jun 29 11:06:16 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: posting notification com.apple.system.config.network_change
Jun 29 11:06:16 iMac-Indigo-1 launchd: Server 0 in bootstrap 1103 uid 0: "/usr/sbin/lookupd"[57]: exited abnormally: Hangup
Jun 29 11:06:16 iMac-Indigo-1 lookupd[89]: lookupd (version 369.5) starting - Fri Jun 29 11:06:16 2007
Jun 29 11:06:21 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: target=enable-network: disabled
Jun 29 11:06:31 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[42]: disk1s6 hfs 08CCA637-0C81-3801-A09E-C19DFE9A1A6F LaCie 30GB /Volumes/LaCie 30GB
Jun 29 11:06:31 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[42]: disk1s7 hfs 08CCA637-0C81-3801-A09E-C19DFE9A1A6F LaCie 100GB /Volumes/LaCie 100GB
Jun 29 11:06:31 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[42]: disk2s6 hfs E807615C-9536-3548-A813-F9DC173C0151 LaCie 37GB /Volumes/LaCie 37GB
Jun 29 11:06:32 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[42]: disk2s7 hfs 45350DB2-644E-313B-893A-CDE5687FBCD5 LaCie 111GB-O /Volumes/LaCie 111GB-O
Jun 29 11:06:32 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[42]: disk1s8 hfs 08CCA637-0C81-3801-A09E-C19DFE9A1A6F LaCie 111GB-N /Volumes/LaCie 111GB-N

de