My IMac is running Snow Leopard however my mbp is running Mavericks (I just installed it directly over M) and I would like to start sharing calendar info and reminders across all my devises via iCloud. So, I downloaded Mavericks to my iMac and attempted to create a bootable thumb drive. However, when I go to system preferences to select the startup disk the thumb drive is not visible, only the iMac hard drive and my OWS Mercury drive (used for Carbon Copy Cloner backups) are available. So, my question is, could I just let CCC run it's normally scheduled backup to the OWS drive tomorrow night and then after verifying it still boots up, wipe the iMac hard drive and run the installation from the OWC drive and just forget about using the thumb drive? Thank you for your help.
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Another Mavericks upgrade question
- Thread starter trave1guy
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It sounds like where you are going wrong is trying to set the thunk drive in that Startup Disk panel. Normally you would just hold the option key down when booting then select the USB installer key from there.
The problem is with my wireless keyboard, I cannot seem to get the option key to be recognized when the system boots up. I have tried holding it down before the chime, the instant the chime comes on, a second after the chime and when the chime is done. It always just comes up as normal. So, I am trying to figure out the best way to do a clean install based on the idea that I will not be able to get the system to recognize the option key to allow the selection of the thumb drive to boot up after I have wiped my hard drive.
If I'm reading your post correctly, you want to go from SL -> Mavericks on your iMac.
You do realize that you can upgrade to Mavericks directly from Snow Leopard without needing any other boot system intervention.
If the problem is just not being able to press the startup key sequence from your wireless keyboard, any usb keyboard will do, Mac or PC, even a $2 one from the Sally ann thrift store.
You do realize that you can upgrade to Mavericks directly from Snow Leopard without needing any other boot system intervention.
If the problem is just not being able to press the startup key sequence from your wireless keyboard, any usb keyboard will do, Mac or PC, even a $2 one from the Sally ann thrift store.
In the end I decided to do as barley proposed and just installed Mavericks directly over SL. What prompted this is that my Carbon Copy Cloner backup failed last night the CCC error message was that it could not access my iMac hard drive. I just figured it was not able to wake it from sleep mode. However, when I looked at the hard drive via Finder it looked like a backup instead of the original, though no files were missing. So, I just decided to install the new OS and see what would happen. All went well, everything seems to be working. May not be as fast as it could have been w\a clean install but it's done and performance seems fine. Now I just need to figure out what happened w\CCC backup. Thanks for the help.
I have an Apple wireless keyboard and the same thing happens to me. What I do is as others have said as soon as I hear the chime, I quickly press and hold the CMD key along with the R key. Once I get to the Boot Utility screen I insert the USB drive and I select which drive to boot from. If I select my USB drive it boots directly to that drive.
It's a handshake bluetooth issue while booting up. Inserting a thumb drive into a USB port only delays the handshake routine. If you want eliminate the frustration get yourself a Windows USB keyboard and after the chime, press and hold the ALT plus the R keys.