[HM] hummmmmm

[Duane Murphy]

--- At Tue, 8 Nov 2005 12:09:38 -0500, Robert Gray wrote:

>At 3:27 PM +0000 on 11/8/05, you wrote:
>
>>  > On Tue, 8 Nov 2005, michaelP wrote:
>>>
>>  >> Can you remind me how to boot from an external hard drive?
>>  >
>>>  Hold the option key at boot. A screen will come up that
>>  > will allow you to select which drive to boot from.
>>
>>
>>  Thanks Allan, I tried this three times and each time
>>  the screen came up but without the external hard drive
>>  showing even though it does appear in the Start-Up
>>  Disk control panel (it has a System Folder identical
>>  to the one on the internal drive).
>
>I'm not so sure you can simple copy the system folder from one drive 
>to another.  Things have to be done; like writing a little sector 
>which tells the system that the drive is bootable.  There may even be 
>invisible files that are essential and don't get included in a 
>"finder-copy".  I remember that caution issued was for at least one 
>OS version.  It's always best to install the OS or at least restore 
>from a backup copy (that still won't make the disk bootable but you 
>might be able to do that with Disk Setup or similar.

While this is true for OS X, OS 9 requires no such tweaking. Simply
selecting the drive in the Startup Disk control panel will fix the drive
so that it can boot.

This will only work if the System Folder is blessed. A blessed System
Folder is identified by the Mac OS face on the folder. If you think the
folder should be blessed then you can help the system recognize this by
dragging the Finder file out of the System folder and then back in.
Seeing the Finder file and the System file in the same folder helps the
system recognize that this is a System folder. 

NOTE: This only works for OS 9. OS X is _completely_ different.

 ...Duane

 ...Duane