A year ago Euan gave me instructions for starting up a Macbook (Snow Leopard) in Target Disk mode and making it appear on the desktop of my G5 (Leopard) as an external drive. This worked very well. I'm now trying to do tyne same thing starting up the G5 as a Target Disk and making it appear on my MacPro's desktop, running Mavericks, which will not work. The first step goes well, inasmuch as the G5 starts up displaying the Firewire symbol moving around.
After the failure of the G5 to appear on the Pro desktop, I succeeded in copying all the files I need from my external hard drive. The G5 however now refuses to behave itself. I have to give it a safe boot every time, otherwise, whilst appearing to be working correctly the screen remains obstinately blank, and I have to shut it down with the power button. I have checked system prefs startup disk, which shows my hard drive highlighted in purple, and offers me the chance to 'click the lock to prevent further changes'. I haven't yet done that but I shall do so now as I think it might be suffering from indecision. I'll let you know!
Hi Eric, let’s be a bit more forensic about your Target Disk problem.
For the record, my Mavericks Macs have no difficulty using Target Disk mode on my other non-Mavericks Macs. As TDM directly accesses the hard drive of the Target Mac, it shouldn’t matter at all what OS X version the T-Mac is running, so long as it’s “new” enough to use TDM.
Summary (it all got rather confusing): you are using MacBook (Snow Leopard), a G5 (Leopard), and a MacPro (Mavericks) plus a separate External hard drive with, or without, a System.
Taking each post in order from the top:
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1st Nov 2013 @ 13:24:04
Understood. First some general questions:
1. what sort of MacPro (e.g. MacPro1,3) is this? — from your About this Mac > System Information menu (Shouldn’t be significant, but…)
2. Is it recent enough to have a Thunderbolt port, or are you using an earlier model Firewire 800 or 400 port?
3. What measures did you take to ensure the integrity of the various System installations (Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion) such as checking permissions, disc Integrity, permissions, restart, safe boot, etc.?
4. It will take possibly several minutes for a large and data-intense drive on the G5 to appear on your MacPro desktop, especially if you are using Firewire 400 (the speed of the lowest specced Firewire will limit transfer speeds, even if your MacPro has FW800, or even Thunderbolt. More, if the drive data isn’t in the best of health. How long did you wait?
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4th Nov 2013 @13:06:37
6. The poor old G5 must be pretty confused by now. The interruptions in the middle of mounting the drive (if that is what actually happened) weren’t good, although there may have been an underlying problem on the G5 beforehand — and it sounds as though the G5 Leopard System is now a bust. Note: although the G5 System isn’t involved in mounting the G5 as a target disk, repeated interruptions of the mounting process may upset data structures.
Was there a reason rely on Safe Boot as a remedy here? It does all sorts of useful housework (Apple never quite explains what, except that it excludes all non-Apple software and clears some caches).
You should now try to start up your G5 Mac with (ideally) your Leopard installer DVD, or as close as you can get to a Leopard startup on an external drive or partition. Then run Disk Utility from that DVD. This may bring the G5 internal HD back to life successfully, although it could take several passes. If not, it may mean an erase and System re-install once your vital files are backed up.
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4th Nov 2013 @ 13:10:34
7. Presumably the G5 internal hard drive was highlighted purple. The question mark means a viable OS hasn’t been found. You need to use another drive for startup. Note: this is System Startup Prefs, so clicking the lock to “make changes” and unchecking the “purple” drive only means that the G5 will try to use another installed OS to start. Needless to say, there has to be a suitable one available. Use your Leopard Installer disc, or the grey DVD that came with your G5.
Press and hold the Option (Alt) key just before the chime and then chose another installed System option for startup — if such an installed system is available and connected. Use the Leopard installer DVD if possible.
Thank you for spending hours on my problem.
1/ The MacPro is an early 2008 running OSX 10.9
2/ Firewire 800Mb/s, Thunderbolt - No drivers loaded
3/ none
4/ I think it was a long time; I'll try again and give it ten minutes
My reason for doing it was that you advised someone, possibly Doug, to do it and it seemed that it must be a GOOD THING.
I shall now have another go, holding down the alt key until the chime, and see what happens.
I'll be back.
That should be: "after the chime and until the System icons shows up". Choose a system and your Mac should start up with that one. Older or newer Systems that cannot start your Mac won't show here.
Your comments stop at #4, please take a little time to think about the rest before you speed into a Light Brigade charge!
If the G5 is in disarray, no amount of waiting is going to make it mount. That's when you need to restart with the closest available OS (later is better if the current one is unavailable).
For the best hope of recovery on your G5, start up with your Leopard Install DVD and use Disk Utility from that. If your G5 came with Leopard installed use the grey DVD that it came with.
I'll have to start where I left off as I can't see the previous screen when I'm writing on this one, and I've got a short memory, and nor can I print anything out from this one (the G5). So.....
What happened was; I fired it up holding down the alt key just before the chime (I now know that was wrong!), and all seemed to be going according to plan until once again the screen went blank. So I wrote that off as a failure and went off to make the tea and consider my options. To my amazement, when I returned having drunk the tea, the machine seemed back to normal. So I inserted the Leopard DVD, restarted on that, and installed Leopard on a different partition. Then used Disk First Aid to repair the duff partition, restarted on that, and it took forever again. Now clicking out of this screen to read your further instructions.....
I've re-read the instructions several times so,.......I'm going to restart on the newly installed Leopard volume and see if it starts up in a reasonable length of time. If it does I'll shuffle all my files around and use that drive as the main one.
Eric Jervis 