repairing flash memory drive which doesnt boot

[license...@gmail.com]

I have a 2 gig flash memory drive on which I installed and used Disk Warrior. It runs in an hour or two instead of the usual few days of chugging along when running from the CD.

I have lost both CD/DVDs I bought and was trying to press this back into service after a year or so of non-use.

The drive no longer boots. And on insertion into a running system, the drive gives an automatic message (before even trying anything) telling me that the drive needs repairing and that DU cannot do it. It however appears on the desktop and opens and I can get to all the files on it (I think).

Something on the boot sector seems to be damaged because it wont boot any more? Is there any way of making it bootable without losing all the data on it please?

Alternatively I have another 8 gig drive: Is my only option to install an OS onto that drive and then try to install DW on tha drive from the flash memory drive which isnt booting properly?

[Fred McKenzie]

In article <740876c0-7892-4baf...@googlegroups.com>,

If possible, use Disk Utility to make an image of the 2 gig flash memory
drive.

I suggest you go ahead and install an OS onto the 8 gig drive. Then
boot from it and use Migration Assistant.app to transfer your account
and files from either the 2 gig flash memory drive, or from its image.

Once you have a bootable system on the 8 gig drive, you can try
reformatting the flash memory drive. If the 2 gig flash memory drive is
not defective, you should be able to use Disk Utility to restore the 8
gig drive onto it.

I would prefer going the 8 gig drive route to be sure the procedure
works, but you may be able to do it with just an image. If you have a
good image of the 2 gig flash memory drive, you can probably just
reinstall an OS on it, boot and use Migration Assistant.app with the
image.

Fred

[license...@gmail.com]

I have managed successfully to make a workable disk image out of the drive and can even install from it to the G4 hard drive and it works. But now I have to use DW In target disk mode:

I cant figure out how to make the bootable drive which I made originally when using DU

And I have hit a snag with your solution. You cant burn any of the more modern OSs to a drive with only 8 gig on it. And installing Mountain Lion (which is on my main computer) writes a new bootloader to some internal EPROM so that thereafter you cant install any OS than 10.8 onto a computer/flash drive connected to it which has ML on it! So I cant install Tiger or SL onto the 8 gig drive to install DW onto that.

[Fred McKenzie]

In article <472e1bb1-23af-435a...@googlegroups.com>,

license...@gmail.com wrote:

> And I have hit a snag with your solution. You cant burn any of the more
> modern OSs to a drive with only 8 gig on it. And installing Mountain Lion
> (which is on my main computer) writes a new bootloader to some internal EPROM
> so that thereafter you cant install any OS than 10.8 onto a computer/flash
> drive connected to it which has ML on it! So I cant install Tiger or SL onto
> the 8 gig drive to install DW onto that.

I had a similar problem trying to restore an image to a portable hard
drive, and then using it with Migration Assistant on a computer that had
a fresh install of 10.4. I was running 10.7 at the time. It turned out
that the "modern" OS X uses a "GUID Partition Table" partition format,
while the PowerPC-based Mac uses the "Apple Partition Map". When I
reformatted the portable hard drive using the "Apple Partition Map" and
restored the image to it, things worked a lot better!

Using Disk Utility, select the drive or flash drive and choose
Partition. You may need to first add a partition to get the "Options"
button to come alive, but you can then change back to a single partition.

Fred