Bootable backup?

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Bootable backup?

I am trying to create a bootable backup of my mac hard drive. I attached a USB hard drive to my mac mini 2012. Then I GUID partitioned it, cloned my internal drive to the external (using carbon copy cloner), and confirmed all the data made it over. Then I set the external drive as the bootable drive and restarted; but it still booted from the internal drive. I have retried mulitple times with the same result. I have also tried holding down the option key while restarting but the computer does not give me the option of rebooting from the external drive. Is there something I am missing?

I have confirmed the following:

1. The hard drive dock is bootable to the mac (voyager S3 from macsales.com)

2. The hard drive is readable from the mac

3. The hard drive is partitioned to GUID format

4. Selected the external drive as the boot drive from inside mac os.

Can anyone think of anything else?

Posted on Dec 31, 2012 2:53 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 31, 2012 4:48 PM in response to family_man1

As a quick test you can try installing OS X to the external drive to try booting to a fresh installation. If this works then try another cloning approach. It is likely you might have an odd setting or two in Carbon Copy Cloner that might be the problem here. While not the best option, you can use Disk Utility's "restore" feature to clone the boot drive to an external drive.

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