Cannot boot from 4 Tb LaCie d2 quadra v3

Question

Cannot boot from 4 Tb LaCie d2 quadra v3

Cannot boot from new LaCie external drive.

I started by cloning a backup drive to this new drive. Everything went smoothly, and Disk Utility and Diskwarrior reported no problems. New drive icon on desktop, and drive appeared in System Preferences:Startup disk.

But on restarting on that drive first I got a grey screen, then the computer restarted on the internal drive and not the new one.

Tried restarting with 'alt' to check the drives available; the new one did not appear, even though it did in Preferences.

I assumed there might be something wrong in the cloning procedure, so, as suggested by LaCie, I followed Apple's procedure to erase the drive.

Next I used a Leopard DVD and installed OSX 10.5 on the new drive. It loaded, but on restarting after installing the computer again reverted to the main drive. It should have started on the new drive using Leopard for me to add user details.

I do not understand why I cannot start from this drive; I contacted LaCie, of course, and they suggested erasing and trying again (no joy) and then said I should try with the drive and another Mac. My other Mac is a 7300 (non-OSX), and there's no-one near with an OSX Mac, whether PPc or Intel.

LaCie said that contacting Apple might help.

So ... I hope someone here will have a suggestion. I think it's a LaCie problem.

The drive concerned is a LaCie 4Tb Quadra v3, with firewire 800, eSata and USB3 connections. I am using the firewire 800 as my Mac does not have either of the others.

The drive appears on the Desktop and in System Preferences, but not on the screen when restarting with 'alt' key.

Power Mac G5 (Early 2005), Mac OS X (10.4.11), also 10.5.8 on 2nd internal drive.

Posted on Mar 16, 2013 9:26 AM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Mar 16, 2013 3:25 PM in response to Shaun Ferguson

Hi Shaun, similar problem here, but not LaCie.

First, PPC Macs need APM Partion scheme & are limited to 2.2 TB drives.

Second, many newer drives are not bootable on PPC Macs due to the chipset used in the enclosure, which is my problem with a new FW/800 2.0 TB drive that cloned perfectly & DU/DW/DG report as fine, shows up in Startup Disk, but not in alt boot, & results in gray screen if chosen to start from.

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Answer 2

Mar 17, 2013 3:53 AM in response to BDAqua

Ah - didn't know about this chipset business. Will see what LaCie have to say. Maybe they'll swap it for the 2Tb drive if that isn't affected by the chipset.

Partition is APM, as recommended, but where does it say PPC Macs are limited to 2.2Tb drives?

Does this mean the OSX system can't run a drive bigger than this, but the drive can still be used for storage and retrieval up to its (here 4TB) limit?

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Answer 3

MichelPM

Level 10

81,535 points

Mar 17, 2013 8:49 AM in response to Shaun Ferguson

It means that PPC hardware isn't capable of reading or writing more than 2.2 GBs of the drive.

OS X 10.5.8 may also limit what it can see for external drive storage space, also, but not sure about that.

There weren't large TB drives back when PowerPC Macs existed and when OS X 10.5 Leoprd came out.

That's why there is this limitation.

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Mar 17, 2013 9:45 AM in response to Shaun Ferguson

PPC Macs running 10.4.11 & up can read & write to GUID Partition scheme, but not boot from it.

I doubt the 2 TB one uses a different chipset.

Because APM allows 32 bits worth of logical blocks, the historical size of an APM formatted disk using small blocks^[3] is limited to 2 TiB.^[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Partition_Map

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

Every disk has exactly one partition scheme. A disk can be partitioned as "Apple Partition Map" (APM), "GUID Partition Table" (GPT), "Master Boot Record" (MBR), or the Fdisk partition scheme. PowerPC Macs could only boot from a disk that is partitioned with the APM partitioning scheme. Intel Macs can boot from a disk that is partitioned with either the APM or GPT partitioning scheme.

http://www.bombich.com/software/docs/ccc/en.lproj/overview/preparing-your-backup -disk-for-a-backup-of-mac-os-x.html

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Answer 5

Mar 17, 2013 11:41 AM in response to BDAqua

OK. Thank you all for your help. Basically I can run this drive as a 2Tb non-bootable drive for storage purposes, with no way of using the full 4Tb I bought it for. Is that right?

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Answer 6

Mar 17, 2013 12:11 PM in response to Shaun Ferguson

A thought - APM restricts me to 2Tb, so ... if I format the 4Tb LaCie using the GUID format I still won't be able to boot from it, but - and if this sounds stupid I plead old age* - can I then use the full 4Tb to read and write?

I've looked through all the documents but this point doesn't appear to be mentioned.

Shaun

*just turned 74 and not as sharp as what I once was ...

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Answer 7

japamac

Level 7

24,400 points

Mar 17, 2013 1:25 PM in response to Shaun Ferguson

if I format the 4Tb LaCie using the GUID format I still won't be able to boot from it, can I then use the full 4Tb to read and write?

Yes, that is how it is supposed to work.

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Answer 8

Mar 17, 2013 1:41 PM in response to japamac

Splendid.

Thank you for your help,

Shaun

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Answer 9

Mar 17, 2013 6:16 PM in response to japamac

I started off with problems about being in the wrong region and now have Plug- in Failure

I am trying to access Setanta Sports Australia which requires

Microsoft Silverlight and was already pre-installed on a Macbook Pro Retina 2.5 ghz Intel core i5 with Mountain Lion 2.8.3

I have these different PlugIns active :

file://localhost/Library/Internet%20Plug-Ins/DivXBrowserPlugin.plugin/

file://localhost/Library/Internet%20Plug-Ins/Flash%20Player.plugin/

file://localhost/Library/Internet%20Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/

file://localhost/Library/Internet%20Plug-Ins/QuickTime%20Plugin.plugin/

file://localhost/Library/Internet%20Plug-Ins/Silverlight.plugin/

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4896087?answerId=21539526022#21539526022/edit

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Answer 10

Jul 15, 2016 1:03 PM in response to Shaun Ferguson

Contrary to some of the answers you received, Apple did indeed change the APM (Apple Partition Map) format for drives larger than 2.2T. I have a 6T drive being used for storage on OS X 10.5.8 (G5 PPC Mac) that was cloned from a 2T boot drive. Like you observed it will show up in System Preferences:Startup disk, but it won't actually boot. It does, however, partition and use the entire disk as storage. I am sure you have most likely moved on from this question, but I thought it worthwhile to correct that wrong assumption for people who might be searching on the Internet for the information.

While I'm at it, it doesn't help to create a small APM partition/volume at the beginning of the disk. Large disks still won't boot. I was searching to see if anyone found or created any work around when I found this discussion.

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