Hello. I'm enjoying my new Open but since there is no recovery solution provided with the system, I want to create a backup before making changes to the stock setup. I've created a block-level clone, but need to know the procedure to "bless" the clone for bootability. The bios recognizes the drive and is set to boot from it in the bios priority, but it just sits at the prompt which reads, "Verifying DMI Pool Data..." Another post refers to a procedure which involves pressing F8 at startup and entering a few commands from the prompt to take care of this. Could you please post these procedures for us? Thanks in advance for your assistance.

You have to write the boot tracks. If you read my post about installing OS X, the steps are buried in there. You will need the Install Pack download, the folder V2, and then you'll need to run the pre-patch script. That script writes the boot tracks.

In terminal, you do this:

sudo -s
cd /V2
./pre-patch.sh

This assumes you've put V2 in your root directory. After that, the clone should be bootable. BTW, the drive has to be a GUID partition to be bootable. If you didn't partition it that way, you'll have to go back and start over.

Thanks Bravenel. I should have mentioned that I was trying to use a PATA drive as the clone of the original SATA drive (the PATA would not boot despite these tips). I'm now trying a SATA drive, instead. I'll provide my findings here once I'm done testing. Regards - zeek2u.

Bravenel,

Thanks for your insight. I'm experiencing a similar issue and admittedly a novice to all this.

I'm using SATA and have the drive partitioned GUID.

Where are your posts you refer too?

Thanks in advance.

Look at this post. From there follow the link to InsanelyMac forum.

He describes how to make a backup of a complete image, which is what you want to do. The steps are easy (must have 2nd bootable drive to do this):

Boot to second device (in his case Kalyway)
run Disk Utility
Unmount the drive you want to backup
Make image of it to second (or third) drive

Then to do a restore from that image, you need to put the boot tracks on the disk after it's been restored (to freshly formatted drive).

Thanks for that. I've actually made the backup using SuperDuper! I now want to make that back-up bootable.

I assume, I need to simply put the boot tracks, then on that drive by downloading the "install pack" you linked to and then go to terminal.

sudo -s
cd /V2
./pre-patch.sh

This is probably a really dumb question and by me asking it I should have no business making these changes but, I need to run terminal from the backup volume, correct?

No. Terminal runs on your main disk, and you zap the clone with it. You need to identify the name of the clone and perhaps edit the pre-patch.sh file to zap the correct disk. To identify the disk use Disk Utility; select the logical drive of the clone (listed below the physical drive), then click the Info button on the row above the list of drives. The name of the disk is something like Disk1s2. Whatever that name is has to be in the script for it to work right. Use Textedit to change it, and to change the logical name as well to whatever you called that disk. The script has Macintosh as the logical name, and Disk0s2 as the disk name. The script needs to reflect what actually is your situation.

I haven't done it this way (SuperDuper clone) so I can't be certain it will work, although it should. The way I do it is I have an external USB drive that is bootable into Leopard. I boot that drive then use Disk Utility to make an image of the main hard drive. Disk Utility has the ability to restore a drive from an image. Before or after the restore, I run pre-patch.sh to put the boot tracks on the restored drive. That works for sure.

Hi Bravenel & Itorok:

I can confirm that the script referenced by Bravenel does the boot trick (thanks!). I have successfully cloned both from "drive to drive" and "drive to image to drive" using both Disk Utility and Mike Bombich's Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) 3.1. As a tip, if you plan on revisiting this process again and the criteria stays constant (ie. the volume name, disk ID), you might consider running the pre-patch.sh as a post-install script in CCC, or even save it as an executable Automator or Apple(script).
Question - Have either of you confirmed if file-level copies are bootable (as opposed to block level; which I've been doing as a precaution)? Let me know if you have any input. I still haven't had an opportunity to perform additional testing on the boot image restored to a PATA drive connected to the Open's otherwise unused IDE bus. I've confirmed that PATA drives mount and function normal otherwise when connected to the IDE bus - bootability, however, is still in question. Thanks again for this continued dialog.

Thanks, bravenel, for sharing your knowledge with us. I am on the same path as itorok in attempting to get SuperDuper clones to boot on my Open and I could really use your advice.

I ran the pre-patch.sh script after making the proper edits. No luck...I can still only boot to my internal drive. Is it even possible to boot OS X from a USB external drive?

As I said earlier in the thread, I don't know about the Super Duper approach to this.

I did not order my Open with OS X installed, so I had the larger problem to solve of getting it to work at all. I have it working (10.5.2), but still have a few minor issues (won't sleep, for one). To get there, the first step was to create a Kalyway boot DVD. From that I formatted and installed 10.5.2 (Kalyway) on an external USB drive. From that I was able to get retail OS X install disk to install on Open internal HD.

So, the answer to your question is a qualified 'yes', because I certainly can boot OS X from an external USB drive. I even managed to get it to boot from a USB flash drive.

Are you sure that your external drive is formatted with a GUID partition? If not, that's the problem. If it is, I don't know what the problem is.