As per my earlier thread about my wife's iMac issues [forums.macresource.com] , I am now having an issue with using her backup drive as the startup disk for my son's MacBook. To review, I had a clone of my wife's internal hard drive from her iMac G4 on an external Firewire drive. I cloned it to another external Firewire drive, formatted my wife's backup external drive and then cloned her system and data back to the original Firewire drive. I then did an archive and install of OS X 10.5.4 onto her external drive and then updated it to 10.5.8. I have no problem using my wife's backup drive as the startup disk on my MacBook (2.4gHz white MacBook.) When I try to use it as the startup disk on my son's more recent white MacBook (2.0gHz), I run into issues. When I first connected the external drive and started up my son's MacBook, I pressed the option key and got the choice of his internal drive or my wife's Firewire drive. All looked good except that it booted from the internal drive even though I selected the external drive.

I then used system preferences to select the Firewire drive as the startup disk and restarted. The MacBook went to a blue screen, then a black screen, then a blue screen, then a black screen over and over. I shut it down, disconnected the Firewire drive and restarted and it started properly. I then connected her Firewire drive to my MacBook again and started from it without a problem. I thought maybe something was wrong with the Firewire input so I took the Firewire drive that has my backup clone on it and tried it with my son's MacBook. It started perfectly.

So now I'm really puzzled. I can use my wife's external drive to startup my MacBook but not my son's and I can start up either using my external backup drive. Any ideas why my wife's drive won't work on his computer? (My son's MacBook recognizes it as a startup disk.)

I can't follow. But I think you're trying to boot an Intel mac with a drive that can boot a G4 iMac?

Sorry, I was hoping that it wasn't too convoluted. The backup drive was originally formatted on a PPC Mac and was used with the iMac G4. When the iMac started acting up. I took the backup drive and cloned it to a second external drive. I then formatted the backup drive using my MacBook (using GUID file format) and then cloned my wife's stuff back onto the newly formatted external drive. Since the system on the external drive was OS X 10.4.11 and had been installed on the iMac, I was advised to do an archive and install of Leopard on the backup drive, which I did. This external backup drive will work as a startup disk with one MacBook but for some reason will not work as a startup disk on the other.

Despite this, a completely different backup drive (the one for my MacBook) will work as a startup disk for either MacBook.

I'm just trying to figure out why my wife's backup drive will work as a startup on one MacBook but not the other.

Hope this is more clear.

Michael

The only thing I can think of is to repair permissions on your wife's drive while it is connected to your son's MacBook. Maybe that would sort out the OS.


Good luck.

- Winston

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Be seeing you.

Got the product numbers handy? You generally can not boot a machine with a version of the OS earlier than what came installed on it.

Late 2008 MB467LL/A came with 10.5.5
White 2009 MB881LL/A came with 10.5.6

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In tha 360. MRF User Map

When I transferred the hard drive from my late 2007 macbook to my new 2.0 Mini, something similar happened (although it went into open firmware and eventually started).
I think its just got to do with hardware specific files/system settings.
And maybe 32 vs. 64 bit mode.

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Filliam H. Muffman
Got the product numbers handy? You generally can not boot a machine with a version of the OS earlier than what came installed on it.

Late 2008 MB467LL/A came with 10.5.5
White 2009 MB881LL/A came with 10.5.6

I thought of that so I had updated the OS to 10.5.8, which is what his MacBook has on it.

I'll try to repair permissions on her drive tomorrow.

Michael

> The MacBook went to a blue screen, then a
> black screen, then a blue screen, then a black
> screen over and over.

I had that happen when trying to boot a Mac that came with 10.5.6 using a 10.5.0 install disc.

It's as Filliam H. Muffman wrote, one cannot generally boot a Mac with an earlier version of the OS than it came installed with.

...But you wrote that you did the 10.5.8 update. If the white MacBook is the one released last January, it requires 10.5.5 or later.

Hmm....

I'd try redoing the 10.5.8 update using the combo updater instead of the Software Update or delta updater.

Is the external hard drive a Western Digital?