Making Western Digital MyBook Home bootable
 

PROBLEM

I recently purchased a WD MyBook Home 1TB for backups.
It is partitioned into 2, and has a bootable SuperDuper clone on one and Time Machine on the other. It is connected with a FW 800-400 cable as the iMac only has FW 800 and the WD drive FW 400.
(I know this is dodgy as if it fails I lose both but I also have a 160 GB Verbatim USB 2 drive which also runs SuperDuper every night.) Call me paranoid...

All the backups work fast and smoothly, Time machine functions perfectly. If I choose the WD HD SuperDuper Volume as Startup volume in System Preferences, it boots just fine so I can run repairs on the iMac or restore files.

However, if I do a cold start holding the Option key, despite all the volumes appearing in Startup Manager, the Mac will NOT boot from the SuperDuper volume when chosen. All I get is the grey screen and Apple logo and then nothing.

If, however I connect a USB2 cable to the WD HD, it will boot from Startup Manager as well as by choosing a volume in Startup Disk in System Preferences.!

The WD website states that this HD will boot with FW or USB2 with an Intel Mac. I have updated it's firmware, no difference.

SOLUTION:

Hi Dave,

I came across a post which suggested that if you don't unmount ext HDs before shutdown, it can do bad things to them as startup drives. In fact I always just shutdown without unmounting the drive volumes.
So, I unmounted the WD HD and then shut down as usual.
I then started with Option key and entered Startup Manager, chose the SD volume and it booted perfectly!

Then I noticed that when I shutdown the Mac from the Apple Menu, after it shuts down, the MyBook also turns off, and the light goes off, whereas my LaCie drives have always remained on in standby mode with the blue light still on.

So this time, I shut down,
Then I pressed the power button on the MyBook and it turned on.
Then I entered Startup Manager, chose SD volume and guess what, it booted perfectly.

The reason I am letting you know this is so that if other people have the same problem with SD booting from WD HDs
you will know what to tell them.

So if my Mac ever refuses to start from it's internal drive, I can now boot from the WD HD to access my SD Clone.
I can then use DiskWarrior to repair the internal drive and/or recover files to a DVD.
Now I am a happy camper and I can continue to use Firewire as you recommend, and I prefer!


iMac Early 2009 24" 2.66GHz 4GB RAM OS 10.5.6

Hey, I just bought the WD drive myself, guess I should have stuck with lacie. So, did I read this right, you should dismount before shutting down computer to make sure it will boot as a startup drive in SD?

Also, I too was going to partition the WD drive. Is there any need for the two software, WD Drive Manager and WDMacTurboDrivers?

thanks,
BJ

Hi there,
No, the unmounting advice was wrong, it was a fluke and I could not reproduce it.
There is no need to unmount drives before shutdown.

I sold the drive in the end to someone who wasn't worried about cloning or sleeping. He just wanted to dump sound, video and photo data onto it. Although it worked well enough for Time Machine and SuperDuper it would not boot from SD using Startup Manager which is the whole point of having a bootable clone.
I partitioned it into two and therefore erased the WD software.
Make sure you use the correct partition map for your Mac GUID for Intel and Apple for PPC
The other problem I had was that it only had Firewire 400 and the new iMac is FW 800 so I tried piggy backing it into my LaCie and also connected by USB 2
Both work but while it was connected either way, my Mac would just never sleep from Power Management settings, only manually.
If you just want a good Time Machine HD it is fine and for manual backups but don't expect it to boot from Option/Restart manager.
I will be interested to hear if it sleeps!
Dave Nanian, author of SuperDuper cannot work out why it won't boot from cold, only if set as Startup Disk in System Prefs. and other brands will.
I reverted to my LaCie and all is fine, I just have less space as it is only 500MB the WD was 1TB
I also have bought 2 Verbatim drives and had no problems at all, one USB one FW
Hope this helps

I'd really return your WD drive, Brandon - see my support email reply.