cloned drive doesn't boot up

[mucho]

I'm registered SD user, and recently having trouble with
backup OSX 10.4.2 from iBook G4 internal HDD to Firewire HDD.

I tried to duplicate internal HDD to external Firewire HDD
with plain setting, and it seems successful to clone the
contents of HDD (when I boot from internal HDD, external
HDD have whole contents that should be there). But once
I boot my iBook from the external HDD, glay apple icon in
boot-up screen soon changes into slash-in-circle icon and
boot-up sequence stops (while the circular animation below
is continuing to animate).

I've got no trouble when I clone 10.3.x in same setting so
I think hardware-related trouble doesn't concern. Would
you give me some advice about my trouble?

[dnanian]

What brand/model of drive do you have, Mucho? Tiger has trouble with more drives than Panther, so it's quite possible that the drive you have either needs a firmware update or is incompatible...

[mucho]

Thank you for your quick reply, Dnanian-san.

My HDD Drive is "MIC Plover 17305HD-FWe".

This is old Japan-original HDD case, and the vendor seems to
have discontinued support for the drive. Assembly is very
complicated and I can hardly access to know what kind of
controller-chip it uses. System profiler shows that the device
name is "ploverHD-FW", and vendor name is "MICASSOC" (I
guess this means MIC Associates, which is Japanese company
which sold this drive). Seems not helpful at all...


Anyway, if the matter is in this HDD case, I may plan to buy
another one to do backups. Thanks again.

[dnanian]

Alas, I don't have any experience with that particular drive, but it seems quite likely that's the problem. What I'd suggest is trying to install Tiger on it directly. If that simple install boots, we should be able to create a bootable copy, too. (I'm guessing it won't.)

If you get a new case, try to make sure that it comes with an Oxford bridge, and that the manufacturer will accept returns if it doesn't support Mac booting (as opposed to just "the Mac", which many do, without realizing that booting is more difficult).

[mucho]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Alas, I don't have any experience with that particular drive, but it seems quite likely that's the problem. What I'd suggest is trying to install Tiger on it directly. If that simple install boots, we should be able to create a bootable copy, too. (I'm guessing it won't.)

Hmmm, that rather makes me bewildered... In reality
I've run my server with OSX 10.4.2 on this HDD case
for about 2 months. I remembered that right after I
updated the OS from Panther to Tiger my server had
same trouble, but once I forced reboot by ctrl+command+power,
it start to boot up correctly, and keeps on working.
Then I bought new HDD case for the server, and divert
this to my iBook backup drive...

That is, the drive case is not (at least the only) matter...?
I should consider the problem more closely. I will try if
NVRAM reset might works. Arigato Dave.

[dnanian]

Hm. Well, when you get a slash-circle, that indicates that it's failing quite early in the boot process, likely well before the boot blocks are even loaded... you can try an NVRAM reset, sure -- or a port change, or cable change. It's always possible something like that will work.

[mucho]

I tried NVRAM reset and port / cable change all at once (I'm sooo
lazy person), and it did work! I appreciate your kindness.

[dnanian]

Always good when the simple things prove useful, Mucho!