Booting from a clone on a USB Hard Drive (spinning)

[Krackle]

Do i recall correctly that you can't boot from a bootable clone that is on an old school spinning hard drive connected by USB?? this , of course, occurred to me after I had made the clones on this usb drive.

I made several clones of different Os's in CCC that doesn't want to boot my computer..selected as startup disk etc..won't do it..

After this failure i kind of recalled that i always made my clones on Firewire externals for this reason..

 

[DeltaMac]

Booting to an OS X system on a PPC Mac was sometimes a challenge, but usually doable with a bit of code magic in Open Firmware.
Firewire, no problem at all.
But, since the advent of Intel processors, for the last 12 years, booting through USB is just making sure that your clone is actually a bootable one. It's not directly related to the type of drive hardware that you might use, but the interface itself.
If you were making copies of various different OSes, the Startup Disk preference pane will NOT tell you if a system that SHOULD be bootable, actually will boot. And, you also have to know if that particular Mac is compatible with the version of OS X that you have used for a clone. If it appears in the Startup Disk pane, that's not a guarantee that system is acceptable. I have bootable partitions for Tiger, which does not have Intel code, but will still appear as a choice for booting. It won't boot on any Intel Mac, but is fine on a wide range of PPC Macs. It actually appears in Startup Disk on many Intel Macs, but cannot actually boot. It even appears in the Option-boot picker screen, but again, doesn't actually boot.
I would suspect that your bootable clones may simply not be good copies of a bootable system, or maybe too old for current CCC to correctly make the system bootable, or just systems that are not compatible with the Mac that you are trying to boot.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Do i recall correctly that you can't boot from a bootable clone that is on an old school spinning hard drive connected by USB??"

No, that's NOT correct.

It doesn't matter if the drive is platter-based or SSD.
What DOES matter is HOW OLD the Mac is that you're trying to boot from.

Tell us about the Mac you have.
Which Mac is it?
What year was it made?
What version of the OS are you using?

 

[Krackle]

Upgraded 2013 mac pro...So far it boots properly in Non cloned disks in Snow Leopard, Mavericks, Sierra and High Sierra..These disks are the ones that I cloned..

I've been running the machine in Snow Leopard quite a bit for some important, currently unsupported, hardware that i use..and in Mavericks for most other stuff with no issues..

I'll check my settings in CCC..I've been making sure that Im using the right versions of CCC..i 'think'

 

[DeltaMac]

Are you using Snow Leopard server in a virtual machine? (That is, OS X 10.6.8 (?) )
A 2013 Mac Pro (MacPro6,1) can't possibly boot natively to Snow Leopard..

Ah, OK, I see now that you have a 2009 Mac Pro - which would explain your statement about Snow Leopard. I was wondering how you would do that on a 2013 Mac Pro.

 

[Krackle]

Delta..nice sleuthing..ha!

Yes, correct..I blurted out the year of my Laptop without even thinking.

So..anyway..The machine boots fine in all of these Os versions..I'm thinking I missed something in my CCC protocol..but I never really change anything..I've never had this issue with CCC..all my previous backup clones have been successful.

 

[Krackle]

Guess I'll make some new clones when i get back into town...