I believe that if a Mac can't find it's startup drive when it's being booted, it will automatically look for a CD or DVD startup disk. Perhaps it also will search for an external drive that's bootable and use that if it can't find anything else?
Of course, that scenario would only apply if you had restarted your computer recently and during the boot it couldn't find (even if temporarily) your startup drive. Remember, never turn your back on a computer. That's usually when they go weird on you. Dan > The weirdest thing happened to my mid-2008 Intel iMac. Sometime Sunday > evening (apparently), the computer switched startup drives (from the internal > drive to an external drive) without my doing anything (that I know of). I > didn't think this was possible. I noticed something was wrong because a bunch > of photos I had imported into iPhoto that day were suddenly missing. I > thought it was a iPhoto problem, and I didn't think to check which drive was > in use. So I spent a few hours researching the subject of disappearing photos > in iPhoto, on the Web (it's a real phenomenon). This afternoon I booted into > the external drive to check it out (but actually I had been on it since > Sunday!). Then I re-booted back to the internal drive and unexpectedly > discovered my missing photos, where they had been all along! So my question > is: has anybody ever heard of a Mac re-booting itself from an alternate boot > volume? (or am I going crazy?) > > Jim > > > _______________________________________________ > MacGroup mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.math.louisville.edu/mailman/listinfo/macgroup > > _______________________________________________ MacGroup mailing list [email protected] http://www.math.louisville.edu/mailman/listinfo/macgroup
