RC3 on USB won't boot with a specific hard drive

[Master Chief]

Hi,

First, I only started to use Chameleon v2. RC3 since yesterday, but used Chameleon v1.0.1[1/2] before, and thus I am still uncertain as to whether this is a bug, or a feature.  That's also why I post it here.

I have the following setup (AHCI enabled in BIOS):

300MB drive with OS X 10.5.8 (MAXTOR STM3320613AS)
300MB drive with Snow Leopard 10.6.1 (MAXTOR STM3320613AS)
1TB     drive with Snow leopard 10.6.1 (SAMSUNG HD103SJ)*
1TB     drive for backups (SAMSUNG HD103UJ)
300MB drive with Ubuntu 9.04 (MAXTOR STM3320613AS)

8GB SanDisk Cruzer USB 2.0 Flash Drive with two partitions.  The first one is 512MB – here I installed Chameleon and the second partition is where I restored the Snow Leopard Retail DVD.

All attempts to boot from the USB stick fail, until I remove the drive marked with the asterisk (*).  And that's the drive where I installed Snow Leopard 10.6.0 onto from the USB stick.  In short: I have no idea what this is and more importantly, how to fix it.  Please help.

Thank you!

EDIT: Right.  I am apparently not the only person who ran into this problem:

http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,310.0.html

The bug was filed on May 06, 2009, 01:21:50 PM and unfortunately still not fixed.

[rocksteady]

Hmm weird one, I use an all sata/ahci setup on my hack (OS X HD is a samsung spinpoint) and an 8GB Cruzer (restored Snow Leopard Retail DVD) with no problems..

What partition scheme are you using for the Cruzer?

[Master Chief]

All drives, including the Cruzer use GUID partition tables.

p.s. And it's not the Cruzer causing trouble but the hard drive (unplug the drive and the Cruzer works).

[tweak]

Instead of partitioning the USB thumb drive, why not use 1 Partition, restore the Snow Leopard DVD to it, and then do a Chameleon install on top of that.  It's what I did, and not only can I boot to other hard drives from it, but it installs perfectly too!  All you need to do from there is modify your Boot.plist file with what partition you'd like to use by default.

[Master Chief]

Sigh.  Please read the title and what I wrote because it has nothing to do with the Cruzer.  Let me rephrase it: "I cannot boot from any media when this brand new SAMSUNG is connected, and I'm not the only one with this problem so it is not limited to my drive".

[abend]

I think I have the same problem. Look here for a partial workaround . . .
http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php?topic=901.0