Problem booting external HD (silverlining mandatory?)

[meall]

Hi,

I have a 300meg external HD that I wanted to partitions differently. So, I used Apple HD setup to do this. I erased all partitions, then add the Mac driver and the partitions I needed. Now the HD refuses to boot if I put an OS on it.

The fact is that, before I did something, the HD was booting right. But for this, it displayed a screen with silverlining (if I remember well) that told the SCSI id of the HD. By removing the first partition (the driver I suppose) I removed the possibility to boot from it.

The HD case is UniMac. So, the question is: where do I find the proper driver for the HD? I search Google, but to no help.

Thanks

 

[alk]

The "driver" for a generic SCSI hard drive is loaded onto an invisible partition by Apple's HD SC Setup when you initialize the drive. If HD SC Setup recognizes the drive, you shouldn't need a third party drive.

Instead, I'd check the termination and ID jumpers on your SCSI drive.

What model Mac are you using?

Peace,

Drew

 

[equill]

The standard Apple partitioning of an HDD is into five, four of which are invisible. The mountable data 'volume' is the fourth. If the fifth is a second 'volume' on the drive, the original fifth becomes the sixth, and so on.

Partition 1

Name: Apple

Type: Apple_partition-map

Partition 2

Name: Macintosh_SL

Type: Apple-Driver43 •

Partition 3

Name: Macintosh_SL

Type: Apple_Driver_ATA

Partition 4

Name: name of visible volume

Type: Apple_HFS

Partition 5

Name: Extra

Type: Apple_Free

The 'driver' lives in the second partition. The 'Device Information' panel of the GUI of Silverlining v6, which is much more immediately informative than Silverlining v5, lists the partitions and their sizes.

Although all third-party disk utilities adhere to Apple's five-partition scheme, they provide their own versions of Apple drivers in the second partition. These can usually overwrite a pre-existing Apple driver, although InTech's HD ToolKit also baulks at other makers' drivers. But not so with the converse case. Unhacked Apple disk utilities are diffident about treading where non-Apple drivers have already trodden. This may be also a consequence of differing action by the utilities. Silverlining uses 'Create File System' as the term for the partitioning exercise. This happily overwrites all data on a drive. 'Formatting' the drive in Silverliningese is a much longer process of preliminary zeroing. Apple tends not to be with the pack when the terms zeroing, erasing and formatting are bandied about, and the utility may not do what you think the term implies that it has done.

One indication of this is that if one does format a drive with a non-Apple utility, if the option to 'Update Apple drivers' is taken early in the installation of a new System, the Installer will whinge that it cannot overwrite the 'interloper'. I find that it is best to disable the option before installation begins. If you 'erased' with Apple's utility, you may not have gone the whole hog in replacing the previous driver.

de

 

[meall]

Thanks guys for the help and explanation.

Finally, the driver may not have been the problem. At first, I plugged the HD to my II (original) that's where I detected it could not boot the HD. But it was the the IIsi, where I knew it was booting before. So on the IIsi I destroyed all partitions, and intall OS again, then it booted correctly.

Maybe just the way I did it on the II that generated a problem, but I can't be sure. Sure that I was simply copying the system folder, not reinstalling to it, that may also add to my problems.

Thanks again.

 

[gobabushka]

try making sure tht the system folder on the external drive is blessed, if not, open it and close it again, and select it as a startup disk

 

[meall]

try making sure tht the system folder on the external drive is blessed, if not, open it and close it again, and select it as a startup disk

It was blessed, as I removed the Finder from the folder, and put it back then again. Then the System Folder icon changed. I selected the boot disk too.

 

[alk]

This sounds like a termination problem to me...

-

Drew

 

[meall]

This sounds like a termination problem to me...
-

Drew

Maybe, but when I plugged the thinks on my IIsi, same SCSI id and position in chain, did not boot. Reformatting and trying things a few times, without changing anything physically restored the boot on the disk. I see it more like a software problem, but that could be anything!