Startup Disk & Carbon Copy Cloner

[JarinS1]

I just used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my hard drive onto an external drive. Is there any harm in changing the Startup disk to the external to verify that it is bootable? I would then change the Startup disk back to the internal after verification. Also, if my internal drive fails, how can I boot from the external drive? Thanks for the help.

JS

 

[alexstein]

no you can't harm the internal drive using an external drive to boot.

to verify your external drive as bootable drive go to:
System Preferance > Startup Disk > Target Disk mode.

you have to boot up in target disk mode. after your reboot go back and set your internal hard disk as primary again. that's it.

 

[JarinS1]

no you can't harm the internal drive using an external drive to boot.

to verify your external drive as bootable drive go to:
System Preferance > Startup Disk > Target Disk mode.

you have to boot up in target disk mode. after your reboot go back and set your internal hard disk as primary again. that's it.

Cool, thanks alexstein. Now if my internal hard drive fails will I be able to get to the System Preference window? If not, how can I boot from the external?

 

[wdlove]

Cool, thanks alexstein. Now if my internal hard drive fails will I be able to get to the System Preference window? If not, how can I boot from the external?

If you notice that your internal is failing, I would switch it at that point. Then you could have the internal replaced.

Also if the internal fails without warning, no worry. During the boot-up process the computer will search for a boot-able disk.