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Cannot create bootable HD backup clone, or bootable 10.6 drive

Hello, I am trying to update my April 2007 MacBook Pro currently running 10.4.11 to 10.6.3 Snow Leopard, which I bought from the Apple Store. I haven't even really gotten to it, yet, though, because I've run into some issues making bootable backup drives. As you do when you're going to mess with the OS, I tried to back up my internal hard drive. At first, using Drive Genius 2, I kept getting a btree catalog depth error (4,0). Eventually after repairing through Disk Utility, I fixed whatever was going on (it wouldn't repair through DG), and I didn't want to waste time trying to duplicate with DG again, so I just used SuperDuper to copy a bootable version of my HD onto a partition in an OWC Mercury Elite drive. Tried booting into it, it worked, great. But I wanted two backups, so I set up another, using SuperDuper to copy the first copy onto another OWC ME drive. That copy seemed to go fine, but wouldn't boot. I figured I had to copy from the original HD to make it bootable, so I erased and copied again, this time from the HD. Still not bootable. I tried it twice connected by FW 800, once connected by FW 400.

Okay, so with one copy of my HD, I didn't want to install 10.6 and risk screwing everything up. So I found a guide online http://www.maciverse.com/installing-snow-leopard-onto-an-external-hard-drive.htm l and figured I would install it on a 32GB Kingston flash USB drive I had. I initialized it to be a GUID partition (my OWC drives are also GUID). I followed the rest of the directions, and two hours later, supposedly the 10.6.3 was installed on that drive. But that wouldn't boot either. I couldn't even look at the drive afterward in DG, either. The drive may be messed up now, I haven't looked too deeply into it because I'm kind of on a clock and this has already taken the better part of a week.

Then I looked at all the drives again with Drive Genius. I noticed the two working bootable partitions on two separate OWC drives I had (one of those backups is over a year old, so I wanted a fresher one) had little asterisks and said I could start up with them. I saw that there was Apple HFS Free Space on either side of the working bootable partitions, and I remembered something about needing a 156MB buffer for a startup partition, so I halved some blank free space and it made an extra buffer Apple HFS Free Space on the other pie-side of the partition I'd been trying to use as the bootable copy destination, where there had been none. I figured that would be the fix. So I tried once again (FW800) to copy the first successfully bootable copy into that space. But it still won't boot.


I've tried to google this issue all different ways and mostly get issues of people who can't boot up their computers at all, or are trying to install 10.6 from a flash drive. Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong or direct me to where I can figure it out? At this point, I think I would prefer installing 10.6 on an external, and booting from that when I have to use it. I like 10.4.11, I am just forced to use 10.6 because I got a (1st generation) iPad. According to that article, it's possible to boot into 10.6 from an external. But of course I would also like to make another bootable clone of my HD, just for safety's sake. So those are my two, or possibly one if it's the same problem, issue/s. I'm unable to make a second bootable clone, and/or a bootable 10.6.3 external.


Thanks in advance! It's been a long time since I've asked a community question, and my family is waiting for me to finish up, so please excuse me if it sounds brusque or I forgot anything.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.11), 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Posted on Feb 10, 2013 6:19 PM

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9 replies

Feb 10, 2013 7:26 PM in response to BDAqua

Well, I did buy DG3 when I got my next-to-most-recent OWC ME drive, but of course I can't use it, because it requires 10.6! 🙂 And I figured since DG2 has worked before (to create my oldest bootable copy) and SuperDuper worked just on Thursday, that it's more likely me doing something wrong, or maybe something wrong with that particular target partition. But thank you for the CCC & Disk Warrior recommendation and input. My "clock," however, is because I have to get 10.6 running somehow to check out this dumb iPad. I only have a few days left to add a warranty, which I wouldn't do if it doesn't work and I have to return it or something. I'll look into those options, but I was hoping to use the tools I have on hand, due to time restrictions as well as money concerns.


I also should have said before, I tried multiple times to boot into the non-booting copy---through System Preference selection, through booting from my 10.4.11 install disk and then choosing it (it does pretend it's there in both those circumstances, just won't start in it). I also tried holding down the Alt/Option key on startup, and, in what seems the most telling result, my other two backups and internal HD show up, but that one doesn't.

Feb 12, 2013 8:27 AM in response to BDAqua

I tried to install it on a 32 GB USB flash drive I initialized to have a GUID setup and partition for it, but no dice with that installation. I was going to try again on a 160GB FW device today. If that fails, I'll try to make another bootable clone of my HD on that. I've only got 5 days left to test the iPad, though, so I may end up just having to try to upgrade with only one bootable backup. Or possibly I'll take the iPad to an Apple Store to have them check it until I get this sorted out. And bring my MacBook just in case. But I hate going to the Apple Store, because they always treat me like a Natural History Museum specimen---"ooo! I've never even seen one that old in person! And it's in amazing condition!" Of course they are talking about my computer! I feel like it will be similar even if they only see the iPad, since they're almost out of the 3-year window. But I don't really want to risk screwing up my internal hard drive just to get the iPad working.

Feb 25, 2013 11:28 AM in response to nyblueblue

Hello,


I tried to use CCC instead, but the 10.4.11 version is not showing source or destination copying options for me. I have asked them for help with that. In the meantime, I tried making a new copy with Super Duper to a totally different OWC 3TB drive's partition. It will not boot either. I copied the log of when I tried to boot from it in hopes it would help someone see a problem. Is the boot.efi not blessed? I have no idea what that really means, i just saw it was a reason why some drives will not boot. I was afraid to do any sudo commands in Terminal because I have no idea what I am doing, and was confused by quotation marks and other punctuation when entering commands. Here is the log of trying to boot into the newest attempted clone, called NYblueblue 2013 Backup Space:


Feb 25 13:36:30 Blue-Computer shutdown: reboot by blue:

Feb 25 13:36:32 Blue-Computer kernel[0]: jnl: close: flushing the buffer cache (start 0x14e00 end 0x19000)

Feb 25 13:36:32 Blue-Computer SystemStarter[963]: authentication service (974) did not complete successfully

Feb 25 13:36:34 Blue-Computer kernel[0]: jnl: close: flushing the buffer cache (start 0x12a5400 end 0x12a9600)

Feb 25 13:36:38 Blue-Computer SystemStarter[963]: The following StartupItems failed to properly start:

Feb 25 13:36:38 Blue-Computer SystemStarter[963]: /System/Library/StartupItems/AuthServer

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: hi mem tramps at 0xffe00000

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: PAE enabled

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: 64 bit mode enabled

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: standard timeslicing quantum is 10000 us

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: vm_page_bootstrap: 512880 free pages

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: mig_table_max_displ = 71

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Enabling XMM register save/restore and SSE/SSE2 opcodes

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: 103 prelinked modules

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: ACPI CA 20060421

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement: ready

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: AppleACPICPU: ProcessorApicId=0 LocalApicId=0 Enabled

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: AppleACPICPU: ProcessorApicId=1 LocalApicId=1 Enabled

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: using 10485 buffer headers and 4096 cluster IO buffer headers

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Enabling XMM register save/restore and SSE/SSE2 opcodes

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Started CPU 01

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: IOAPIC: Version 0x20 Vectors 64:87

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: ACPI: System State [S0 S3 S4 S5] (S3)

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Security auditing service present

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: BSM auditing present

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: disabled

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: rooting via boot-uuid from /chosen: CFE18DE9-7BAD-4F65-B69D-C87D66AB777B

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Waiting on <dict ID="0"><key>IOProviderClass</key><string ID="1">IOResources</string><key>IOResourceMatch</key><string ID="2">boot-uuid-media</string></dict>

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: USB caused wake event (EHCI)

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: FireWire (OHCI) TI ID 8025 built-in now active, GUID 0019e3fffe6d2d18; max speed s800.

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Got boot device = IOService:/AppleACPIPlatformExpert/PCI0@0/AppleACPIPCI/SATA@1F,2/AppleAHCI/PRT2 @2/IOAHCIDevice@0/AppleAHCIDiskDriver/IOAHCIBlockStorageDevice/IOBlockStorageDri ver/Hitachi HTS543216L9SA02 Media/IOGUIDPartitionScheme/Untitled@2

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: BSD root: disk0s2, major 14, minor 2

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: CSRHIDTransitionDriver::probe:

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: CSRHIDTransitionDriver::start before command

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: CSRHIDTransitionDriver::stop

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: IOBluetoothHCIController::start Idle Timer Stopped

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Jettisoning kernel linker.

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Resetting IOCatalogue.

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: display: family specific matching fails

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Matching service count = 0

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Matching service count = 1

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Matching service count = 1

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Matching service count = 1

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Matching service count = 1

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Matching service count = 1

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Previous Shutdown Cause: 3

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: display: family specific matching fails

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: ath_attach: devid 0x24

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: Override HT40 CTL Powers. EEPROM Version is 14.4, Device Type 5

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: mac 12.10 phy 8.1 radio 12.0

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost kernel[0]: IPv6 packet filtering initialized, default to accept, logging disabled

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost memberd[40]: memberd starting up

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost mDNSResponder-108.6 (Jul 19 2007 11: 41:28)[31]: starting

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost DirectoryService[45]: Launched version 2.1 (v353.6)

Feb 25 13:42:33 localhost lookupd[41]: lookupd (version 369.8) starting - Mon Feb 25 13:42:33 2013

Feb 25 13:42:34 localhost diskarbitrationd[39]: disk2s10 hfs 1BC7CBE4-7244-3057-9530-78668FAFC9CC OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro [not mounted]

Feb 25 13:42:34 localhost usbmuxd[34]: usbmuxd-196 built for iTunesNineTwo on May 17 2010 at 13:53:51, running 32 bit

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost kernel[0]: yukon: Ethernet address 00:17:f2:d0:27:69

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost diskarbitrationd[39]: disk0s2 hfs EA5E9697-DFDB-3900-B537-596AB2292D23 Macintosh HD /

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost kernel[0]: AirPort_Athr5424ab: Ethernet address 00:19:e3:da:59:14

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost diskarbitrationd[39]: disk4s2 hfs 94754090-3766-33E1-929E-651B94555378 OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro 2011 (replacement) [not mounted]

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost diskarbitrationd[39]: disk5s2 hfs 0C5B5E7B-A473-305B-841C-79FA74381F2A OWC Mercury Elite Pro 2013 [not mounted]

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost diskarbitrationd[39]: disk4s3 hfs B4211786-741C-3701-9C71-F80B7689E7A1 Sister's computer backup space [not mounted]

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost diskarbitrationd[39]: disk5s3 hfs BB42A36F-8690-3D2E-ABB4-38A78FF2B2BA Sister 2013 Backup Space [not mounted]

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost diskarbitrationd[39]: disk4s4 hfs 5B8B1B2D-235B-35D6-BB33-BD8FBB29497C NYblueblue's computer backup space [not mounted]

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost diskarbitrationd[39]: disk3s2 hfs EF011102-14EA-33AE-8478-13FE1D7659DF OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro 2010 [not mounted]

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost diskarbitrationd[39]: disk5s4 hfs 69A0A2A9-850B-33AF-BEF9-0A67EEEACAF7 NYblueblue 2013 Backup Space [not mounted]

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost diskarbitrationd[39]: disk6s2 hfs 152C4162-AD99-3E0D-9ADF-06411D09862A OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro 3TB [not mounted]

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost diskarbitrationd[39]: disk3s4 hfs FD9A1798-6F8B-34EF-87E2-CB6C2A3B1594 Blue Computer Backup [not mounted]

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost diskarbitrationd[39]: disk6s3 hfs 855CBEBE-0552-3820-928E-F7F7375CFC1B Sister 3TB Backup Spot [not mounted]

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost diskarbitrationd[39]: disk3s5 hfs A777B33E-8158-3ED0-94A1-F311336DD572 for Sister but temp iTunes iPod [not mounted]

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost diskarbitrationd[39]: disk6s4 hfs 9694D08F-3963-3B92-91C7-D7409820CBE1 NYblueblue 3TB Backup Spot [not mounted]

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost lookupd[105]: lookupd (version 369.8) starting - Mon Feb 25 13:42:35 2013

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost kernel[0]: Registering For 802.11 Events

Feb 25 13:42:35 localhost kernel[0]: [HCIController][setupHardware] AFH Is Supported

Feb 25 13:42:35 Blue-Computer configd[37]: setting hostname to "Blue-Computer.local"

Feb 25 13:42:37 Blue-Computer kernel[0]: WARNING: AppleUSBAudio has detected that clock_get_uptime () value changed radically from previous values

Feb 25 13:42:37 Blue-Computer /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow: Login Window Application Started

Feb 25 13:42:37 Blue-Computer mDNSResponder: Adding browse domain local.

Feb 25 13:42:38 Blue-Computer loginwindow[108]: Login Window Started Security Agent

Feb 25 13:42:43 Blue-Computer diskarbitrationd[39]: disk2s10 hfs 1BC7CBE4-7244-3057-9530-78668FAFC9CC OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro /Volumes/OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro

Feb 25 13:42:43 Blue-Computer diskarbitrationd[39]: disk4s2 hfs 94754090-3766-33E1-929E-651B94555378 OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro 2011 (replacement) /Volumes/OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro 2011 (replacement)

Feb 25 13:42:43 Blue-Computer diskarbitrationd[39]: disk5s2 hfs 0C5B5E7B-A473-305B-841C-79FA74381F2A OWC Mercury Elite Pro 2013 /Volumes/OWC Mercury Elite Pro 2013

Feb 25 13:42:43 Blue-Computer diskarbitrationd[39]: disk3s2 hfs EF011102-14EA-33AE-8478-13FE1D7659DF OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro 2010 /Volumes/OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro 2010

Feb 25 13:42:43 Blue-Computer diskarbitrationd[39]: disk6s2 hfs 152C4162-AD99-3E0D-9ADF-06411D09862A OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro 3TB /Volumes/OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro 3TB

Feb 25 13:42:43 Blue-Computer diskarbitrationd[39]: disk5s3 hfs BB42A36F-8690-3D2E-ABB4-38A78FF2B2BA Sister 2013 Backup Space /Volumes/Sister 2013 Backup Space

Feb 25 13:42:43 Blue-Computer diskarbitrationd[39]: disk3s4 hfs FD9A1798-6F8B-34EF-87E2-CB6C2A3B1594 Blue Computer Backup /Volumes/Blue Computer Backup

Feb 25 13:42:43 Blue-Computer diskarbitrationd[39]: disk4s3 hfs B4211786-741C-3701-9C71-F80B7689E7A1 Sister's computer backup space /Volumes/Sister's computer backup space

Feb 25 13:42:43 Blue-Computer diskarbitrationd[39]: disk6s3 hfs 855CBEBE-0552-3820-928E-F7F7375CFC1B Sister 3TB Backup Spot /Volumes/Sister 3TB Backup Spot

Feb 25 13:42:43 Blue-Computer diskarbitrationd[39]: disk5s4 hfs 69A0A2A9-850B-33AF-BEF9-0A67EEEACAF7 NYblueblue 2013 Backup Space /Volumes/NYblueblue 2013 Backup Space

Feb 25 13:42:43 Blue-Computer diskarbitrationd[39]: disk3s5 hfs A777B33E-8158-3ED0-94A1-F311336DD572 for Sister but temp iTunes iPod /Volumes/for Sister but temp iTunes iPod

Feb 25 13:42:43 Blue-Computer diskarbitrationd[39]: disk4s4 hfs 5B8B1B2D-235B-35D6-BB33-BD8FBB29497C NYblueblue's computer backup space /Volumes/NYblueblue's computer backup space

Feb 25 13:42:43 Blue-Computer diskarbitrationd[39]: disk6s4 hfs 9694D08F-3963-3B92-91C7-D7409820CBE1 NYblueblue 3TB Backup Spot /Volumes/NYblueblue 3TB Backup Spot

Feb 25 13:43:26 Blue-Computer pppd[255]: pppd 2.4.2 (Apple version 233-18) started by root, uid 501



I hope this helps someone help me, I don't know what to do anymore! 😟

Cannot create bootable HD backup clone, or bootable 10.6 drive

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