How to make a bootable Drive

I use an OWC USB2 drive as a Carbon Copy Cloner backup that is bootable. I bought a 4 TB Fantom USB3 drive but for reasons I do not understand it is not bootable. I used the Disk Utility to format the drive using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and even copied the OS over to the drive. Can anyone offer suggestions?

Thanks.

When you tried to make that drive bootable did you copy the files over yourself using Finder? If so, use Carbon Copy Cloner to do the job. In short, repeat the job you did when you set up the other drive.

Thanks Skydude. Unfortunately I set up the current bootable external drive so long ago I do not remember how I did it. Since it's an OWC drive I think it comes formatted for the Mac right out of the box so I didn't have to do anything.
I've looked at the CCC help and do not see a way to do this through that program. If you're sure it can be done I will send them an email for tech support. They are very good with that.

Mark F said:

I bought a 4 TB Fantom USB3 drive but for reasons I do not understand it is not bootable. I used the Disk Utility to format the drive using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and even copied the OS over to the drive. Can anyone offer suggestions?

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Let's assume everything went correctly. In order to boot from a bootable external drive (assuming the computer has a bootable internal drive)...you either have to:

1. Go to System Preferences >> Startup Disk >> and choose the external drive to boot from it (then restart).
2. Restart the computer...then immediately hold down the "Option" button. This will give you a screen to choose the drive to boot from.

HTH,

- Nick

I bought a 4 TB Fantom USB3 drive but for reasons I do not understand it is not bootable. I used the Disk Utility to format the drive using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and even copied the OS over to the drive.

Click to expand...

Maybe I'm missing some important aspect of what you did; but as I read your statement, this 4TB External Hard Drive (EHD) is new, was formatted as stated, and now has a copy of your Operating System (OS).

Well, it can't be bootable if that is the correct interpretation of what you did.

It's an EHD with data on it - (in this case a copy of the OS). That does not make an EHD bootable.

I'm happy to have my senior colleagues tell me I'm wrong; really.

Ian

Pigoo3, when I boot holding the option key down, the only two drives that appear are my internal drive and the OWC drive, not the new Fantom drive. Even if I turn the OWC drive off so it is not mounted.

IWT, you understand my situation correctly. My current OWC drive has data on it and is also a bootable drive. That is, by holding down the Option key on a restart I have the ability to boot diretly from the OWC drive instead of the internal drive. But the OWC drive is several years old so likely subject to failure, as well as being smaller and slower (much) than newer drives. So I bought the Fantom USB3 drive to replace the OWC. I would like to use the Fantom drive as a destination for my CCC backups and to boot the iMac in case of an internal drive failure.

Mark:

Ian is correct. Use CCC to clone your old OWC drive to the new Fantom drive and that will render the new drive bootable. As you found out, you can not copy what was on the old drive to the new one and expect it to be bootable.

Just create another CCC Task and name it something like this: "Clone OWC drive to Fantom drive". Then let CCC walk you thru the steps (it has that ability). No need to contact their support.

Mark F said:

Even if I turn the OWC drive off so it is not mounted.

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Are you saying the new drive is not mounting? Since it sounds like you formatted the new drive correctly...it should at least be mounting...and you should be seeing all three drives (if all are connected at the same time).

And since you mentioned "Even if I turn the OWC drive off..."...I sure hope you're not just turning the OWC drive off without unmounting it properly. If you're simply switching the external OWC drive off without properly unmounting it...and if this has been practice for a long time...then the computer could have some file corruption issues from doing this. If all of this is true...I would run Onyx to correct things.

- Nick

Chscag, I will try that. That would be great!
Pigoo3, sorry for the confusion. THe Fantom drive does mount correctly, it just does not appear as a bootable drive if I restart holding the Option key down. Also, I do unmount a drive before turning it off. I learned that lesson years ago when I got an error message about drives not being ejected correctly.

And I would like to thank everyone for your help.

Mark F said:

Also, I do unmount a drive before turning it off. I learned that lesson years ago when I got an error message about drives not being ejected correctly.

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Super duper...great to hear it.

- Nick

Maybe you are running into APFS problems., Is the 4TB drive a platter drive? Have you upgraded CCC to Version 5 for Apple File System cloning?


https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/everything-you-need-know-about-carbon-copy-cloner-and-apfs#bootable

Harryb2448, I am running the latest version of CCC. I have no idea if the Fantom is a platter drive. It is not an SD drive.

Thanks.

I used the Disk Utility to format the drive using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and even copied the OS over to the drive.

Click to expand...

But was the GUID option format also used??? Or at least Apple's APM format???




- Patrick
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If the iMac has an SSD it was formatted to APFS when you upgraded, no option other than that.

Open CCC and click on 'About CCC' and see what version it is.

Pm-r, I did use GUID (although I had a tough time finding it��).

Harryb2448, there is an internal fusion drive which I guess is an ssd? But it's the external drive that is the problem.

Thanks again.

Pm-r, I did use GUID (although I had a tough time finding it��).

Click to expand...

OK, and just checking, just in case, and they do seem to like hiding the option don't they!!! Strange eh???




- Patrick
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Believe me, I appreciate all the help I can get.

Mark F said:

Believe me, I appreciate all the help I can get.

Click to expand...

BTW: Did you get your 4 TB Fantom USB3 drive to boot or use any of the suggestions using CCC to clone etc???




- Patrick
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