Failure to start up from full backup

[equill]

First, the partition scheme is APM throughout, as Dave supposed.

I copied, with SD, the source volume from the Indigo iMac with 10.4.10 to the 111GB partition of an older d2 Extreme 160GB external drive. I ran DiskWarrior 3.0.3 and First Aid over the target volume. The iMac started up from the target volume without demur. It seems beyond doubt that the new 250GB d2 Extreme external disk is faulty. Given the drive's contents, an HDD and a bridge board, it is the board that has to be suspected.

I'm not sure what part of the system.log record is of interest in this context, but I quote the last lines of the log for the two last attempts to cold boot from an SD and a Retrospect copy on different partitions. In each case start up defaulted (although it was not selected in Startup Disk) to the internal Seagate drive.

SuperDuper! copy on 30GB partition:
Jun 29 10:53:49 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: setting hostname to "iMac-Indigo-1.local"
Jun 29 10:53:51 iMac-Indigo-1 loginwindow[55]: Login Window Started Security Agent
Jun 29 10:53:51 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: executing /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/Kicker.bundle/Contents/Resources/enable-network
Jun 29 10:53:51 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: posting notification com.apple.system.config.network_change
Jun 29 10:53:51 iMac-Indigo-1 launchd: Server 0 in bootstrap 1103 uid 0: "/usr/sbin/lookupd"[57]: exited abnormally: Hangup
Jun 29 10:53:51 iMac-Indigo-1 lookupd[89]: lookupd (version 369.5) starting - Fri Jun 29 10:53:51 2007
Jun 29 10:53:55 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: target=enable-network: disabled
Jun 29 10:54:06 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[43]: disk1s6 hfs E807615C-9536-3548-A813-F9DC173C0151 LaCie 37GB /Volumes/LaCie 37GB
Jun 29 10:54:07 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[43]: disk1s7 hfs 45350DB2-644E-313B-893A-CDE5687FBCD5 LaCie 111GB-O /Volumes/LaCie 111GB-O
Jun 29 10:54:07 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[43]: disk2s6 hfs 08CCA637-0C81-3801-A09E-C19DFE9A1A6F LaCie 30GB /Volumes/LaCie 30GB
Jun 29 10:54:07 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[43]: disk2s7 hfs 08CCA637-0C81-3801-A09E-C19DFE9A1A6F LaCie 100GB /Volumes/LaCie 100GB
Jun 29 10:54:07 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[43]: disk2s8 hfs 08CCA637-0C81-3801-A09E-C19DFE9A1A6F LaCie 111GB-N /Volumes/LaCie 111GB-N

Retrospect copy on 100GB partition:
Jun 29 11:06:15 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: setting hostname to "iMac-Indigo-1.local"
Jun 29 11:06:16 iMac-Indigo-1 loginwindow[56]: Login Window Started Security Agent
Jun 29 11:06:16 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: executing /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/Kicker.bundle/Contents/Resources/enable-network
Jun 29 11:06:16 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: posting notification com.apple.system.config.network_change
Jun 29 11:06:16 iMac-Indigo-1 launchd: Server 0 in bootstrap 1103 uid 0: "/usr/sbin/lookupd"[57]: exited abnormally: Hangup
Jun 29 11:06:16 iMac-Indigo-1 lookupd[89]: lookupd (version 369.5) starting - Fri Jun 29 11:06:16 2007
Jun 29 11:06:21 iMac-Indigo-1 configd[40]: target=enable-network: disabled
Jun 29 11:06:31 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[42]: disk1s6 hfs 08CCA637-0C81-3801-A09E-C19DFE9A1A6F LaCie 30GB /Volumes/LaCie 30GB
Jun 29 11:06:31 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[42]: disk1s7 hfs 08CCA637-0C81-3801-A09E-C19DFE9A1A6F LaCie 100GB /Volumes/LaCie 100GB
Jun 29 11:06:31 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[42]: disk2s6 hfs E807615C-9536-3548-A813-F9DC173C0151 LaCie 37GB /Volumes/LaCie 37GB
Jun 29 11:06:32 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[42]: disk2s7 hfs 45350DB2-644E-313B-893A-CDE5687FBCD5 LaCie 111GB-O /Volumes/LaCie 111GB-O
Jun 29 11:06:32 iMac-Indigo-1 diskarbitrationd[42]: disk1s8 hfs 08CCA637-0C81-3801-A09E-C19DFE9A1A6F LaCie 111GB-N /Volumes/LaCie 111GB-N

de