anyone succesfully create a bootable clone on external HD over USB?

[uncleMonty]

Our old MacBook (2007 2.16 GHz) is still running 10.4. Before attempting an upgrade to Snow Leopard I wanted to clone the HD in case of any problems. I used Carbon Copy Cloner onto a partition of a 2 TB WD MyPassport and the backup was apparently successful - all my data is there. But I can't boot from it. I did some troubleshooting on the CCC forums but with no clear outcome. Apparently some Western Digital drives can't be made bootable, but that's not the case for this one, as I can boot my Air (10.7) and MBP (10.5) from the other partitions on this drive that I've backed them up to. Apparently a USB 3.0 enclosure can cause unbootability for older machines that weren't intended for it, but I haven't seen any discussion of MacBooks being in that category, at least not Intel MacBooks.

So I am wondering whether anyone has made a bootable clone of their MacBook, and if so what external drive and connection type did you use? (And which OS?)

When I attempt the reboot from the clone, the machine has no problem locating the volume, and I get as far as the Apple logo on a grey background, then I get the message saying I have to power down.

Thanks.

 

[justperry]

Our old MacBook (2007 2.16 GHz) is still running 10.4. Before attempting an upgrade to Snow Leopard I wanted to clone the HD in case of any problems. I used Carbon Copy Cloner onto a partition of a 2 TB WD MyPassport and the backup was apparently successful - all my data is there. But I can't boot from it. I did some troubleshooting on the CCC forums but with no clear outcome. Apparently some Western Digital drives can't be made bootable, but that's not the case for this one, as I can boot my Air (10.7) and MBP (10.5) from the other partitions on this drive that I've backed them up to. Apparently a USB 3.0 enclosure can cause unbootability for older machines that weren't intended for it, but I haven't seen any discussion of MacBooks being in that category, at least not Intel MacBooks.

So I am wondering whether anyone has made a bootable clone of their MacBook, and if so what external drive and connection type did you use? (And which OS?)

When I attempt the reboot from the clone, the machine has no problem locating the volume, and I get as far as the Apple logo on a grey background, then I get the message saying I have to power down.

Thanks.

If you want to know what is going on do the following, choose the external drive as the boot up drive from System Preferences>Startup Disk, click the restart button, as soon as the mac restarts hold Command-V, Hold until text appears then release.
Now, take notice of the text and see where it hangs, you could also make a picture and attach it in your next post, make it a bit smaller please, not several MB, few 100 KB is sufficient.

Edit: When you are done you need to hold the Option key, choose the normal disk to startup normally and change the startup disk again in startup disk.

 

[uncleMonty]

JustPerry - thanks for your advice. I changed nothing about how I was attempting to reboot except for holding down command-V for verbose mode. The first time I did it, I got several chimes, a bit stuttering, and nothing else - I had to power down from a blank grey screen. The second time, I got a lot of "failed this" and "failed that" in the verbose output, but after thinking about it for a long while the machine actually decided to finish booting and my desktop appeared, apparently functional. I wanted to go back and take note of what the failed steps were in the verbose output, to see if they were serious or not, so I rebooted again - and this time everything went much faster, too fast for me to see any warnings or error messages in the verbose output. And the machine seems to be working fine. So at this point I'm going to cautiously assume I have a bootable clone. (I checked "About this Mac" and it really did boot from the external HD.)

I don't know if it was the request for verboseness that did the trick, or just trying again a few more times, but in any case it's all good now and I'm going to proceed to the 10.6 upgrade...

 

[justperry]

JustPerry - thanks for your advice. I changed nothing about how I was attempting to reboot except for holding down command-V for verbose mode. The first time I did it, I got several chimes, a bit stuttering, and nothing else - I had to power down from a blank grey screen. The second time, I got a lot of "failed this" and "failed that" in the verbose output, but after thinking about it for a long while the machine actually decided to finish booting and my desktop appeared, apparently functional. I wanted to go back and take note of what the failed steps were in the verbose output, to see if they were serious or not, so I rebooted again - and this time everything went much faster, too fast for me to see any warnings or error messages in the verbose output. And the machine seems to be working fine. So at this point I'm going to cautiously assume I have a bootable clone. (I checked "About this Mac" and it really did boot from the external HD.)

I don't know if it was the request for verboseness that did the trick, or just trying again a few more times, but in any case it's all good now and I'm going to proceed to the 10.6 upgrade...

A verbose mode startup does nothing more than starting up verbose, don't know what happened here, if it starts up fine I wouldn't think about it much.
Single User Mode does check and repair a disk though but you didn't use this mode.