Booting from backup

[dnanian]

A few things here, Bob.

First, it's very important to note that a Sandbox is not a backup, it's a way of doing a checkpoint of your system. So, if you want something you can recover from, you should be using "Backup - all files", not any of the Sandbox scripts.

Second, only Intel based Macintoshes can start from USB drives. PPC Macs cannot. Both can boot from FireWire drives, so I'd strongly suggest a Mac "boot compatible" (Oxford based) FireWire drive if you can use one.

The most common reason for a failure to boot is that the drive is partitioned with the wrong scheme. As of a later release of 10.4.x, Disk Utility started letting users format HFS+ volumes even when the on-disk format was MBR (Windows) partitioning, and this can be quite confusing.

In general, external drives should be partitioned with the Apple Partition Map scheme, which is compatible (on an external drive) with both Intel and Power PC Macs.

If you're using exclusively Intel Macs, you should use the "GUID" partitioning scheme. A drive that moves internal to an Intel Mac must be GUID as well.

So, please check the partitioning scheme and see if you're using the right one. Once you do that, and use "Backup - all files" with Smart Update or Erase, then copy, your backup should boot successfully.