So I buy a Mac Pro....

[ThomasW]

Decide I want to have a second boot drive to play around with Parallels and not risk hosing the original OS-X installation.

I pull out the original HD and put in a new one. Get it formatted and start the installation. It locks up during the install now I'm in limbo (aka hell)

With the failed installation it boots I get the Apple logo then it goes to blank gray screen. I figure no big deal I'll pop out that drive and put the original back in.

Unfortunately that doesn't work either, I get the same blank gray screen with either HD.

I have 27yrs of experience with PC's and 3 days with Mac. Is there something I need to do to reset the system so it sees the original OS installation HD?

As always any assistance is appreciated

Thomas

[ThomasW]

Solution was to reinstall Leopard to the original HD.

If this is an example of how Apple's best computer and premier OS functions, I'm not impressed...

[cug]

Solution was to reinstall Leopard to the original HD.

If this is an example of how Apple's best computer and premier OS functions, I'm not impressed...

I'm pretty sure you messed the system up with what you have done. I have NEVER in 20 years using Macs to re-install the system. Why did you get the drive out in the first place? It's not necessary to do this, especially if you want to play with Parallels. You can tell Parallels to give Windows no access to the Mac side and that's about it.

Probably booting from the DVD and letting the Disk Utility take a look at the drives would have solved it easily. Next time you can try that.

[ThomasW]

The idea was to have a 2nd Leopard install (on a different hard disc) to experiment with using Parallels and Transporter. That way if something screwed up (plenty of posts about this on the Mac forums) I'd have the original install to fall back on..

When the four hour OS install on the new HD failed, the computer kept thinking the failed install HD was still in the chassis even though it was removed.

I tried booting from the DVD, the machine continued to "see" the failed install, even though that HD had been removed and the original HD reinstalled. That screwed up the original install (hosed the file system) and necessitated a reinstall on that disc...

[cug]

The idea was to have a 2nd Leopard install (on a different hard disc) to experiment with using Parallels and Transporter. That way if something screwed up (plenty of posts about this on the Mac forums) I'd have the original install to fall back on..

Hmmm, I never used Transporter, but I do use Parallels on my MacBook Pro without any problem and never thought of having that on different drive. Okay, I always have a recent backup, so I'm pretty safe here.

When the four hour OS install on the new HD failed, the computer kept thinking the failed install HD was still in the chassis even though it was removed.

Interesting. I don't know whether this still works, but back in the PowerPC times there was the Cmd-Alt-P-R bootup, which resetted the P-RAM (similar to BIOS settings).

I tried booting from the DVD, the machine continued to "see" the failed install, even though that HD had been removed and the original HD reinstalled. That screwed up the original install (hosed the file system) and necessitated a reinstall on that disc...

Interesting. When you boot from the DVD (by forcing that with holding down C while booting), in the menu is the Disk Utility accessible. That should have taken care of any filesystem issues with "repair disk". Doesn't always work and I have to admit, I never tried what you did.

[littlesaint]

With Parallels (I prefer VMware), you'd want to boot your guest OS from an image, so a second HD shouldn't be necessary. If you use Apple's Bootcamp, a second drive might be a good idea to keep your Windows install seperate without having to re-partition your primary drive.

All this aside, your problems are definitely an exception to the Mac experience. Also, there's no reason you can't have both drives installed at the same time, or with a Firewire enclosure and use the secondary drive externally.

[Hdale85]

I was going to suggest using bootcamp.

[ThomasW]

I tried boot camp, the install failed with 2 different XP Pro SP2 discs.

A Carbon Copy clone wouldn't boot

And as noted above the install from scratch on a 'new' HD also failed after a 4+hr installation.

Turns out there were a couple of hardware issues.

1) the factory supplied optical drive is flaky,

2) the new HD I bought for back up was also flaky

So, using a different optical drive and a new hard drive, the computer tore through a from scratch Leopard install in ~30 minutes. That's more like it.... :T

Now I can play with both Parallels/Transporter and BootCamp. If something screws up I have the original install HD sitting by....

[cug]

So, using a different optical drive and a new hard drive, the computer tore through a from scratch Leopard install in ~30 minutes

That sounds more like a reasonable time.

[dyazdani]

I had the same problem with a failed HDD on my MacBook. A new one made a big difference!

[Lex]

sounds fairly aggrevating. Put a new notebook drive in a PC had XP running in 30 minutes the other night.

[littlesaint]

sounds fairly aggrevating. Put a new notebook drive in a PC had XP running in 30 minutes the other night.

All hardware being equal though, aside from OS upgrades, I've had my Mac up and running for about a year without a reboot. Almost 2 for my Linux server. Can't say the same for my Windows PC.

[Lex]

well, for me the mac pc decision is fairly easy, my office runs microshaft, so I am pretty well locked in for compatibilitiy sake.

[Hdale85]

It's really all just personal preference I would prefer macs but unfortunately the games I play aren't available for OSX so I have a PC for games and a Mac for whatever.

[littlesaint]

Although Linux actually serves my job (network engineer) much better, I am required to use Windows for Outlook and Visio. I've been a Mac user since 1991 so that is still my platform of choice at home.