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-   -   Mac won't boot from cloned drive (https://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5789)

mgump 09-26-2009 10:19 AM

Mac won't boot from cloned drive
 
I used SuperDuper! to create a cloned copy of the original Seagate Momentus 80 GB drive in a MacBook Pro onto a new Seagate Momentus 500 GB drive. This post is informational only as I figured out what was causing the problem. I thought others might benefit from what I discovered.

I found that I had to use the Mac OS X Disk Utilities program (found in Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility) to format the new hard drive to make it viewable to the SuperDuper program in the first place. I used the Partition function. After making the new hard drive viewable by SuperDuper!, I proceeded to do a full copy of all the files from the existing internal 80 GB hard drive to the new 500 GB Seagate hard drive. I connected the new drive through a Apricorn USB Upgrade Kit I got at Frys Electronics that included a CD with SuperDuper! Lite on it. BTW, this same CD had a copy of Apricorn EZ Gig II software which is to do the same kind of operations on a Windows hard drive.

The clone operation finished without any problems but when I swapped the new hard drive for the old drive and tried to boot, nothing happened other than the screen just sat there looking like it was waiting for something to happen. After re-trying the copy operation twice to make sure I hadn't missed something, I finally realized the partition option was set to make the new hard drive use the setting for older non-Intel CPU based computers . This is called the Apple Partition Map (APM) scheme and is what is supposed to be used for computers that are PowerPC based. Once I realized the computer I was working with had an Intel Core Duo CPU, I re-partitioned the new drive to use the GUID Partition Table option, did the full clone copy operation again and the new drive booted up and worked fine.

It would be nice to have a bit more explanation or suggestion about this boot type option so people using the software were directed more explicitly to use the right option. I'll admit there is an explanation given in the Disk Utility program in the Options settings window of the Partition tab operation but maybe something about the cloned drive not booting if the wrong option is chosen would be helpful. :o

Another thing I think would be handy for the user would be to make the option to copy all files also be labeled as something like "Clone entire bootable hard drive" so it would be more apparent that this is exactly what this option is designed to do. :D

I hope this helps others.

Mark Gump
Quality Computer Care
Westminster, CA

dnanian 09-26-2009 03:00 PM

Hi, Mark. I do have a number of FAQ entries about this... but I have to say I wish that Apple hadn't changed the way Disk Utility worked in 10.4.6 or so: it should select, by default, the proper partition scheme for your Mac, rather than defaulting in a typically wrong way.


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