Another "can't boot from cloned drive" problem.

[robgo]

I got it to boot BUT:

Let me back up a bit, so things don't get confusing.

This isn't written as a complaint, I love SuperDuper, it's a great piece of software. This is the first time I've had a problem with it, and as I've said, all my data is intact, nothing is lost (if I can find my old Firefox and Safari bookmarks on the drive that won't boot.)

This is just for documentation purposes, and/or "thinking out loud" on my part.

I have three external firewire drives that were bootable:

"main" -- Lacie, 80 gb, no partitions, been using it for over a year as my main disk, since the SMART status started failing on my internal drive, and SuperDuper successfully backed everything up. (Internal drive is pretty much fried now).

"backup" -- a Maxtor, 160 gb, partitioned backupboot, backupmyvideo, backupnetvideo, etc.

"rugged" -- a Lacie "rugged drive", 160 gb, which I love the look, feel, and tiny size of, purchased in December, 2007. Partitioned ruggedboot, ruggeddata, ruggedvideo. Except for trying it out when I first got it, this is my "almost brand-new drive that I'll never really use unless I really need it." The video and data partitions are empty.


Since I use it so much, I wanted to partition my "main" drive into "mainboot" and "maindata". The reason I wanted to do this was because, being a privacy freak, every couple of months I use the Apple Disk Utility to wipe the free space on my drive, using the 7-pass-overwrite. Last time I did this on "main" drive, I think I started at midnight, and it wasn't completed until about 4:00 p.m. the next day. Way too long. If I partition the drive, I can do the 7-pass-overwrite overnight on a partition.

About this time, I turned off "journaling" on my drives, as i do a lot of video work (transferring old VHS to DVD, etc.), and heard this would help.

So I use SuperDuper to clone "main" drive to "backupboot", which used to be bootable. Journaling was off on all drives. Then I partitioned "main" into "mainboot" and "maindata", then, with journaling off, cloned the new "backupboot" to "mainboot". I should have checked first, I suppose, to see if the new "backupboot" was bootable, before I cloned it back, but I didn't.

Now, "mainboot" won't boot. Which is why I started this thread. All the data is there, it mounts fine. Just won't boot. Turns out, "backupboot" won't boot, either, but mounts just fine (lots of data on the other partitions). "mainboot" and '"backupboot" both show in "preferences-startupdisk" and you can click either of them on, and it "says" the system will boot on either when you restart, but it doesn't. You get that off-white screen with the grey apple in the middle, and the spinning-sprocket-of-death. When you hold down option as you restart, they won't show as a choice. Yet they still mount just fine if you select "ruggedboot".

Switched firewire cables, did the stuff mentioned above, nada.

So tonight, on a lark, operating off of my almost-new, almost-never-used "ruggedboot" I again partitioned "main" into "mainboot" and "maindata", knowing it would erase all the data (no worries, data is still on "backupboot") AFTER turning journaling ON everywhere. THEN using SuperDuper I cloned "ruggedboot" to "mainboot."

Good news: "mainboot" now boots, and boots, and boots, and boots. So it's not the drive.

Bad news: wasn't really anything at all on "ruggedboot", it's pretty much an empty drive/partition, except for the basics. So now "mainboot", being a mirror of "ruggedboot" is pretty much empty, too.

So did it successfully clone with SuperDuper, and become bootable, because journaling was re-enabled? I don't know. Could be. Next "experiment" would be to clone back "backupboot" to "mainboot" with journaling turned on everywhere.

Another possibility: my iMac flat-panel Power PC, operating with Tiger, has only 2 firewire ports. When I purchased my Lacie Rugged Drive in December 2007, I also purchased a Belkin 6-Port Firewire Hub. It has a power cord, to give it a boost, I guess, but I've never used the power-cord, no need to as far I could tell, huge video files would transfer with no corruption. I wasn't using the Hub when I used SuperDuper to clone "maindrive" to "backupboot". I had to use it, though, to clone "backupboot" BACK to "mainboot". I was running off "ruggedboot", which took one of my computer's firewire ports, so I had to plug in the Firewire Hub, to plug in "backupboot" and "mainboot" at the same time, and use SuperDuper to clone BACK "backupboot" to "mainboot". Could be that's what went wrong? (rhetorical question, really).

I'll do more experimenting, see if I can figure it out.

My two hypotheses so far:

1. SuperDuper MAY not clone a bootable drive successfully, resulting in a working BOOTABLE drive, IF journaling is not enabled.

2. SuperDuper MAY not clone a bootable drive successfully, resulting in a working BOOTABLE drive, IF a firewire hub is used. Perhaps there's a slight defect in one of the 6 hub ports, connection at the time of the clone, etc.

Quick question: my "ruggeddrive" is partitioned into "ruggedboot" "ruggedvideo" and "ruggeddata", the latter two completely empty, 49.55 GB each. Would there be any problem with me cloning "backupboot" to, say, "ruggedvideo", thereby having two BOOTABLE partitions on the same drive? I'm guessing there would be no problem, but thought I'd ask. I could do this without using the hub, then check if it was bootable, and then, if so, clone it back to "mainboot", without the hub, and check if "mainboot" was then bootable, with all the data/bookmarks, etc. that were there when I started the whole process. Of course, I guess that wouldn't really answer the question "was it the hub or was it journaling was turned off the first time?"