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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Desktops > Boot Drive failed to be found - Question Marks ???

Boot Drive failed to be found - Question Marks ???
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Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Jul 2007
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Nov 1, 2007, 05:56 PM
 
I recently used SuperDuper to clone my primary OSX 10.4 Tiger startup disk to a second internal hard drive in my Intel MacPro, and now I am experiencing strange behavior when booting from the Cloned drive...

To start with, let me first say that upoin successfully cloning my main OS onto the secondary internal drive, I removed my primary drive from my machine and replaced it with a cleanly formatted blank drive for data storage...in other words, there is currently only one capable startup disk in my machine at the moment...

So when running my OS from my new Clone OS drive, everything works fine when the OS is running, and things are fine and dandy...When I restart my computer, the machine loads right back up as if everything is totally normal and functioning perfect.

But then I went ahead and shutdown the machine for a short while, and upon returning and attempting to power up again, the startup process brings me to the FLASHING QUESTION MARK icon shortly after hitting the power button (as if for one reason or another, its not seeing my OS)...

The only way I can get the machine to work again, is by force-quitting the flashing question mark screen thereby powering back down; then restarting holding the 'option' key, and choosing my Clone boot drive from the list of startup discs (as it does show up as the only available drive in this list...)...Then my computer loads back up again, and things are working as normal, again, as if there were no problems...I test restarting a few times - no problem...I then re-test shutting down and powering back on again...QUESTIONS MARKS AGAIN!!

Anyone have any idea what the heck is going on, and how I should go about handling this?

any suggestions would be greatly appreciated... Thanks!
     
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Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: UK
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Nov 2, 2007, 06:48 PM
 
Boot it up, then load the startup disk preference pane and select the drive from there. Reboot and test. You might also use Disk Utility to repair permissions and verify/repair the disk.

For future reference, I find cloning drives can be less than 100% reliable. I would have installed a clean OS on the second drive and then run the Migration assistant. I find it very reliable indeed.
MacBook 2.0GHz CD; MacBook Pro 15" 2.4GHz Late '08; PowerMac G4 MDD Dual 1GHz; 3x Xserve G4 1GHz; Mac Mini 2GHz; Big pile of broken and working bits;
     
   
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