Clone recognized in Startup Disk but not Startup Manager

[plumpjack]

Having trouble booting from a Carbon Copy Clone drive. Spec:

Mac Pro early 2009 Running 10.6.8
2.5” USB 3.0 Samsung 500GB M3 drive
CCC 3.5.7 [trialware]

This is a dedicated drive. Nothing else is on the disk beyond the cloned image. The disks are correctly formatted with GUID and OS X Extended [Journaled].

This is a bootable USB drive. It does not need its own power source.

Startup Disk recognizes the USB drive in System Preferences and the clone boots if I alter preferences manually. So the clone is functional.

It does NOT show up on Startup Manager using the Option key however. It shows only the system disk. No joy from the ‘C’ key either.

I contacted Carbon Copy Cloner and they told me to use a USB 2.0 cable on this USB 3.0 device as they'd found this worked much of the time.

USB 2.0 cables are physically different. They just don't fit [that I can see] surely?

Suggestions appreciated.

Thanks for any help

 

[chscag]

I don't know why the folks at CCC recommended using a USB 2 cable on a USB 3 drive as the cable end (male) is different, unless they thought the Samsung drive had both inputs. But it does sound like it might be a connection problem of sorts. I don't particularly like Samsung drives and usually avoid them because of various problems that have been reported. Swap the cable with another if possible and if the same problem occurs, return the drive to where you purchased it from. And maybe try another brand.

 

[plumpjack]

I don't know why the folks at CCC recommended using a USB 2 cable on a USB 3 drive as the cable end (male) is different, unless they thought the Samsung drive had both inputs. But it does sound like it might be a connection problem of sorts. I don't particularly like Samsung drives and usually avoid them because of various problems that have been reported. Swap the cable with another if possible and if the same problem occurs, return the drive to where you purchased it from. And maybe try another brand.

Thank for this chscag. It was the micro B version it seems.

Rob from Bombich Software emailed me thus:

"The attached image shows how a "USB2 Micro B" connector will fit into the "USB3 Micro B" socket. While unexpected it works fine."

https://support.bombich.com/attachments/token/GKRz4zKOsFznGP3XZPxLzu8lB/?name=USB2-3+micro.png

He goes on:

"I really expect that to work. We know that CCC did its job as the computer booted from the drive and worked as expected. A drive not booting in one mode and working in the other is a hardware (likely USB bus timing) issue that most times is resolved with a cable change. If the issue persists after trying that (and the other suggestions) I would contact the drive vendor or exchange the drive."

I don't own one of these cables so I've ordered one from Amazon. I guess we'll just see how it goes.

Thanks again.

 

[harryb2448]

And with a Mac Pro why use slow old external drives? Are all four bays on the Mac Pro full? If not whack the drive into Bay Two or first free bay.

 

[plumpjack]

And with a Mac Pro why use slow old external drives? Are all four bays on the Mac Pro full? If not whack the drive into Bay Two or first free bay.

Simple answer: because it's convenient and how I prefer to organize things. I do have space. I do not have another internal drive. Maybe that's the way I'll go if this doesn't work out.

Thanks Harry

 

[harryb2448]

Well using an internal bay and hard drive will always be much, much quicker than USB2 and Firewire 800. A 2009 Mac Pro uses SATA II and transfer rate is 3GB/s. USB 2 come in at 480MB/s. You do not have USB3 unless you install an expenside PCIE card, and reports on the success of these is very mixed.

 

[plumpjack]

Well using an internal bay and hard drive will always be much, much quicker than USB2 and Firewire 800. A 2009 Mac Pro uses SATA II and transfer rate is 3GB/s. USB 2 come in at 480MB/s. You do not have USB3 unless you install an expenside PCIE card, and reports on the success of these is very mixed.

Yes. Thanks.