Leopard Won't Install. WTF?!?!?

[Moof1904]

I'm running Leopard on my main boot drive and I have a 400 gig external drive that's partitioned into a 360 gig partition for Time Machine and a 40 gig partition that I want to install Leopard on as an emergency boot drive in case I have to do repairs on my startup drive and don't feel like booting from the Leopard install DVD.

I run the Leopard installer and it acts like it's installing with no problem. When the install finishes I get the green checkmark and the installer then reboots. Instead of booting to the newly installed Leopard so that I can do the new config stuff, it just reboots from my original startup drive.

Attempts to force a startup from the new partition fail (the new partition shows up in the Startup Drive system pref, so the OS thinks that the partition as an OS on it). Instead of booting from the new partition like i've selected, it just boots from my main startup drive.

Looking at the new partition, it looks like a complete install of Leopard.

I've tried this install three times. I've erased the partition using Disk Tools and even zeroed out the partition when erasing it in case there's flotsam remaining from an earlier failed attempt.

WTF?

 

[Makosuke]

I thought the installer warned you about this, but is it possible you have the wrong partition map format?

You should be using APM if you've got a PPC Mac and GUID if it's an Intel Mac (use the options button in the Partition tab of Disk Utility).

 

[Moof1904]

Thanks for the response

It's a G5 and Disk Utility tells me that it's Apple Partition Map.

 

[tyr2]

Perhaps a daft question, but it is a firewire drive isn't it. G5's can't boot from USB (iirc).

Does the drive show up when you hold alt/option when booting, to bring up the disk selector?

 

[Moof1904]

Yes, it's a firewire drive and that same drive has had a partition on it that had a bootable Leopard install on it, not too long ago, before I did some unrelated stuff and then reformatted it back to its current state.

 

[tyr2]

I wonder if there is a problem with it accessing the boot block on such a large drive.

Perhaps try repartitioning the disk so the Leopard install is the first partition on the disk, and then then Time Machine follows it? Or is this how you've got it already?