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General discussion

Firewire startup problem

Nov 8, 2005 5:36AM PST

I have OS X on a FireWire external hard drive that I use whenever I want to work with music, however I can't get my iBook to start up from it today. Worked fine this morning, but I can't seem to get it to run. I'm able to start up on the internal hard drive's OS X, but whenever I try to startup on the external drive, the apple will sit there for a while then turn into a circle with a slash.

Discussion is locked

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Circle with a slash
Nov 8, 2005 7:46AM PST

Bad!
You may have a corrupt OS on the external Firewire drive. What OS is it?
It might be fixed with the judicious application of Disk Warrior, an Archive and Install or a belting with a 4 pound hammer.
How does starting from the FW drive help when you are working with music? Is it the larger storage capacity?
Does the drive actually rotate, can you hear it running? Does it mount on the desktop when you start from the internal HD?
Have you done anything to the system recently? Was the drive connected during one of the Software updates? You do software updates?
What a lot of questions: Answers would help us help

P

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Answers
Nov 8, 2005 4:06PM PST

Whew, that is a lot of questions, hehe. Okay, the drive mounts just fine, it spins up and down no problem. I just updated to 10.4.3 on my firewire drive. The larger storage capacity is one factor, the other is that it's a 7200 RPM drive as opposed to a 4200 one. Also, it's nearly impossible and somewhat impractical to install Logic Express and Garageband + jam packs on my internal drive if I'm going to switch them to my external drive. Garageband Everywhere works okay, but I still have the rest of Logic to deal with, so that's why I have OS X set up on this external drive. I may have traced the problem back to this: I switched the startup volume to it and restarted while Spotlight was indexing the drive. I don't know if that's what did it, but that's the only potentially bad thing I remember. I talked to a tech service rep at apple today, they couldn't really do much of anything on it, unfortunately. (although they were really friendly and helpful with my other problem). It might just be easier (and cheaper) to archive and reinstall. whatcha think? I have been looking into getting Disk warrior, I hear a lot of good things about it on these boards.

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Interesting
Nov 8, 2005 8:56PM PST

Try this. Set the startup drive to the internal. Restart the machine and hold down the option key at the first chime. Keep it down while the system searches for valid boot drives.
Theoretically, it should find two. The internal and the external. Once it's finished searching, choose external and go on from there.
If there is no boot, then the Archive and install may be the only option.

Disk Warrior is an excellent piece of software and well recommended.

Keep in touch

P