Drive will not boot, but can be read from

As the title would suggest, I have a drive that was previously in my PowerBook G4. I replaced it with a new one because I would get the 'you need to restart' message when turning the computer on. I bought a firewire enclosure for it and when hooked up to the PowerBook it mounts and can be read from fine. But when trying to boot from it via Firewire the same message appears.

Any way to repair boot files so that I can clone it over to the new HD and have it be bootable?

The main problem really is that I have lost my Leopard DVD and the system restore disk containing OS 10.3.x is pretty useless. What's more, I had made an iso of the disc and attempted to burn it to a DL DVD, which I subsequently found out the PowerBook's super drive will not read.

Hey, if any of this were easy, it would be boring. Thanks!

Yeah, 10.3 installed fine on the new drive.

Also, just now I tried to repair the drive with Disk Utility and got an error message something in the way of: 'the underlying task reported failure on exit'. Doesn't sound promising.

Thanks.

BrianBaughn said:

That just about eliminates a hardware error causing the kernel panic.

I suppose you've tried booting in safe mode and/or single-user mode.

It would seem you're going to be on the hunt for a Leopard install disk. From there I would thing you'd be able to use migration assistant to move your data, settings and apps over to the new drive.

When you get the Leopard install disk, boot from it with the old drive in the PowerBook to run Disk Utility and check the S.M.A.R.T. status of the drive, just to be sure it's safe to use after you're done with your reconfiguration.

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Thanks much. Looks like I just have to bite down and spend another $100 or so on a Leopard disk...AGAIN!! Thanks!

SuperJudge said:

You might need to repartition the new drive with APM instead of MBR. This is a fairly common issue that's easily overlooked when installing a new hard drive.

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The new drive is fine, the issue is that the old one is not bootable any longer. Thanks.