Irregular SD boot probs w backup firewire partitions

[csrollyson]

Hi Dave,

More sleuthing; been reading many useful threads on SD discussions, namely these:
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/s...ghlight=goldie
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/s...earchid=143350
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/s...rnal+partition

I do have a 3rd partition (empty) on the FW, so I thought I'd install Tiger on it and boot from it (you'd suggested this to Goldie). Using Tiger (10.4) CD, restarted Mac 61 with CD. It showed Mac 61 (17-in int hd), Mac 6BU, Mac 51BU and spare2 (the 3 FW partitions) as volumes; however, the FW partitions had red ! marks. When I clicked on spare2, the installer said it couldn't install tiger there because it couldn't boot from it.

Shut down. Ran Disk Warrior, rebuilt directory on spare2. No change.

I therefore conclude that the drive itself has experienced something that has made it unbootable. Please note that it was bootable yesterday. I've had no crashes. All the data is there. What could cause this?

Thanks- Chris