iMac won't boot drive as external

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Jan 13, 2007
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Your Mac's Specs
15in i7 MacBook Pro, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD, 500GB HD
I hate asking for help, but this has me completely stumped.

The SATA cable/controller in my sister's 2009 iMac died. The hard drive is still good as I've put it in an external enclosure and can mount it on my MBP using a USB drive dock. We've tried 3 different enclosures, including 2 from OWC. The 2 from OWC (combo FW400/800/USB) wouldn't mount the drive at all. The most recent model, a Macally FW400/USB enclosure will mount the drive fine on my computer.

I can't get the iMac to mount the drive and boot from it. I know the computer sees the drive just fine and that is knows there is a bootable OS on it. (Currently running 10.5.8). If I boot from my Snow Leopard install DVD, I can select the external drive as the start up disc but it never loads. It displays the Apple logo then goes to a white screen.

OK, so maybe the OS install is bad. The iMac booted up my Snow Leopard DVD just fine, so I installed SL on a empty partition on the drive. Completes the install, then restarts, and its stuck at the same white screen.

I'm hoping someone will have some ideas as I've been trying to solve this issue for almost a month now.
 
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Stretch
Joined
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Your Mac's Specs
15in i7 MacBook Pro, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD, 500GB HD
I've figured something out. I finally got it to boot its original drive using my USB dock. I think something with the Oxford 934 chipset is causing an issue. That is the only thing identical to all the enclosures that didn't work. Even when I used USB with the 934 enclosures it wouldn't boot.
 
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Stretch
Joined
Jan 13, 2007
Messages
4,773
Reaction score
166
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63
Location
Central New York
Your Mac's Specs
15in i7 MacBook Pro, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD, 500GB HD
Just an update on this, I did finally get the computer working. I think the firewire controller died when the SATA controller died. Got it to work with a USB drive and is currently running on the USB port of a firewire/USB enclosure that wouldn't work under firewire.
 

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