Unable to access boot menu with USB HDD

Wonder if anyone can help. I have a new MacBook Pro running OS X 10.6.4

I wish to create a bootable backup of my Macintosh HD on a LaCie 500GB USB external HDD which is 2-3 years old. I formatted the drive with a GUID partition table scheme, with the volume formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), which I believe is the correct setup.

I then used SuperDuper! to backup all files to the external HDD - no problems there.

However, when I try to boot from the external HDD by holding down Option key during startup, I do not get the boot menu, instead the computer freezes at a blank grey screen and doesn't boot anything. If I remove the USB drive and do the same, the boot menu appears with Macintosh HD as the only choice (as would be expected).

I have tried holding down Cmd+Option+Shift+Del during startup - this doesn't work either.

Can anyone shed any light on this? Is it a problem with the MBP or the external HDD?

Any help much appreciated.

Booting from a USB drive is an exercise in frustration, although it is technically possible Intel Macs can boot from USB drives.

Do you have a firewire option on that LaCie? If not, I suggest you consider transferring the drive inside it to a FW/USB combo enclosure. Check Performance Upgrades; FireWire USB SATA Storage; Memory, more at OWC for options, and translate that to your UK situation.

He should be able to boot his MBP from a USB drive without any difficulty since it's an Intel machine running Snow Leopard. Sounds like the drive may have problems.... SuperDuper requires a drive formatted to HFS Extended Journaled using the GUID partition scheme, otherwise the clone it creates will not be bootable.

To the OP:

Try setting up the LaCie again. Go thru the whole process once more. If it still won't boot, I suspect you've got a problematic LaCie drive.

Regards.

I have booted from external USB drives and USB memory sticks on my Intel Mini. It's teh Power PC Macs that had USB booting issues.

Try what chscag suggested and get back with us. Like chscag said make sure the partition is a GUID Partition or it will not boot on an Intel Mac.

the sudreau

Thanks for the replies.

I have discovered some more things since my original post. The reason for wanting a backup on this specific occasion was that I thought I needed to perform a full OS X re-install and restore. This was because I am trying to setup a bootcamp partition, but bootcamp assistant could not create the partition due to the common "unable to move files" problem, which is well documented.

On further reading of Mac forums, I discovered a potential fix to the bootcamp problem that involved starting up in single-user mode (Cmd+S at startup). However, when I tried this, I got the same blank grey screen and failure to boot, and so I suspected a problem with the internal HDD. I therefore ran Disk Utility, and lo and behold there were a number of disk errors that I was able to fix using Disk Utility on the OS X installation CD.

As a result, Bootcamp now partitions my internal HDD fine! I can also boot into single-user mode.

But.... I still cannot boot from the USB HDD, even with a fresh SuperDuper! backup (following repair of the internal HDD). As chscag suggested, I therefore suspect an issue with the LaCie. I have borrowed a newer Iomega USB HDD from a coleague and will try with that. Will let you know if it works!