startup disc

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Hi

Can anyone advise me on how to change the startup disc. I appear to be
running from a external clone disc and all attempts to change back to the
MAC HD drive have failed. The about this mac screen shows the startup disc
has CLONE.
I have tried altering the disc in system preferences (which show the MAC HD)
but clone still appears in the about this mac. Is there a more permanent way
to force the startup disc. I am using the latest release of leopard on an intel mac.
many thanks
rogerwinterton
 
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You should just be able to change it in System Preferences as you are doing.

Are you sure it's just not the name of the internal disk that's changed?

What happens if you try and boot without the external connected?
 
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startup

wookie

I have tried booting with the clone removed and my system hangs.
I have tried system preferences. it shows both the clone and the
system hdd. choosing system hdd appears to have no affect.

regards
roger
 
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OK.

Lets go back to how this started. How did you get to this point?

Is the external a clone of the internal disk or Vice-versa?
 
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startup

wookie,

I first noticed a problem after attempting to install the latest release of leopard.
The installation failed suggesting a corrupt download. I answered OK to the prompt and my system hung. I switch off and attempted a reboot. It failed.
I tried this a number of times each time with no success. The clone is a partition on my Western Digital Time Machine. This was attached. I have one
other WD drive which is my working drive. This was attached. I tried to boot
into safe mode but it failed with - if i remember correctly - bootstrap not found.

I then booted from my installation disc to access disk manager. This was
successful. I repaired my Mac HDD drive. At this point I should have noticed that disk manager did not remind me that this should have been the startup disc.

The system recovered. It was at this point that I noticed that some of my apps were running from the clone disc. I investigated further and found that the clone was my startup disc. Attempting to change it in system prefs did not work. I have tried booting from the MAC HDD after holding the function key whilst booting. It allowed me to select the MAC HDD but the WD CLONE
light was very active during the reboot suggesting that I was still on the CLONE (not sure).

The installation error may well have nothing to do with the startup probs I may have been on the CLONE for sometime with noticing it.

regards
roger
 
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OK. A little confused by all of that to be honest.

1. Is the external drive 'clone' a Time Machine backup or a backup created from some other tool?
2. Do you have a Snow Leopard disc?

If so your best bet is to start again. Boot from the DVD, install SnowLeopard and restore your Time Machine backup
 
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startup

wookie

The first WD is formatted as a time machine with a partition on it used as a clone (carbon copy cloner).

I guess recovery is the final option although I would like to know why i cannot change the startup disc in the normal fashion.

regards
roger
 
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Then I'd use CCC to clone the working copy back to your internal drive.

I think the reason it's not working you answered yourself
The installation failed
. I imagine you've got a partial install there that still has pointers to files on the external.
 
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startup

wookie

sorry i have already successfully installed the latest version of leopard thinking this may cure the problem.
Unless I can find an answer to this I may wait for LION and make sure it is installed on the target disc MAC HDD. This way I should have LION on the MAC HDD and the final release of Leopard on the clone.

regards
roger
 
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I'd restore the clone or a clean snow leopard install.

You need a working snow leopard install to get Lion
 

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