External Start Up Drive Won't Boot Up

[taomation]

Hi All,

My first post. I'm not sure if anyone here will be able to help, but you never know.

I have a Lacie external firewire drive that I use use as a start-up drive and it works flawlessly. I created another one that is the exact same drive that will not boot and gets stuck on the Apple screen. I have used it successfully before.

I have tried everything I could find online, cables, permissions, repair disk, resets etc. but to know avail.

Now having said that I think I might know what caused the problem, but don't know how to fix it.

After, I had successfully used this drive as a start-up, when it was online, but not the start-up. I used the Mackeeper duplicates finder on it, and after I deleted all the duplicates and tried to use it again as a start up, it wouldn't boot.

I think I may have deleted a file that it needs that is probably still on the drive, but in the wrong location.

I know that it's a pretty tall order for someone to have a solution to this, but like I said, "you never know".

Sorry for the long-winded post, and thanks in advance for any ideas.

Cheers...Ian

PS Macbook Pro OS 10.6.8

 

[justperry]

Hi All,

My first post. I'm not sure if anyone here will be able to help, but you never know.

I have a Lacie external firewire drive that I use use as a start-up drive and it works flawlessly. I created another one that is the exact same drive that will not boot and gets stuck on the Apple screen. I have used it successfully before.

I have tried everything I could find online, cables, permissions, repair disk, resets etc. but to know avail.

Now having said that I think I might know what caused the problem, but don't know how to fix it.

After, I had successfully used this drive as a start-up, when it was online, but not the start-up. I used the Mackeeper duplicates finder on it, and after I deleted all the duplicates and tried to use it again as a start up, it wouldn't boot.

I think I may have deleted a file that it needs that is probably still on the drive, but in the wrong location.

I know that it's a pretty tall order for someone to have a solution to this, but like I said, "you never know".

Sorry for the long-winded post, and thanks in advance for any ideas.

Cheers...Ian

PS Macbook Pro OS 10.6.8

Bold.
There is your problem.

Stay away from MacKeeper, CCleaner, CleanMyMac, they do more damage than good.
Plenty of threads here complaining about problems with macs and then find out they used the above.

If your normal HD starts up, clone it again, it will work.

 

[taomation]

Thanks, but there's things on the new drive that I can't get rid of that isn't on the old one. I need this one to work. It's either that or start from scratch

 

[justperry]

Thanks, but there's things on the new drive that I can't get rid of that isn't on the old one. I need this one to work. It's either that or start from scratch

You most likely can't solve this without starting over again, there are plenty of duplicates in OS X, the System needs then even if they are duplicates.

What you could do though is restoring parts of the System with the help of Carbon Copy Cloner.

Select the good one in the left source pane, the Target in the right pane, un-tick all Folders except bin, cores, System, private, sbin and usr.
Be very sure to set protect folders at root level, if you forget it will delete them.
Then start.

 

[taomation]

Thanks,

That's a very good idea. I'll give it a try. Thanks, again for the response...Ian

 

[justperry]

Thanks,

That's a very good idea. I'll give it a try. Thanks, again for the response...Ian

Yep, but as I said before, be careful, CCC is a very powerful App, actually it uses OS X built in commands to do its job.

If you never used it you could do a test on a different HD to see how it works.

Hope it works out.


And, never ever use that crap again. (MacKeeper, CleanMyMac, CCleaner)
If you need to use a program to resolve issues (And only then) , use Onyx.
OS X does not need maintenance (Apps), it has some built in scripts which do some maintenance. (Daily, Weekly and Monthly scripts)

 

[taomation]

Hey JP,

I'm pretty familiar with CCC, and it worked!!! Very good suggestion. I seem to have lost an IP address along the way, but I can resolve that.

I do some maintenance on my Mac, but use Cocktail for that and never had any problems with it. The only reason that I got Mac Keeper is for the duplicates finder, because I wanted to try to organize all the data drives I've accumulated over the years onto a couple of larger drives. If you know of a better program for doing that please let me know. I didn't know about the problems associated with MK, but I certainly don't like the way it's designed.

Again that for the help. I really appreciate it. I knew right when you said it, that it would work. Cheers...Ian

 

[justperry]

Hey JP,

I'm pretty familiar with CCC, and it worked!!! Very good suggestion. I seem to have lost an IP address along the way, but I can resolve that.

I do some maintenance on my Mac, but use Cocktail for that and never had any problems with it. The only reason that I got Mac Keeper is for the duplicates finder, because I wanted to try to organize all the data drives I've accumulated over the years onto a couple of larger drives. If you know of a better program for doing that please let me know. I didn't know about the problems associated with MK, but I certainly don't like the way it's designed.

Again that for the help. I really appreciate it. I knew right when you said it, that it would work. Cheers...Ian

Ag, good you know CCC, you know it can be very handy but also potentially "dangerous.
Cocktail should also be good, I never had problems with it.
I don't use any duplicates App since no app can do this safely, well maybe if it only searches in your Home Folder but not on the whole drive.

Bold, it should be considered malware, not only that, they also have strange/intrusive ways of advertising for this App.
Especially ex Windows Users fall for it, no need for any maintenance App except when there are problems.

Glad you solved it.

Any time.

 

[taomation]

Completely agree with the deceptive advertising. Didn't see that until after I got it. Thanks again for your help...I