How to create bootable external Mavericks drive for MacBook Pro Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013? For use with apps like Drive Genius 3.

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Level 1

4 points

How to create bootable external Mavericks drive for MacBook Pro Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013? For use with apps like Drive Genius 3.

Just got a new MBP Retina 15". Migration Assistant was horrible at transferring content from my previous MBP. I'm trying to defrag the mess left behind from deleting to sort things out. Could do that easily with Drive Genius 3, but can't launch from an external disk containing DG3.

Tried to boot from a USB Flash Drive containing 10.9.1 and DG3. Get the circle with a line through it. Same problem with an external boot using 10.7.5 (not a big surprise).

Booted from the internal Recovery HD, but then can't access external drive containing DG3.

Of course, there's always the option to just start the whole thing all over again from scratch; but, that still means it's not possible to use the suite of recovery/cloning/etc apps which can only act on MBP Retina's internal drive from a recognizable OS launched from an external disk containing the helper apps.

Can anyone think of a way to create a non-Apple-Recovery-HD, external-bootable Mavericks drive for MacBook Pro Retina 15"? or how to access helper apps on external drive in Recovery HD mode? Any help you can give is greatly appreciated.

Posted on Jan 18, 2014 9:49 AM

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Answer 1

markwmsn

Level 6

15,035 points

Jan 18, 2014 5:10 PM in response to _LB

How about just cloning the boot drive to an external hard drive?

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Answer 2

nbar

Level 5

7,019 points

Jan 18, 2014 5:14 PM in response to _LB

No, not yet. It's a special build which is not the same as the commercial build released in the App store. Wait for a unified OSX update to create a bootable EHD:

Mac OS X versions (builds) for computers - Support - Apple

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Answer 3

markwmsn

Level 6

15,035 points

Jan 18, 2014 5:24 PM in response to nbar

nbar,

Even a cloned copy of the internal drive won't work?

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Answer 4

nbar

Level 5

7,019 points

Jan 18, 2014 5:25 PM in response to markwmsn

A cloned drive would work. Thank you for this clarification.

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Answer 5

_LB Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 19, 2014 9:15 AM in response to nbar

Thanks, markwmsn & nbar.

CCC says that the clone should be bootable; but, it wasn't. It's closer though ... when booting MBPR from clone, the Apple logo appears, then the screen goes black (so logo shows vs. circle with bar).

Just booted in Recovery HD mode. Opened Terminal at highest level. Copied that System dir to a Flash Drive which on option-boot had renamed itself EFI Startup (or something close to that). Back to circle with bar.

Urgh.

(Side note: GD3 says 68% fragged HD doesn't require defrag, so single goal is to create bootable EHD.)

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Answer 6

Mar 7, 2014 3:40 PM in response to _LB

Same issue here; very frustrating as I usually have an external "Rescue" drive that has several other apps on it (Disk Warrior, etc.). This drive (with the latest updated version of Mavericks) will boot just about everything else in my corral, just not the MacBook Pro Retina (Fall 2013). What's most worrisome about this is that the clones (made by CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper) won't boot it as well, and that's my primary safety net.

As you note, CCC says they should be bootable, but they're not. Nor is the drive I installed Mavericks on from scratch, nor is the drive I made using DiskMaker X. All such drives will boot everything else (including the latest iMacs) but not the MBPr.

I wonder if the Mac Pro guys are having this issue. Maybe it's a paradigm change Apple is making (i.e., they only want you to use the "internal" Recovery HD) and just not being very public about.

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