2003 Power Mac G4s cannot boot from LaCie Pocket drive?
2003 Power Mac G4s cannot boot from LaCie Pocket drive?
We have received corroborating reports that some users are unable to boot their 2003 Power Macintosh G4 (FireWire 800) systems from LaCie's 20 GB FireWire PocketDrive.
Paul Mallet writes:
"I have a 20 GB PocketDrive (external FireWire) which I use as my startup disk. It has Mac OS X 10.2.4 installed onto it and I have been able to boot from it every day for over a year using either my iMac G3 600 MHz or my Power Mac G4 466 MHz (Digital Audio). Works like a charm.
"I just bought a new 1.25 GHz Dual G4 (FW 800) which arrived today. I booted up, plugged in the PocketDrive and it was correctly recognized and appeared on the desktop. Then I launched System Preferences, changed the startup disk to the PocketDrive, and restarted the computer. To my surprise, it booted on the internal drive. I tried restarting - same problem. I double checked that the PocketDrive was listed as the startup disk and it was. The PocketDrive continues to boot fine on other computers. I should note that the new PowerMac was straight out of the box when I tried this so I doubt this could be related to a software conflict of some sort."
Several other readers have confirmed this issue. If you are in the same boat, or have a solution, drop us a line at late-breakers@macfixit.com.Resources