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backup psystar boot drive help please.


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I used a third party tool to back up my boot drive on my Psystar and It would not boot. I have been searching all over to figure out how to do it because I think the drive is failing...

Download "Carbon Copy Cloner" (it's free) then download "Chameleon(1) 2.0 RC4 installer package"

Clone with CCC & install Chameleon.

Also how do I update the OS and other Apple software I purchased?

 

Do yourself a favour, when you replace the Hard Drive, use a retail OS X DVD to install using the "Tonymac" or " myhack" methods to do a clean install. That way your system will be more compatible for upgrades than the pystar way and you can copy your docs & apps from your backup.

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Getchaself a new drive. Make two partitions with an OSX install disk. Clonezilla your old files to one partition. Reinstall using OSX retail DVD and [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url]. Then when it asks where you want to copy your files from at first set up screen select the backed up partition.

 

Either that or put both drives in and install fresh copy and just select the old drive when it asks where to copy your files from, and hope it doesn't die before you get a new install up and running.

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What version do you have, Leopard or Snow Leopard?

I have 10.6.1

 

Download "Carbon Copy Cloner" (it's free) then download "Chameleon(1) 2.0 RC4 installer package"

Clone with CCC & install Chameleon.

 

 

Do yourself a favour, when you replace the Hard Drive, use a retail OS X DVD to install using the "Tonymac" or " myhack" methods to do a clean install. That way your system will be more compatible for upgrades than the pystar way and you can copy your docs & apps from your backup.

Where can I find these methods? I am having trouble finding them

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My mac has been crashing and I think the OS on the system is compromised. Disk utility says to insert distribution disk for repairs. Can I use my disk to repair it first or will that screw things up because it is a psystar?

 

It would be nice to get to the next level of OS (upgrade) and I can't do that with my psystar because it points to their server for the upgrades.

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My mac has been crashing and I think the OS on the system is compromised. Disk utility says to insert distribution disk for repairs. Can I use my disk to repair it first or will that screw things up because it is a psystar?

I don't know anything about the pystar disk, but I assume if you can boot with it then you can run disk utility from it.

You can also repair by booting in single user mode (-s) then typing fsck -fy

 

I would be doing a backup ASAP--Format your backup drive (GUID)--Clone with CCC--Install Chameleon, set destination to the backup drive. This will give you a bootable backup.

 

 

 

It would be nice to get to the next level of OS (upgrade) and I can't do that with my psystar because it points to their server for the upgrades.

From what I know pystar made their hardware as identical as apple's as possible, so if you did what is know as a vanilla install, then all update should be fine.. Did they supply you with a retail OS X install DVD?

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I don't know anything about the pystar disk, but I assume if you can boot with it then you can run disk utility from it.

You can also repair by booting in single user mode (-s) then typing fsck -fy

 

I would be doing a backup ASAP--Format your backup drive (GUID)--Clone with CCC--Install Chameleon, set destination to the backup drive. This will give you a bootable backup.

 

 

 

 

From what I know pystar made their hardware as identical as apple's as possible, so if you did what is know as a vanilla install, then all update should be fine.. Did they supply you with a retail OS X install DVD?

 

Yes they did

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I'm backing up now.

I assume you are backing up to another drive either internal or external. Using CCC?

If you then install Chameleon on that drive, you have a bootable backup.

 

 

No I haven't tried to do a single user repair as above as I don't understand how to do it as a single user and why.

How you do it! I don't know what bootloader pystar installs, but how it is done in most bootloaders is that you tap the space key as the loader is starting, sometimes you get a menu to pick single user mode, or you get a prompt where you can type sometimes on the bottom left of screen. This where you type -s

When you get into single user and it stops scrolling text you type fsck -y

When it finishes running and if it says system repaired or modified you tap the up arrow and repeat until it just says system ok. then type exit to continue boot.

 

As to why: Because you can repair the system when disk utility is unable to from within OS X. You'r assuming that your hard drive is failing (may be), but it could be that the system is corrupted and is repairable.

 

If it was me, even if the system is repaired, I would do a clean vanilla install. Get rid of the {censored} pystar software and make it easy to do updates.

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can I carbon copy the drive then load myhack 1.1 and then use it to boot?

 

Yes you can. You can run myhack with the backup drive as destination after doing the carbon copy but you won't have to have any of the option checked as you have a working system. All myhack will be doing is installing a bootloader to the backup to make it bootable.

 

Do you intend doing a clean install with myhack?. If so you need not go through all the steps in the myhack guide like restoring the Install DVD to a drive.

 

Did you run the repair and if so what was the result?

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Yes you can. You can run myhack with the backup drive as destination after doing the carbon copy but you won't have to have any of the option checked as you have a working system. All myhack will be doing is installing a bootloader to the backup to make it bootable.

 

Do you intend doing a clean install with myhack?. If so you need not go through all the steps in the myhack guide like restoring the Install DVD to a drive.

 

Did you run the repair and if so what was the result?

 

 

I decided to do the back up the way it is. Verify that backup is bootable with myhack.

 

Then I'll attempt to fix the drive.

 

I started it the way you explained. Booted as single user but it didn't give me an opportunity to type fsck -y it went right into loading the desktop

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I decided to do the back up the way it is. Verify that backup is bootable with myhack.

 

Then I'll attempt to fix the drive.

 

I started it the way you explained. Booted as single user but it didn't give me an opportunity to type fsck -y it went right into loading the desktop

 

Wow never heard of that for single user mode. Did you see scrolling text?

 

Good idea doing the backup first.

 

When you are able to boot from the backup, you will be able to run disc utility from that drive.

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Wow never heard of that for single user mode. Did you see scrolling text?

 

Good idea doing the backup first.

 

When you are able to boot from the backup, you will be able to run disc utility from that drive.

 

after hitting space bar it gave me options to select for boot I selected single user then the desktop came up.

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after hitting space bar it gave me options to select for boot I selected single user then the desktop came up.

Sounds strange, but I have not got a clue what bootloader pystar used and how they have modified it.

Hopefully your backup will be bootable.

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Sounds strange, but I have not got a clue what bootloader pystar used and how they have modified it.

Hopefully your backup will be bootable.

 

Back up complete, MyHacked it. It seems to be working fine.

 

When I go to do software updates it says I have a network problem (because Psystar pointed the updates to their server. How do I repoint them to get them from Apple?

 

Doing a Vanilla from scratch makes me nervous because I am not sure that all the drivers will be there for my psystar. I guess I can use a different drive and just see what happens.

 

 

WHat I Have

Model Name: Mac Pro

Model Identifier: MacPro3,1

Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon

Processor Speed: 2.67 GHz

Number Of Processors: 1

Total Number Of Cores: 4

L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 8 MB

Memory: 12 GB

Bus Speed: 533 MHz

Boot ROM Version: MP31.006C.B05

SMC Version (system): 1.30f3

 

TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-5223B

 

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

Slot: Slot-1

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 512 MB

Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)

Device ID: 0x0640

Revision ID: 0x00a1

ROM Revision: 33323333

Displays:

Cinema HD:

Resolution: 2560 x 1600

Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Rotation: Supported

Display Connector:

Status: No Display Connected

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Back up complete, MyHacked it. It seems to be working fine.

If it is working fine then you should be able to boot from it, the run "Disk Utility" from it and repair the other drive

 

When I go to do software updates it says I have a network problem (because Psystar pointed the updates to their server. How do I repoint them to get them from Apple?

Don't know how to repoint but you just go to the "Apple" website and download the updates eg 10.6.4 combo update and there is a SnowLeopardGraphicsUpdate1.0. Just download & install.

 

Doing a Vanilla from scratch makes me nervous because I am not sure that all the drivers will be there for my psystar. I guess I can use a different drive and just see what happens.

Not really that hard, a simple 3 step install. If you decide to do it in the future it would be no problem, seeing you have another drive. Now that you have a bootable backup, there is really no danger of ruining your system. Looks like your system would run on vanilla kexts anyway. You just need a couple of kexts in the extra folder to fool OS X that it is running on areal Mac.

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If it is working fine then you should be able to boot from it, the run "Disk Utility" from it and repair the other drive

 

 

Don't know how to repoint but you just go to the "Apple" website and download the updates eg 10.6.4 combo update and there is a SnowLeopardGraphicsUpdate1.0. Just download & install.

 

 

Not really that hard, a simple 3 step install. If you decide to do it in the future it would be no problem, seeing you have another drive. Now that you have a bootable backup, there is really no danger of ruining your system. Looks like your system would run on vanilla kexts anyway. You just need a couple of kexts in the extra folder to fool OS X that it is running on areal Mac.

what would those kexts be?

 

I lost my sound on this drive. Also when I do an open with Like when I want to watch a movie there are two entires for all apps to choose... And worse, I have no sound!

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what would those kexts be?

 

I lost my sound on this drive. Also when I do an open with Like when I want to watch a movie there are two entires for all apps to choose... And worse, I have no sound!

 

What kexts, I have never done an install on a vanilla system. You will need the fake kext at least. You don't say what the motherboard is, but it was my understanding that on the pystar systems, sound video, network etc just worked with the OS X kexts (vanilla)

 

No reason for you to lose sound just by cloning and adding a bootloader that I can think of. A choice of 2 apps sounds like a permission problem. Remember you cloned a system that was not healthy for a start. Have you tried repairing the other drive from the backup yet.

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What kexts, I have never done an install on a vanilla system. You will need the fake kext at least. You don't say what the motherboard is, but it was my understanding that on the pystar systems, sound video, network etc just worked with the OS X kexts (vanilla)

 

No reason for you to lose sound just by cloning and adding a bootloader that I can think of. A choice of 2 apps sounds like a permission problem. Remember you cloned a system that was not healthy for a start. Have you tried repairing the other drive from the backup yet.

 

 

I am up and running on "New" Drive with Myhack No sound. there is no choice for sound in system set up for sound.

I was able to update to 10.6.4, Yea! Everything seems to be working except sound. is there a good place to go to figure out how to get this os to recognize the onboard sound card?

 

Where can I find step by step on how to get my apps off my old pystar boot drive transferred to this?

including how to get my mail and itunes account transferred?

 

By the way, thanks for all your help!

 

Should I use migration assistant?

 

<strong>I am going to open a new topic related to how to transfer apps from old psystar drive but I sure wish could figure out how to edit the kexts files to fix the sound.</strong>

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By the way, thanks for all your help

Your welcome

 

Where can I find step by step on how to get my apps off my old pystar boot drive transferred to this?

including how to get my mail and itunes account transferred? Should I use migration assistant?

The "easy" way is to use migration assistant. I prefer to transfer them manually. A bit of "research"(google) will find out where everything is. example itunes music is kept in root/Users/userxyz/Music.

 

I am going to open a new topic related to how to transfer apps from old psystar drive
I am sure the topic has been covered many times, not pystar specific, but is no different from transferring other os x x systems.

 

I sure wish could figure out how to edit the kexts files to fix the sound

Have you tried? Have you done a searh like this http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&...q=&gs_rfai=

or you could download "system info app from here http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=219584 then search http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&...q=&gs_rfai=

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Your welcome

 

The "easy" way is to use migration assistant. I prefer to transfer them manually. A bit of "research"(google) will find out where everything is. example itunes music is kept in root/Users/userxyz/Music.

 

I am sure the topic has been covered many times, not pystar specific, but is no different from transferring other os x x systems.

 

 

Have you tried? Have you done a searh like this http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&...q=&gs_rfai=

or you could download "system info app from here http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=219584 then search http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&...q=&gs_rfai=

 

Im OK with moving things. Just can't figure out that darn lack of sound!

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