iMac 800 flat-panel with LaCie external drive. On the external drive I have a data partition and 2 OS 10.3.9 partitions. My problem is that if a do a cold start of the computer and invoke the startup manager (by holding the option key on startup), the startup manager only shows my internal drive as an option. However, if I go ahead and let the system boot off the internal drive - and then do a restart (a warm start, in other words), all of my OS 10 partitions show up in the startup manager.
I get similar behavior if I simply select my startup disk through the startup disk preference pane. If I select one of the external partitions and do a warm restart, the iMac boots up from the desired external partition. If I shut the computer off however, and then start up, it reverts to my internal drive.
So, what is different between a cold start and a restart that would make my external fire-wire drives invisible. By the way, every partition mounts on the desktop just fine after the boot process, regardless of how I've selected the startup partition.
One other piece of information. If I connect this particular firewire drive to my laptop and do a cold start from there, the laptop's startup manager sees the external partitions just fine!
Any advice would be appreciated.
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