Intel Mac boots on Apple Partition but not GUID?!?!

[jlgage01]

I have not tried that so I will do that the next time along with the other methods. How do I refresh in the Boot Menu once I attach the drive?

I have done the Restart from the System Preferences as well as restarting the computer and holding down Option until the attached boot devices are shown and have clicked on the different boot drives but still get the same results.

[dnanian]

And when you switched to FW400, you unplugged/disconnected from the Mac ALL the other drives?

[jlgage01]

Yes, I ejected all external HDDs, I pulled the FW800 cable out from the back of the Mac, then I plugged in the Rugged with FW400 straight to the Mac. I went to the System Preferences selected to boot up off of the Rugged, restarted and nothing ... just the white screen with an Apple and no indication (like the thinking wheel) that the computer was doing anything ... I leave it like that for a couple minutes before I turn off the computer, disconnect the external HDD then turn the computer on to startup off the internal HDD.

[dnanian]

I really don't know what's going on here, unfortunately. It certainly should be working, and if the drive's showing up in the Startup Disk preference pane, it has an intact OS, is properly blessed, isn't disallowed by the OS (wrong partitioning, drive, etc) and should work.

I assume that you've tried starting up in Safe Boot (Shift) and Verbose (Cmd+Opt+v) to see if you get any diagnostics, yes? And you've applied the "All apps crash" 'fix' at the top of the forum? (I didn't mention either before because you indicated it was booting previously.)

[jlgage01]

I have not tried to startup in Safe Mode yet ... will try with my new copy.

Also, did not apply the "All apps crash" but have downloaded and have that as an After script ... will this script bother the copying that is performed by the LaCie drive that does actually work or should I remove it from that scheduled backup?

[dnanian]

The script shouldn't bother anything.

[jlgage01]

Well, I just finished trying everything I could think of after I reformatted to APM ...
Restart with FW800 = X
Plugged in FW400 and restarted = X
Selected Disk on Startup w/ FW400 = X
Restart from preferences w/ & w/o other drives hooked up w/ FW400 and FW800 = X
Startup in Safe Mode = X ... it won't even go to Safe Mode

My last ditch effort is to make the drive a single GUID partition and run SD on it effectively wasting 1/2 of the drive space. Has anyone ever heard of reboots not working on a drive with multiple partitions? That is my only other guess.

Has anyone ever heard that the portable LaCie Rugged Drives can not create reboot drives or are not configured as such?

[dnanian]

I've got a lot of users who have no problem starting up from the Rugged drive.

[jlgage01]

Well, I just tried my last ditch attempt of using the Rugged partitioned as 1 GUID drive and nothing. It is weird, I can feel the Rugged drive running through the reboot until the gray apple gets on the screen and then it just stops. I can also watch some indicator lights on a USB port and they are on until the gray apple comes on the screen and all the lights go out at the same time as the drive stops running.

[jlgage01]

YEAH! I FINALLY GOT IT!!!!

Keypoint ... you have to have power supplied to the Rugged when you are using it to boot from (at least I did). I used the supplied power cord which plugs into a USB opening on the iMac, restarted and it booted right up!

[dnanian]

Ah-hah! A drive POWER problem?!? Wow.

But -- why wasn't it working with FireWire? Lots more power on FireWire...

[jlgage01]

Yep. That is a good question because that was my understanding also. So I confirmed and reconfirmed yesterday several times and using FW800 AND the power cord (cable plugged into a USB port) it worked every single time .... interesting ....

[dnanian]

Bizarre. But glad you're working.

Take away lesson for all: if it comes with a wall wart, use it.