[KenDallas]

Well, I have been trying to do this for a while and have not been successful. Thought I would ask the wise people of MacNN

When considering the Mac platform and my switch from the PC world I had learned of the ease with which Powerbook hard drives could be cloned to external firewire drives, and then one could also boot the Powerbook off of this external backup.

I have been using SuperDuper to clone my powerbook drive. The drive has been formated as HFS, and the initial backup was a "complete" backup. SuperDuper erases the drive and supposedly copies everything from the hard drive of your laptop. When I try to boot from this drive I only see a gray screen. When I go to verify the size of files on this external clone and the powerbook I always find that the powerbook has about 900mb more data than the external drive. My first question..

If the external drive is supposed to be an exact clone of the powerbook, then why
is does the powerbook contain more data than this external drive?

I have been messing with this for over 2 months now and haven't been able to find a solution. My understanding was that a Powerbook should be able to boot off any firewire drive? Are there only certain brands of external drives that are able to do this?

Any and all help with this is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Ken.

PS. I have a 15" Powerbook running 10.4.2 and have also tried Carbon Copy Cloner without much luck.

[JoshuaZ]

Well the size difference could be because of logs. That would be my first guess.

I'm pretty sure that you should be able to boot off any firewire drive. Its quite odd that you can't. If your firewire ports working otherwise?

[Randman]

CCC not Tiger ready, still.

[KenDallas]

You're right about CCC not yet ready for Tiger. I meant to say that I have tried CCC under Panther. My Powerbook came with Panther installed... later I upgraded to Tiger and using SuperDuper under Tiger with no luck either... Quite frankly, this problem is driving me nuts.

Originally Posted by Randman

CCC not Tiger ready, still.

[KenDallas]

Would the logs make that much of a difference in size? I mean, logs files after all are text files and for text files to total almost a gig is a lot of logging.... but other than this booting problem the firewire port works great !!!

Originally Posted by JoshuaZ

Well the size difference could be because of logs. That would be my first guess.

I'm pretty sure that you should be able to boot off any firewire drive. Its quite odd that you can't. If your firewire ports working otherwise?

[amazing]

CCC can work with Tiger, just download Pseudo, a utility which gives the application root privileges without activating root (root is best kept deactivated.) You drag CCC onto Pseudo and then CCC works.

About starting from the external fw drive: You didn't by chance activate Open Firmware Password Protection, which prevents anyone from booting from externals? Doesn't sound like it since it should be asking you for the password, but just checking.

Which firewire drive manufacturer? Because there are certain bridge chips that aren't compatible, yours might need a firmware update to work.

Lastly, have you checked that your version of SuperDuper is compatible?

[KenDallas]

Lets see if I can respond to all your questions... I am not sure if I would want to try the Pseudo solution to running CCC and my only reasoning for this is that I am rather new to the Mac environment and this sounds like a solution that an advanced user may consider. If something goes wrong I would end up doing more damage than good not knowing the internal workings of the MacOS just yet.

To be candid, I have no idea what Open Firmware Password Protection is, but as you said, if it were active then I am sure I would have to enter a password to be able to boot from any external device. Is there a way to verify this?

As for the Firewire drive manufacturer, its a DiskGo EDGE!. Some may say it may be a sub-par brand but its performed wonderfully for me the six months that I have had it. I have used it with a PC as well as with my Powerbook and has worked flawlessly. But the drive working well does not discredit your suggestion of perhaps needing a firmware update. The manufacturer web site, as well as the box in which the drive arrived say that the drive is Mac compatible. This could mean that the drive was formated FAT32 (which of course the Mac can read/write), so to be sure I reformated the drive using HFS+. I will check the web site again to see if there are any firmware updates available. Here is the URL to the manufacturer's site if you would like to take a look at the drive yourself... http://www.edgetechcorp.com/store/EDGDG35USBFWHDD.htm

Finally, yes... I am using the most recent version of SuperDuper. I selected SuperDuper for the rave reviews its received. I am not locked into SuperDuper though and am open to trying other backup software if they will work. But I doubt this is a superduper issue. I still wonder about the reason why there would be more data in terms of GB than on th external drive after performing a "full-backup".

Originally Posted by amazing

CCC can work with Tiger, just download Pseudo, a utility which gives the application root privileges without activating root (root is best kept deactivated.) You drag CCC onto Pseudo and then CCC works.

About starting from the external fw drive: You didn't by chance activate Open Firmware Password Protection, which prevents anyone from booting from externals? Doesn't sound like it since it should be asking you for the password, but just checking.

Which firewire drive manufacturer? Because there are certain bridge chips that aren't compatible, yours might need a firmware update to work.

Lastly, have you checked that your version of SuperDuper is compatible?

[outsourced]

SuperDuper! is fantastic. I've used it recently with no problems, and I've given up CCC a long time ago after spending a week fixing my file permissions.

Have you tried just installing the OS onto the drive instead of trying to clone an existing one?

[bgotori]

Hey KenDallas

Are you running File F(V)ault??? If you are thats one of the Problems, also you need to remember that Booting from your External Drive, Doesn't mean Really True Boot, files and such are still connected to your Internal Drive... Also if you change your PassWord on the External Drive using File F(V)ault it will seperate you from your System Settings and you will have to Start All Over from there unless you Change back to your Original PassWord and than Relocate your Old Files and set it up from there.

Also did you Change your Boot settings in the SYSTEM PREFs to Boot off the External???


Great Times!!!

Brad

[KenDallas]

I have not tried installing the OS directly onto the drive. This is where my being a novice comes in, I dont exactly know how this is done. Meaning, if there was a way that I could manually set things up initially to where the external drive would boot, then I could just use the "Smart Update" option within SuperDuper to keep everything sync'd up...

Is there a resource on the web you can point me to where I can learn how I can manually install whatever software necessary to have it boot?

Originally Posted by outsourced

SuperDuper! is fantastic. I've used it recently with no problems, and I've given up CCC a long time ago after spending a week fixing my file permissions.

Have you tried just installing the OS onto the drive instead of trying to clone an existing one?

[KenDallas]

Hey Brad... thanks for responding?

I am not using the FileVault feature what-so-ever. I am not running a very sophisticated system at all... just basic system with basic software. I have been burnt before and have been caught with my pants down (loss of data without backups) and would like to not get caught in that situation again.... thus the desperate need to have a bootable backup.

As for your final question, yes, I have gone into the Systems Preference panel and the external drive doesn't even show up under "Start up Disk" pane. This is truly strange...

Originally Posted by bgotori

Hey KenDallas

Are you running File F(V)ault??? If you are thats one of the Problems, also you need to remember that Booting from your External Drive, Doesn't mean Really True Boot, files and such are still connected to your Internal Drive... Also if you change your PassWord on the External Drive using File F(V)ault it will seperate you from your System Settings and you will have to Start All Over from there unless you Change back to your Original PassWord and than Relocate your Old Files and set it up from there.

Also did you Change your Boot settings in the SYSTEM PREFs to Boot off the External???


Great Times!!!

Brad

[KenDallas]

I am not sure if this information would be helpful in trouble-shooting my situation, but when I try to boot and when the grey screen shows up, I can hear the external drive start to spin, mount, and continue spinning.

It almost sounds like the drive is mounting and the computer is looking for data but cant find any... not sure if this information helps.....

Thanks everyone for helping with this... hopefully I can have it working with everyone's help.

Ken.

[amazing]

Ken: At this point, you have nothing to lose by trying CCC using Pseudo. If the drive doesn't boot after cloning your system, then it'll have to be something with the drive. Some firewire drives don't permit booting either because of the chipset or the firmware version.

Considering the number of hours you've already put into this, I'd go out at buy a Macally firewire case from someplace like newegg.com and slap the HD into that. It'll boot.

[KenDallas]

Is it really this simple? meaning, just simply buy a mac compatible external enclosure for drives and then it should work?

Can you recommend other firewire case manufacturers like MacAlly that would work with the powerbook?

Originally Posted by amazing

Ken: At this point, you have nothing to lose by trying CCC using Pseudo. If the drive doesn't boot after cloning your system, then it'll have to be something with the drive. Some firewire drives don't permit booting either because of the chipset or the firmware version.

Considering the number of hours you've already put into this, I'd go out at buy a Macally firewire case from someplace like newegg.com and slap the HD into that. It'll boot.

[CatOne]

Not all firewire enclosures support booting. Many of the cheapie ones in fact do not.

You should get an enclosure that uses an Oxford (911 or 922) chipset if you want to boot from the firewire drive. I'm sure the enclosures from Wiebetech use this chipset and are bootable -- I suspect you enclosure is NOT bootable.

I've encountered this first-hand: I booted for 6 months off a La Cie external drive, and bought a NexStar enclosure which would NOT boot on the same machine (they were cloned the same way). It's the enclosure and chipset, NOT the way you're trying to copy over the data, so quit wasting your time

[KenDallas]

You're right. I will just buy an enclosure and just not worry about it.

Originally Posted by CatOne

Not all firewire enclosures support booting. Many of the cheapie ones in fact do not.

You should get an enclosure that uses an Oxford (911 or 922) chipset if you want to boot from the firewire drive. I'm sure the enclosures from Wiebetech use this chipset and are bootable -- I suspect you enclosure is NOT bootable.

I've encountered this first-hand: I booted for 6 months off a La Cie external drive, and bought a NexStar enclosure which would NOT boot on the same machine (they were cloned the same way). It's the enclosure and chipset, NOT the way you're trying to copy over the data, so quit wasting your time

[KenDallas]

Thank you everyone for the help in insight. All of you will be happy to know that the problem is solved via purchase of a new hard drive enclosure containing the Oxford 911 chipset.

Although a few of you suggested purchase of a MacAlly enclosure I was not too fond of the fact that they didn't have power on/off switches. Instead, I opted for the Rosewill enclosure (I made sure that it had a Oxford 911 chipset) and simply swapped the drive from the older enclosure to the newer one.

Without changing anything else I was to boot from the drive in this new enclosure, no problems what-so-ever !!!!!

I highly recommend this enclosure, looks very nice, and performs like a champ. Thank you all once agian for all your help.

Ken.

PS. For those of you curious about what this enclosure looks like, you can find it here: http://www.rosewill.com/product/prod...x?productId=80

[analogika]

FWIW, those enclosures are sold in Germany as the LMP "Pleiades".

They're fine.

[I was David B.]

Originally Posted by CatOne

Not all firewire enclosures support booting. Many of the cheapie ones in fact do not.

I can support this. It is indeed the reason why your clone does not boot.
I have a 2.5 inch DVico Momobay with firewire and usb support and there is no way to make it boot. (Btw, it was not cheapo at all and is a very nice enclosure.)

My sarotech 3.5 inch hardbox boots a ccc clone perfectly.
Maybe there is a way to update the firmware. Just have a look at the manufacturers site before you spend more money.

Super duper is not as transparent as ccc, because it does not tell you exactly which files it copies. The missing 900 MB can be caches, this has been said before. I wouldn't be worried (I would be worried to carry around 900 MB of caches on my system instead ).

Carbon Copy Cloner 2.3 does clone 10.4 in the meantime.

[Randman]

CCC used with Pseudo does clone just fine with Tiger.