Booted from external, MB screen went Black! Help!

[assia]

Hello.

I started another thread in the basics and help section asking for advice on formatting a new hdd and cloning my present one. This is the thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/332384/ I have another problem and posted on here as this section is moving faster than the other.

After, I booted from the external and after around 10 min of only the desktop background showing the screen went black! I don't know what happened. Can someone help me? Is there a way for me to boot from the hdd in the mb again or is it damaged?

 

[iToaster]

If you've got OS X still on the original HD, just unplug the external, or hold down "option" when you press the power button to turn it on and hold in until you see a screen displaying boot disks, then select one and press enter. Also, if it's connected via USB (I read that right, right?) it will be a slower less reliable connection that really shouldn't be booted from... FW all the way.

 

[CanadaRAM]

After, I booted from the external and after around 10 min of only the desktop background showing the screen went black! I don't know what happened. Can someone help me? Is there a way for me to boot from the hdd in the mb again or is it damaged?

Could the OS on the external be set to sleep or shutdown after 10 minutes? (some external hard drives have problems waking from sleep)
Is your machine plugged in to AC?

 

[assia]

Thanks both of you.

I don't know if the computer was asleep or not. I did a google search and found a post where someone said to push the power button then press "s". That shut down the computer the first time it did this.

After, I restarted and looked around the hdd and everything seemed to be fine. I then booted again from the external and looked around in there and all was fine also. So I then preceded to switch out the two drives.

The new drive in the mb seems to be fine but when I booted again from the external to check the old hdd it came on and loaded up. Then my screen became really dim. I was about to shut it down when my desktop started to flash on and off. I panicked and unhooked the external and the screen again went black. It wouldn't do a forced shut down until an hour later.

Is this normal even with a usb connection?