Issues Booting to New Leopard Install

[estorstenson]

I recently had warnings about my backup external disk, so I bought a brand new disk to use in my old Mac Pro, with the intention of moving the old disk over as the backup. In the process, I decided to go back to Leopard, since this machine functions mostly as a back-up disk for my MBP and iMac (both are much newer).

So, the installation went fine, but when I removed the original boot disk (which has Mountain Lion on it), my old mac never could find a bootable partition. I'm assuming it was able to boot before because the install DVD was in the drive, which I removed the other day.

So, the question is: Is there any way I can make an existing disk bootable (i.e. the new one) without losing any info on the disk or do I need to do something to the disk so that it will boot when the other disk isn't present?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Does that mean, the newly installed Mac OS X is not visible, when pressing OPTION right after the startup sound chimes?

What happens, when you boot into OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and go to System Preferences > Startup Disk*?

And did you format the new HDD properly?

How to format a new HDD to install Mac OS X onto (or make a bootable copy onto)​

 

[estorstenson]

When I go to "Start up disk" in ML, I only see the ML disk, not the Leopard disk.

As for formatting the HDD properly, I let Apple do that

That's what I'm assuming is wrong. Does it need to be formatted in a particular way? When I go into Disk Utility, I'm not seeing too many different things. But, I'm not sitting on a virgin disk. It has been partitioned and is in use ATM.

Also, when I look at "Info" for the partition (which is the entire disk), it does say "Bootable: Yes"

 

[simsaladimbamba]

When I go to "Start up disk" in ML, I only see the ML disk, not the Leopard disk.

As for formatting the HDD properly, I let Apple do that

That's what I'm assuming is wrong. Does it need to be formatted in a particular way? When I go into Disk Utility, I'm not seeing too many different things. But, I'm not sitting on a virgin disk. It has been partitioned and is in use ATM.

Open Disk Utility, select the actual HDD on the left side (not the indented volume below the HDD entry) and check on the bottom what it says behind "Partition Map Scheme".
Then select the indented volume entry and look at the bottom, what it says behind "Format".

If you still have the grey Restore DVDs for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or a working (with the Mac Pro) Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Retail DVD, you could try the install yourself? But it is highly unlikely, that Apple ****ed this up.

 

[estorstenson]

The format says: GUID Partition Table

I just wonder if the original install wrote to the boot sector (or EFI whatever it is on macs) on the original boot disk. I think it was in either bay 1 or at least a lower bay than the new disk is in.

I just want to avoid reinstalling if there is some simple command to copy boot loaders over, and I'm just not seeing anything with my google searches...probably because I don't know the correct terminology.

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Apple didn't do the actual install. I did. I just meant that Apple wrote the installer I used to install Leopard onto a machine that already had a functional version of Mountain Lion on it (but not on the same physical disk). So, the disk was formatted by Apple, indirectly

 

[estorstenson]

So, I know what the problem was. The disk is faulty, apparently. I've reinstalled 3 times, and after a few days, it just loses the ability to boot into that disk.

Is there any low level formatting I can try before I try to get it replaced? It's a new disk (maybe 3 weeks old tomorrow...) It isn't sending out SMART errors, which is why I was fooled into thinking I had done something wrong with the previous installation.