"Prohibitory sign" booting from backup drive?

[nylonbrando]

Hi

I used SD to make a full backup to a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition on an external USB 2.0 drive attached to my Intel iMac.

Everything went fine so I restarted with the Option key held down and selected the backup drive, but then the grey apple turned into a "prohibitory sign" as shown here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106805

So I rebooted in the original drive, ran Disk Utility to verify the external drive - and it said everything was fine, no repair necessary.

Then instead of doing a restart, I did a full shutdown, powered everything down including the external drive, and then a startup - then I was able to boot into the backup drive no problem, and it seemed to work perfectly!

However, it's worrying that it wouldn't boot the first time.... has anyone seen this before, or know why it might happen? Or am I worrying too much ;-)

nylon

[dnanian]

That's strange; are you sure, the second time, that it actually started up from the backup drive? How is the backup drive partitioned (what scheme)?

[nylonbrando]

Yeah I'm sure it booted from the backup drive the 2nd time, because the positions of the drives were swapped round in Finder, and in Disk Utility the "Repair Disk" button was greyed out in the backup drive and not the main drive. Also I could hear the backup drive working as it booted up.

The partition scheme is GUID Partition Table - I chose that because I thought it's the native bootable partition scheme for Intel Macs.

In case it helps, here's the log from the backup run:

| 08:30:36 AM | Info | SuperDuper!, 2.1.4 (82), path: /Applications/~Installed/SuperDuper!.app, Mac OS 10.4.10 build 8R2218 (i386)
| 08:30:36 AM | Info | Started on Sun, Oct 7, 2007 at 8:30 AM
| 08:30:36 AM | Info | Source Volume: AtlanticOSX, mount: /, device: /dev/disk0s2, media: WDC WD2500JS-40NGB2, interconnect: Internal SATA, file system: "Journaled HFS+", OS: 10.4.10 (8R2218), capacity: 202.00 GB, used: 145.25 GB, directories: 121389, files: 636900, ejectable: NO, ACLs: Disabled
| 08:30:36 AM | Info | Target Volume: ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01, mount: /Volumes/ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01, device: /dev/disk1s2, media: SEAGATE ST3320820A, interconnect: External USB, file system: "Journaled HFS+", OS: N/A, capacity: 250.34 GB, used: 0.07 GB, directories: 4, files: 7, ejectable: NO, ACLs: Disabled
| 08:30:36 AM | Info | Copy Mode : Erase, then copy files
| 08:30:36 AM | Info | Copy Script : Backup - all files.dset
| 08:30:36 AM | Info | Transcript : BuildTranscript.plist
| 08:30:36 AM | Info | PHASE: 1. Prepare to Copy Files
| 08:30:36 AM | Info | ...ACTION: Preparing AtlanticOSX
| 08:30:36 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Verifying the integrity of volinfo.database
| 08:30:37 AM | Info | volinfo.database OK
| 08:30:37 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Enabling permissions on AtlanticOSX
| 08:30:37 AM | Info | Refreshing Disk Arbitration ...
| 08:30:37 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Verifying that permissions are enabled for AtlanticOSX
| 08:30:37 AM | Info | Permissions on '/' are enabled.
| 08:30:37 AM | Info | ...ACTION: Erasing ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 08:30:37 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Preserving ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01 UUID
| 08:30:37 AM | Info | 3EAE0C91348E9596
| 08:30:37 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Preserving spotlight indexing state
| 08:30:37 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Erasing ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Restoring ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01 UUID (3EAE0C91348E9596)
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | 3EAE0C91348E9596
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Restoring Spotlight search indexing state on ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | /Volumes/ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01:
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | Indexing enabled for volume.
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | Indexing enabled on ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | ...ACTION: Preparing ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Enabling permissions on ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | Refreshing Disk Arbitration ...
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Verifying that permissions are enabled for ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | Permissions on '/Volumes/ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01' are enabled.
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Verifying that ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01 ACL support matches AtlanticOSX
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | ...ACTION: Preserving Spotlight state on ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Disabling Spotlight search indexing on ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | PHASE: 2. Copy Files
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | ...ACTION: Copying files from AtlanticOSX to ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Cloning AtlanticOSX to ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 08:30:53 AM | Info | Copying copy files using script: /Users/tj/Library/Application Support/SuperDuper!/Copy Scripts/Standard Scripts/Backup - all files.dset
| 08:30:54 AM | Info | Loading 21 commands from copy script /Applications/~Installed/SuperDuper!.app/Contents/Resources/Copy Scripts/Exclude system temporary files.dset
| 08:30:54 AM | Info | Loading 6 commands from copy script /Applications/~Installed/SuperDuper!.app/Contents/Resources/Copy Scripts/Exclude system cache files.dset
| 08:30:54 AM | Info | Loading 1 commands from copy script /Applications/~Installed/SuperDuper!.app/Contents/Resources/Copy Scripts/Exclude Norton FileSaver files.dset
| 08:30:54 AM | Info | Loading 2 commands from copy script /Applications/~Installed/SuperDuper!.app/Contents/Resources/Copy Scripts/Exclude Spotlight search index.dset
| 08:30:54 AM | Info | Loading 0 commands from copy script /Users/tj/Library/Application Support/SuperDuper!/Copy Scripts/Standard Scripts/Backup - all files.dset
| 08:30:54 AM | Info | /
| 08:30:57 AM | Info | /bin
| 08:30:57 AM | Info | /usr
| 08:34:13 AM | Info | /.Spotlight-V100
| 08:34:13 AM | Info | Ignoring /.Spotlight-V100/.journalHistoryLog
| 08:34:13 AM | Info | Ignoring /.Spotlight-V100/.store.db
| 08:34:13 AM | Info | Ignoring /.Spotlight-V100/_IndexPolicy.plist
| 08:34:13 AM | Info | Ignoring /.Spotlight-V100/_rules.plist
| 08:34:13 AM | Info | Ignoring /.Spotlight-V100/ContentIndex.db
| 08:34:13 AM | Info | Ignoring /.Spotlight-V100/store.db
| 08:34:13 AM | Info | /.Trashes
| 08:34:13 AM | Info | /.vol
| 08:34:13 AM | Info | Ignoring /.vol
| 08:34:13 AM | Info | /Applications
| 09:03:24 AM | Info | /Users
| 11:11:23 AM | Info | /automount
| 11:11:23 AM | Info | /Library
| 12:18:04 PM | Info | /cores
| 12:18:04 PM | Info | /TheVolumeSettingsFolder
| 12:18:04 PM | Info | /System
| 12:28:27 PM | Info | Ignoring /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache
| 12:28:27 PM | Info | /dev
| 12:28:27 PM | Info | /sbin
| 12:28:27 PM | Info | /private
| 12:28:33 PM | Info | Ignoring /private/tmp/501
... <snipped similar lines> ...
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | Ignoring /private/var/vm
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | /Network
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | /Volumes
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | Ignoring /Volumes/AtlanticXP
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | Ignoring /Volumes/ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | Ignoring /Volumes/ExtDisk03P2
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | Ignoring /Volumes/._LEV'S IPOD
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | Ignoring /Volumes/.DS_Store
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | Ignoring /Volumes/AtlanticOSX
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | Ignoring /mach
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | Ignoring /mach.sym
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | Ignoring /Desktop DF
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | Ignoring /Desktop DB
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | Ignoring /.hotfiles.btree
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | Evaluated 757821 items occupying 144.66 GB (121386 directories, 605916 files, 30519 symlinks)
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | Copied 757629 items totaling 142.29 GB (121366 directories, 605746 files, 30517 symlinks)
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | Cloned 142.29 GB of data in 14264 seconds at an effective transfer rate of 10.21 MB/s
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | PHASE: 3. After Successful Copy
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | ...ACTION: Making ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01 bootable
| 12:28:37 PM | Info | ......COMMAND => Blessing OS X System Folder
| 12:28:38 PM | Info | Successfully blessed Mac OS X folder on ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 12:28:38 PM | Info | ......COMMAND => Blessing OS 9 System Folder
| 12:28:38 PM | Info | Did not bless Mac OS 9 System Folder on ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01 because it does not exist.
| 12:28:38 PM | Info | ...ACTION: Restoring Spotlight state on ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 12:28:38 PM | Info | ......COMMAND => Restoring Spotlight search indexing state on ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 12:28:42 PM | Info | /Volumes/ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01:
| 12:28:42 PM | Info | Indexing enabled for volume.
| 12:28:42 PM | Info | Indexing enabled on ExtDisk03P1-SysBk-AtlanticOSX-01
| 12:28:42 PM | Info | Copy complete.

[dnanian]

OK, just wanted to make sure. No reason I can think of that it didn't work first startup, except for -- perhaps -- a transient hardware issue at startup.