[equill]

Background: I've just acquired my third LaCie d2 external drive, which is also my second Triple Interface. I use FireWire exclusively for backup connections to FireWire-capable Macs (about 10 of them) because I also use a bootable partition on each external drive, as I do also for SCSI Macs (more than 30 of them). I format ATA drives for internal use in an external Zynet Polar (Prolific) enclosure. The expected failure to boot into OS X from the Zynet drive takes the form of a perpetually spinning gearwheel. The two older d2s were formatted from Silverlining versions of the time, but now updated to 6.5.8, and continue to function faultlessly for backup, with either Dantz/EMC or SuperDuper! I had not, however, so far had need to restore from SuperDuper!, or to boot from a SuperDuper! copy.

The problem: Whether I format the new drive (30, 100 and 110GB) from OS 9.2.2/Silverlining 6.5.8 or OS 10.4.10 (Safari betaUpdate 3.0.2)/Disk Utility, in four attempts so far, a fresh full backup of 10.4.10 on the 30GB partition will not boot the iMac CRT Indigo/500MHz/1GB/40GB from which it came. The result of attempt to start up is the spinning gearwheel for about a minute, supervened by the prohibitive sign for up to 10min without further advance. Neither will the same d2 30GB partition with 10.4.10 boot either of two other CRT iMacs: 2001 Indigo/500MHz/768MB/30GB and 2000 Snow/500MHz/1GB/40GB. Although these latter have 10.3.9/9.2.2 and 10.2.8/9.2.2 installed, they are fully capable of supporting Tiger. You can take it for granted that the source 10.4.10 is maintained with DiskWarrior 3.0.3, MacJanitor and ClamXav, and is up-to-date with System software. The source files add to 8.88GB, SuperDupered down to 8.49GB in the copy.

Any insights or suggestions, please?

de