I use CalDigit VR Mini drives and SuperDuper to make bootable Backups of bothe the Leopard and Snow Leopard drives on my MacPro. These drive can connect either as eSATA via a supplied extender board which connects to the motherboard or via FW800.
A few months ago I toiok my Ma=cPro to an Apple store to have my original OEM upgraded ATI X1900XS video card replaced under warranty with an Envidia 8800.
A few weeks later when I tried to connect my exterbal CalDigit drives via eSATA I realized that my MacPro no longer recognized them. I just figured that the extender had become disconnected somehow when they swapped out the cards.
Yesterday I connected my external drive to my MacPro using FW800 to update my bootable backup. When my MacPro boots the CalDigit external drives are visible on the desktop of both the Leopard AND Snow Leopard OS and I am able to create a bootable backup...
BUT now (unlike before) when I have a bootable backup drive connected via FW800 and boot while holding down the OPTION key I only see my internal bootable drives and NOT the external FW800 drives. This also used to work even when my external drives were connected via eSATA.
Might anyone have an idea what might have happened or how to fix this functionality?
I had no system crash or power outage.... could this be a bios issue as the OPTION key boot used to give me the choice of external Bootable Backups before any operating system had actually loaded.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Reply 1 : Help: Intel MacPro no longer recognizes External BU Drives
My initial thought is that if things weren't working exactly as they were when you took the system in to be worked on, you should take it back and tell them they broke something while working on it.
Given that to replace the video card they would have probably removed any other add-in cards, it's entirely possible they just didn't get it in all the way. The add-in slots are one of the few poorly designed aspects of the Mac Pro case.
There are a couple of oddities in your post, like why are you using SuperDuper to create multiple bootable backups? Having one of each for emergency purposes should be quite sufficient. After that, Time Machine should be able to do the job quite nicely. You can use a Time Machine backup to restore your system in a very similar fashion to SuperDuper, only Time Machine is far more efficient in its storage.
Moving on, the fact that the drives are visible in OS X means that they work fine, but the fact that they don't show up at the EFI (Macs don't have a BIOS, and yes it's kind of a potato-potahto distinction) boot picker means that they aren't bootable. You probably have some kind of setting wrong in SuperDuper. And before you give the knee-jerk response of how you've never touched those settings in 5 years, just check it anyway. And make sure the drives have a GUID partition table. Without that, they will not boot on a Mac with Intel CPU.
Also, another minor point: nVidia, not Envidia. Pronounced the same however, so easy mistake to make if you haven't ever seen it written.
And I suppose you could try clearing the PRAM. I highly doubt it will have any effect at all, but sometimes a bad PRAM setting can wreak all manner of havoc on a system. It takes all of 10 seconds to try, so not like you have much to lose.
Given that to replace the video card they would have probably removed any other add-in cards, it's entirely possible they just didn't get it in all the way. The add-in slots are one of the few poorly designed aspects of the Mac Pro case.
There are a couple of oddities in your post, like why are you using SuperDuper to create multiple bootable backups? Having one of each for emergency purposes should be quite sufficient. After that, Time Machine should be able to do the job quite nicely. You can use a Time Machine backup to restore your system in a very similar fashion to SuperDuper, only Time Machine is far more efficient in its storage.
Moving on, the fact that the drives are visible in OS X means that they work fine, but the fact that they don't show up at the EFI (Macs don't have a BIOS, and yes it's kind of a potato-potahto distinction) boot picker means that they aren't bootable. You probably have some kind of setting wrong in SuperDuper. And before you give the knee-jerk response of how you've never touched those settings in 5 years, just check it anyway. And make sure the drives have a GUID partition table. Without that, they will not boot on a Mac with Intel CPU.
Also, another minor point: nVidia, not Envidia. Pronounced the same however, so easy mistake to make if you haven't ever seen it written.
And I suppose you could try clearing the PRAM. I highly doubt it will have any effect at all, but sometimes a bad PRAM setting can wreak all manner of havoc on a system. It takes all of 10 seconds to try, so not like you have much to lose.
Reply 2 : Help: Intel MacPro no longer recognizes External BU Drives
Dear Jimmy,
Thanks for the reply....
The eSATA problem is a bit different as the eSATA ports are not actually using the slot. It has 2 cables that actually connect to the spare optical connectors on my Motherboard that would be used by an extra optical or blue-ray drive had I ever decided to add one. so unless he pulled both of those connectors off... and they look solid as far as I can see it is an EFI problem.
The VRMINI was indeed formatted originally with a GUID partition... I will start over again and make SURE that that partition is good.
I have a RAID 1 backup for both Leopard & Snow Leopard in case if one of my boot drives dies I will be able to keep on working.... At least that was the plan! The Drives had never failed to display in the past so it a new one on me. I have stopped using TM as I am more worried about a bad drive than erased files....
I really appreciate you taking the time to brainstorm this with me... Thanks.
Thanks for the reply....
The eSATA problem is a bit different as the eSATA ports are not actually using the slot. It has 2 cables that actually connect to the spare optical connectors on my Motherboard that would be used by an extra optical or blue-ray drive had I ever decided to add one. so unless he pulled both of those connectors off... and they look solid as far as I can see it is an EFI problem.
The VRMINI was indeed formatted originally with a GUID partition... I will start over again and make SURE that that partition is good.
I have a RAID 1 backup for both Leopard & Snow Leopard in case if one of my boot drives dies I will be able to keep on working.... At least that was the plan! The Drives had never failed to display in the past so it a new one on me. I have stopped using TM as I am more worried about a bad drive than erased files....
I really appreciate you taking the time to brainstorm this with me... Thanks.
Reply 3 : Help: Intel MacPro no longer recognizes External BU Drives
You made a mistake. You said, "And make sure the drives have a GUID partition table. Without that, they will not boot on a Mac with Intel CPU."
It is the other way around, a PPC Mac will not boot with a HDD formatted with GUID. An Intel Mac will boot with a HHD formatted with APM.
It is the other way around, a PPC Mac will not boot with a HDD formatted with GUID. An Intel Mac will boot with a HHD formatted with APM.
Reply 4 : Help: Intel MacPro no longer recognizes External BU Drives
Fair enough, but it's not the sort of thing I would rely on. It may work now, but it may also disappear at any point in the future and it may also lead to unpredictable results. In fact, Apple just recently released an update to the SMC for the Mac Pros, and it's entirely possible that they removed this feature in addition to tweaking the fan settings. It wasn't mentioned in any of the notes I've seen for the update, but I also haven't gone looking to see if there are any ASP only sections to the KB article on it either. It's kind of academic given the OP says that the partition table was GUID. Even if the Apple store updated the SMC like they are supposed to with the video card replacement, and it did remove the APM boot option, if the partition table was GUID, it's not the source of the problem.
Unless you have a very specific reason for doing so, I'd rank this up there with installing smcFanControl and similar programs in terms of it being a bad idea.
This really sounds like there's just some issue with the way the backups are being made. For one reason or another, they're not bootable, and thus not showing up in the boot picker.
One detail I don't see, Hassiman, is whether or not your external drives are just singular drives, or if you have one of those fun little external drive bay devices where the drives are configured into a RAID 1 setup like the internal drives. I don't really know exactly how SuperDuper deals with RAID setups, but it stands to reason that if it's just creating a blind copy, then that copy thinks it's part of a RAID 1 setup, and is failing to find the second drive. It's even possible that SuperDuper is only copying data from one of the drives in the array, and when you go to look at them later via the OS, it's filling in the gaps from the internal drive. I've never used SuperDuper in a RAID setup, so this is just speculation along a logical line of thought. Something to consider anyway, unless someone has more detailed knowledge of this than I do.
Unless you have a very specific reason for doing so, I'd rank this up there with installing smcFanControl and similar programs in terms of it being a bad idea.
This really sounds like there's just some issue with the way the backups are being made. For one reason or another, they're not bootable, and thus not showing up in the boot picker.
One detail I don't see, Hassiman, is whether or not your external drives are just singular drives, or if you have one of those fun little external drive bay devices where the drives are configured into a RAID 1 setup like the internal drives. I don't really know exactly how SuperDuper deals with RAID setups, but it stands to reason that if it's just creating a blind copy, then that copy thinks it's part of a RAID 1 setup, and is failing to find the second drive. It's even possible that SuperDuper is only copying data from one of the drives in the array, and when you go to look at them later via the OS, it's filling in the gaps from the internal drive. I've never used SuperDuper in a RAID setup, so this is just speculation along a logical line of thought. Something to consider anyway, unless someone has more detailed knowledge of this than I do.
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