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Old 07-21-2009, 10:19 PM
Staxman Staxman is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Seattle, WA: the belly of the beast!
Posts: 15
Partition table and bootability

Quote:
Originally Posted by chris_johnsen View Post
Do you usually have both external drives connected to the system? Are the volumes on both exernal drives named similarly? Maybe you misread it as booting from a volume on the Verbatim but it was actually booting from the OWC.
No, I've only ever had one external connected to the system at a given time. Even if that weren't true, all the partitions have distinctive names.

Quote:
Originally Posted by chris_johnsen View Post
When determining the startup disk for the computer as it is currently running, you should always look at Startup Disk in  > About This Mac.
I didn't know that--live and learn!

Quote:
Originally Posted by chris_johnsen View Post
Are you using the "Restart from …" or the "Set … as Startup Disk" options in SuperDuper!?
I don't know--next time I run SuperDuper, I'll check. That'll probably be this weekend. The drives live in my safe deposit box except when I'm using them.

Quote:
Originally Posted by chris_johnsen View Post
could be that the Open Firmware was actually configured to boot from a partition on the MBR Verbatim disk. This is speculation, but in such a situation, the firmware might notice that it can not possibly startup from that volume. Faced with this "insane" configuration, it might try to boot from a "normal" volume (like one on the internal disk).
Strikes me as the most likely scenario. This all came about because I got a WinBlows box a while back for work-related software and have been backing it up to an NTSF partition on the MBR disk. I wanted to create a Windows partition on the APM disk, and when I found I couldn't, that led to the discussion on the other forum. I was hoping to have data from both computers on both drives in case one drive died. Sounds like I'm going to have to go all-Windows on the MBR disk. or accept that I'll need to boot from the install DVD to restore from the Mac partitions on that disk.

Thanks for a good, informative explanation--really clears things up for me!
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