Boot off firewire backup
 

Hello all,

I have a PPC mini-mac that I've been happlily backing up to a sparse image NFS hosted in a debian box over my LAN. My wife has become more 'dependent' on the MAC, it's in the kitchen and basically runs our family life now :), so I decided a 'bootable' backup would be much better, so I bought an 80G firewire drive.

'About this MAC' shows it is a 'PL3507 Combo Device', and a quick google on that says it sports the Oxford 911 chipset. Lucky me, I had no idea there were different ones about, and reading the rest of the posts this is the good one.

However, after a full backup with make this drive bootable, OS X refuses to see it. I've held down the option key, tried 'T', and even as a last resort, told Super Duper to do the backup and reboot off firewire. The latter just left me with a grey screen for a few mintutes, so I unplugged the drive, power-cycled the box, and let it boot off of the internal drive.

Did I miss a step here?

Best Regards and thanks for any help/suggestions!

Lee

A PL... device generally means it's not a real Oxford device, it's a Prolific device which they claim is Oxford compatible.

But, anyway, my guess is that your drive is mis-partitioned, probably as "Master Boot Record" rather than "Apple Partition Map" (for Power PC). Check that in Disk Utility...

Thanks Dave,

My aplogies, I'm an OS X noob, linux pays my bills. Looking in Disk Utility, I see Partition Type as 'Apple_partition_scheme' under 'Info', is that the right place to check? FWIW, the box has 'Formatted for MAC' on it on a sticker, nothing like a false sense of security.

Looking at the *SECOND* post on my google search, it's pointed out quite plainly that this is not an Oxford chipset as well. Dang, I chose poorly... I'll happily buy a new enclosure, and while I realize your job is not to recommend hardware, can give me a hint to search on? :)

Best Regards,

Lee

No apologies necessary. Is this 10.4.x? You should see the Partition Scheme on the main screen when you click the disk, on the right hand side at the bottom...

As far as enclosures go, one with an Oxford chipset! :)

Hi Dave,

Yes, it says:

Partition Scheme : Apple Partition Map

So it appears I have a bogus controller. Lesson learned. I see enclosures out there with the Oxford chipset, and will correct my error. I can always drop this enclosure on my linux box for a data disk if I need it.

Thanks again for all the help! Next time I should research before buying, eh? :)

Lee

That seems likely. You can try option-starting and refreshing a few times to see if the drive shows up, but I think it's likely the problem is the chipset... sorry!

Hi dnanian,

Just a short followup, I purchased a new enclosure (with the Oxford 911 chipset :-), moved the drive over, re-delta'd, rebooted, all was well! Thanks again for the help, especially since it had nothing to do with Super Duper.

Best Regards,

Lee

Glad to hear you're up and running, Lee!