External Boot: 1 Drive Works, 1 Hangs

I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my OS X 10.4.5 drive, and below are the results:

Copied to Lacie 160GB connected via firewire. When OPTION key is pressed at startup, the drive shows, and I can boot to it . . up to a point. There's activity for about 10 seconds, then a long pause, then more activity for about 10 more seconds, then . . nothing. Grey Apple screen with the circular progress indicator just spinning. I gave it more than 5 minutes and gave up.

Copied to a Samsung 200GB drive in a Mad Dog firewire enclosure. Did it exactly the same way (with CCC). The drive shows at boot (now, along with the Lacie), but when I choose it, it boots into the desktop. It also pauses for awhile, but the time was totally reasonable, and in fact, I am now on that drive.

Any idea as to what might be wrong with the copy on the Lacie drive? Maybe I should just let it sit longer for that first boot to that drive?

Thanks!

Mark

I dont know, but when i tried to boot to an external hard drive, it would stop at the grey screen and stay there. i decided to let it sit for while i went to school and when i got back it was like that. 6 hours and nothing. so i just reinstalled the os. after five minutes... hmm... i dont know, but try it again.

Thanks. I gave it another shot (the waiting), but gave up after about 10 minutes. The question is:

Does the Lacie drive hang because it's the Lacie drive (Western Digital inside it, I think), or because it's the first drive in the firewire chain?

I suppose I should switch the order of the drives, and see if it then becomes the Samsung that hangs. Sounds like a project for another day, but I am curious about that.

Mark

I switched the order of the drives on the firewire "chain", and no difference. OS X just refuses to fully load/boot from the LaCie. Confirmed latest firmware. I'm sure glad I decided to buy the Samsung/Mad Dog enclosure. Otherwise I'd have been sitting here going completely nuts (more so than I am) wondering why I couldn't boot from an external drive.

Mark

Okay, got it to boot (quick, BTW) after repairing permissions. Still, it's not quite right, aas I got 3 error dialog boxes once the desktop started. All were related to .hid extensions, I believe (one associated with an ATI preference add-on). This wasn't necessary on the Samsung. On that drive CCC did the job perfectly. Even though I have CCC set to erase first, I'm thinking I should wipe the LaCie boot partition with disk utility and try again. At least now I know it *can* work, but the LaCie is surely more particular about things than the Samsung drive.

Mark

External Boot: 1 Drive Works, 1 Hangs - Solution

The solution:

Use Disk Utility to erase the boot drive partition, then use CCC to copy the drive image. The LaCie now boots perfectly. Apparently, CCC may have issues with the "erase" option. I believe the Samsung worked right off, because that drive/partition was clean when I first used CCC. Anyway, all is well now.

Mark