need to update my os and must reformat my hard drive to journaled status. Have backed up hard drive to seagate 2tb usb drive. need to change startup disk so I can reformat hard drive in computer. Cannot find any clear, understandable instructions to follow to accomplish task. Any help is appreciated.
iMac (21.5-inch Late 2009), Mac OS X (10.7.5)
seagate usb drive is journaled and encrypted. All files are there and functional.
To start from another disk hold the option (alt) key while booting your Mac. You will be shown icons representing the available disks with valid systems. Click the one you want. and hit return. Next time you boot normally you will do so from the usual disk.
Thanks, I will give that a try. Never done this before so am working blind. You have shed light on my problem;
Thanks but I am still not getting in. Apparently when I copied my hard drive to the seagate it did not copy the system files. The seagate drive does not show as a potential start up drive. How do I get the seagate to become a startup drive? Do I need to coy OSX Lion onto it and can I do that? This is the only mac I have so have downloaded it only onto one computer. I am lost. Seems apple would give some straightforward instructions as to how to update your drive to a journaled format so I could update my OS. bummer.
How did you copy to the Seagate drive?
If you did a drag and drop then all of the invisible files were not copied.
The only way to get everything is to have used cloning software to do the copy.
The directions are at Make a bootable clone of your boot drive
I used disk utility to do the copying. Took about 5-6 hours to make the copy.
Thanks but I am still not getting in. Apparently when I copied my hard drive to the seagate it did not copy the system files. The seagate drive does not show as a potential start up drive. How do I get the seagate to become a startup drive? Do I need to coy OSX Lion onto it and can I do that? This is the only mac I have so have downloaded it only onto one computer. I am lost. Seems apple would give some straightforward instructions as to how to update your drive to a journaled format so I could update my OS. bummer.
Easy solution. Get a copy of SuperDuper (free for full clone)
It can create a bootable clone of your current boot disk onto an external disk.
Next level of difficulty.
Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility
Select the external disk
Partition -> Options -> GUID partition type
Create a partition with Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)
Disk Utility -> Restore
Select your current boot disk as "Source"
Select your external disk as the "Destination"
Click "Restore" button
This will copy the boot disk to the external disk.
With either utility DO NOT get confused about which device is source and which is destination.
reformat my hard drive to journaled status
