Clone boot error (blinking underscore)

[thestevo]

I've got a 775Dual-VSTA installation was working fine on a PATA. I wanted to move to a SATA. So I read up on it and used Carbon Cloner. Reboots and all I have is a blinking underscore ( _ ) Ok, so I use rsyncx, same thing. I read the article about how to repair a clone, did ALL of that. In my journeys I've used fdisk -u, fdisk -e, I dd'ed boot1h to the start of the partition, I've used startupfiletool, and I've blessed it the disk. Then I read that the whole thing may not work because 10.4.8's disk utility might not work with MBR correctly. So I popped in Hiren's and reformatted the whole SATA in FAT32 with Paragon Partition Manager. I put in 10.4.7, erased the FAT32 as HFS+, cloned it again (copying files across unto the partition I just created with CC or Rsynx) ... still didn't work. Then based off that I tried every combination of what I've listed above. I've checked to make sure all the boot files are in place and uncorrupted at /usr/standalone/i386. I swear I've spent hours searching this forum for every single thing there is to do about this and if its here, I'm pretty sure I've tried it. So, this is not an obvious solution.

 

I can boot onto the SATA if the disk is in the drive. I can't install directly to the SATA because SATA is not recognized by the DVD for my mobo.

 

I only have one partition on the SATA, besides the tiny MBR, and I've checked to see if each new thing I try works by unplugging the PATA (so there is absolutely no tie between the two.) Heck, at this point I'm willing to install a boot loader to get it to work, whatever. I just don't want to install XP or linux to do it.

 

Stephen

[thestevo]

I'm usually not one for bumping a post, but I figured I'd just make sure this had one last chance at anybody answering.

 

Nobody?

[Rammjet]

I'm not positive that the Disk Utility on the 10.4.7 install DVD doesn't suffer the same problem as the 10.4.8 Disk Utility. The next time I need to format, I will try it again to be sure one way or other.

 

10.4.6 works.

 

Format your hard drive as FAT32 using something in Hiren's. Also, set the primary partition "active" Use the 10.4.6 or other install DVD to format (erase) the primary partition of your hard drive (shown below the hard drive icon in Disk Utility). Then boot back to your working installation of OSX and use Disk Utility's Restore function. Drag the icon of your existing installation to the Source field and drag the icon of the primary partition that you formatted to the Destination field and click Restore. Do not check the Erase box.

 

BTW, Disk Utility doesn't make use of the files in the /usr/standalone/i386 directory, it uses files built into the Diskimages.framework. And "blessing" just sets the partition "active". Each hard drive has its own active partition - setting boot order in BIOS sets which hard drive to boot from and the active flag tells BIOS which partition to boot even if there is only one partition.

[thestevo]

Thanks for your help Rammjet. I tried what you gave me, but I couldn't get it to work. I'm sure that I was missing something, but I didn't have the time or patience to fix it.

 

I'm just posting back to put some closure on the topic. I'm now running off of SATA because I installed from the latest JaS with PPF1 and my PPF that includes the disk utility downgrade and MartaMarco's modifications. Once installed I migrated everything from the other partition, pretty slick.

 

So, just in case anybody was wondering if I ever got it... I did. This is the easiest way to do it. I got it working a while ago in a couple hours.

 

Stephen