2009 MP - Booting Issue

[sound kev]

hey ,

i recently had my 2008 MP replaced by Apple for a 2009 model .
i took the precaution of making a backup of my previous primary HD (with SuperDuper) onto a new HD bought specifically for the task .

i presumed that it would just be a matter of putting the HD in to bay 2 , going to 'startup disk' in System Prefs - and choosing this as my boot drive ... however ... on restart , all i'm getting is a blank screen .

i've also tried booting while holding down the Option key -
both HD's are showing up to choose from but as soon as i double click on the old HD i get a freeze

it took me more than a week to install all my third party plug-ins for Logic Pro ... i'm praying i don't have to go through all those authorizations again !

am i doing something wrong ?

thanks

 

[geoffreak]

SuperDuper should make a working bootable copy, so I'm surprised it doesn't.

What drive are you copying from and to? Have you tried moving the drive to a different port internally? Have you checked the SMART status of the replacement boot drive?

 

[sound kev]

hi geoffreak ,

the drive is a 1TB Spinpoint F1 .
i've moved it around and it makes no difference .
it was definitely working - and bootable - in my last MP .

i've also got bootable backups on a couple of external LaCie drives and they're doing the same ... i select them to boot from and .. freeze .

i had an idea to make a backup of the new mp's HD on another (internal) HD and then (in SuperDuper) do a 'backup- user files' + 'copy newer files from **my 08 MP backup**' - but this didn't work either .


apologies for not knowing , what's a SMART status ?

the HD shows up on the desktop and is freely accessible .

 

[geoffreak]

Is the OS up to date? If you are using an older version of Mac OSX, you won't be able to boot on newer hardware.

SMART status

 

[sound kev]

yep , evrything is up to date .

it's not booting from two different backup sources .. internal or the external .
i'm hoping it's not some kind of data corruption - my previous MP had a few issues ...

are there any other avenues i could explore in SuperDuper that you know of ?

i've read through the help files but can't seem to see any answers .

thanks .

 

[geoffreak]

Well, I would suggest trying a fresh installation of Leopard and using Migration assistant to port the data off the hard drive.

If data corruption is really the problem, SuperDuper won't fix it (clones are exact copies after all )

 

[sound kev]

ok , cheers man - i'm trying this atm :

Restoring when you can’t start up from your backup :

If you have a backup image or volume, but can’t start up from it, you can
still restore using your OS X install disc. To do so:
• Start up from the OS X Install disc.
• When the Installer starts, choose “Disk Utility” from its Application
menu.
• Once the Disk Utility starts, select the drive you want to restore to,
and switch to the Restore tab.

------------------------------------------

just doesn't add up , the backups booted perfectly on my previous MP ..
and the fact that they show up as options when i go to 'startup disk' in 'sytem prefs' ... weird .

 

[geoffreak]

Actually, before you try that, have you tried repairing the disk you are trying to boot with disk utility?

 

[Cynicalone]

Could be a driver problem. Different graphics cards in the 08 and 09 model, something simple like that maybe.

 

[sound kev]

... i'd already started

i got a 'restore failure' message 'could not restore , operation not permitted' .

so repaired the disk with Disk Utility (even though it said it was ok) ...
and tried to repair permissions too .. which i couldn't ... there were lots of exceptions which couldn't be fixed (i tried 3 times) .

so for the time being i'm stumped

just having another stab at restoring with disk utility .

sk

 

[geoffreak]

If you can't repair the hard drive, it sounds like the hard drive has failed. You did verify it, right?

You can try migrating the data off the drive, but if that doesn't work I hope you have a Time Machine backup.

 

[sound kev]

If you can't repair the hard drive, it sounds like the hard drive has failed. You did verify it, right?

You can try migrating the data off the drive, but if that doesn't work I hope you have a Time Machine backup.

the hard drive itself is fine (verified) - but there were permissions which couldn't be fixed .. whether this would have a bearing ?

i've read various places that the migration assistant is a bit hit and miss ..
i also steered away from doing a Time Machine backup as you can't boot from it ... which is why i went for SuperDuper .

... this isn't looking good is it

 

[sound kev]

ok , as an experiment i've partitioned a seperate internal HD ,
put a fresh Leopard install on it .. and am now transferring files over from an external backup of my MBP .. purpose being - i haven't had any issues with my laptop so i want to see if i can create a healthy boot drive this way .

 

[geoffreak]

I had no issues migrating to my new Mac Mini with Migration Assistant my old Mac Mini's data from an external which I cloned with SuperDuper.

 

[Cynicalone]

Migrating is a bit different than cloning your HDD and dropping that in a new computer.

When you clone it you are carrying over all the old junk. That is why I mentioned drivers above. If you have a Mac Pro with a ATI 4870 and you drop in a HDD that was working fine with an 8800GT there are going to be problems. Odds are the display won't even come on. I'm just guessing on the hardware since no details where given.

Much easier to migrate your user info or manually transfer you data imo.

 

[sound kev]

Migrating is a bit different than cloning your HDD and dropping that in a new computer.

When you clone it you are carrying over all the old junk. That is why I mentioned drivers above. If you have a Mac Pro with a ATI 4870 and you drop in a HDD that was working fine with an 8800GT there are going to be problems. Odds are the display won't even come on. I'm just guessing on the hardware since no details where given.

Much easier to migrate your user info or manually transfer you data imo.

thanks Cynicalone -
i'm slightly confused though .
how would i go about migrating my user info and transfer data ?
my problem is that i have a ton of 3rd party audio plug-ins that took me over a week to install and authorize on my 2008 MP (GeForce 8800 GT) and i'm trying to avoid having to go through all that fiddling about again with my 2009 MP (GeForce GT 120) .

i'm going to have a stab at installing the OS again and at the point where it asks whether i would like to copy across info from another volume etc i'm going to try doing so from the original backup ... hopefully it will just copy over my applications and plug-ins and not drivers and stuff that would screw things up !

sk