[NovaScotian]

Originally Posted by Dan Lester

Hi -

I know there's a sticky on this, but I wanted to see if I could get some more info.

I have a new Intel MacBook running 10.5.5, and I have a Fujitsu MHV2080 SATA in a cheap USB enclosure (USB-powered). I was hoping to be able to boot from this disk, but don't seem to be able to. Yes, I partitioned with GUID formatting, and did a SuperDuper full backup copy onto it from the same machine I want to boot from. As you might gather, the disk mounts fine. The backup copy on the disk looks fine.

Then I do a restart holding down the OPTION key with the disk connected. The startup manager comes up, but the external disk isn't there!

Is this one of these deals where not quite all USB drives are bootable, and I just happen to have one that isn't. Or ... ? Do I really have to get myself a Firewire enclosure? Fortunately, this is a last-generation MacBook that has a Firewire port! Is this a SuperDuper issue, a USB issue, a disk issue, or an enclosure issue?

I gather that I may have to connect the enclosure to an external power supply. But would low power produce this symptom? As I said, it mounts fine.

Thanks,

Dan

I have my SuperDuper! backup on an external USB connected HD with an external power supply (formatted Mac OS Extended -- Journaled) and my last generation (early 2008) MBP boots just fine from it. (I'm using the firewire port for an older drive in a shell holding Time Machine).