Chimera Boot Issue with Time Machine Disks

In several places around these forms are threads about an issue involving Chimera spontaneously failing to boot on systems with large Time Machine drives. On a previously working system, not undergoing any sort of upgrade, Chimera will hang on the \|/- text spinner as long as the offending drive is connected to the system. This issue affects both internal and external drives, and most users report it on drives larger than 1 TB.

Here are a couple of threads detailing the issue, amongst others:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/chimera-b...out-presence-internal-time-machine-drive.html
http://www.tonymacx86.com/mavericks...-ud5h-doesnt-reach-bootloader.html#post783235

Several years ago, the accomplished hu45ndP4k proposed a patch:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/chimera-a...angs-if-usb-time-machine-hdd-present-fix.html

However, it appears that his fix has not yet made its way into the main Chimera trunk.

Evidence suggests that this bug has existed in Chimera/Chameleon for many years, but is becoming more prevalent now as more and more users have large Time Machine drives. Is there anything that we can do to move this issue forward?

This startet happening to me today, too... a fix would be highly appreciated.

This started happening with me as well. I unplugged the SATA power cable from my internal 1 TB HDD used only for Time Machine, and then Chimera loaded instead of being stuck on "-" or "\".

Please fix this… I could reformat my TM drive, but then I'd lose all my backups! That's not a solution, that's a (bad) workaround. In the meantime I'm operating sans hourly backups… not good.

Don't hold your breath for a quick fix -- this bug has been sitting untouched for quite a while now. I'm afraid you're stuck erasing your backups or buying another drive.

Just had this issue happen to me. I did not find this thread until after I found the issue after an embarrassing number of hours of frustration. In case this happens to someone else, here is what happened to me:

1. Had a fully functioning 10.10.2
2. Through the App Store, upgraded to 10.10.3
3. Following the restart during the update, computer did not boot.
3a. Did not get to the Chimera screen
3b. Would not boot to my carbon copy backup drive
3c. Would not boot to my USB stick
4. Searched here and elsewhere for things like (placing these here in case others do similar searches):
4a. "hackintosh will not boot to chimera"
4b. "stuck at spinning cursor"
4c. "hackintosh chimera will not launch"
4d. "hackintosh upgrade to 10.10.3 no boot"
4e. None of those brought me here and not of the threads I did find provided a solution
5. Thought maybe I had a hardware failure that was coincident with the upgrade. Long shot, but was at a loss. So I created and tried to boot from an Ubuntu DVD. Boot worked fine, Ubuntu fully functional
6. Stuck for a while
6a. Not hardware, Ubuntu boots
6b. Can't be related to 10.10.3, system is not getting that far
6c. Can't change settings in Chimera, system is not getting that far
6d. Can't boot from daily clone, gets the same result as main boot disk
6e. Can't boot from USB stick, gets the same result as main boot disk
7. Decided to disconnect every cable from the CPU except for PS2 keyboard and monitor and tried to boot
8. Boot success!
9. Reconnected 1 device at a time and rebooted after each
10. Isolated the issue to my Western Digital USB 1TB hard drive which is my Time Machine backup disk
11. With the WD disconnected and a booted up and fully functioning 10.10.3, I connected the WD. Connected fine so I kicked off a backup. Worked fine.
12. Decided to try a restart with the WD connected and functional. Did not work. Pulled the WD, restarted, all good.

So, if something like this happens to you, disconnect your Time Machine drive and try to reboot.

Hope it works!

Not sure what I am going to do about my Time Machine backups. Guess I will need to plug the WD in after each boot and remember to unplug it before a reboot. Anyone have a better solution than that?

OK - guess I should have looked a bit more.

Found this thread: http://www.tonymacx86.com/chimera-b...out-presence-internal-time-machine-drive.html

Suggests updating the org.chameleon.Boot.plist file with the following:
<key>Scan Single Drive</key>
<string>Yes</string>

I did that and now can boot with the WD drive connected.

Possible solutions:

1. Reformat affected Time Machine drive and hope the corruption doesn't happen again
2. Unplug/replug before each boot (only works if affected Time Machine drive is external)
3. Update org.chameleon.Boot.plist to force it to scan only one drive (will break dual boot)
4. Switch to the Clover bootloader

For me:

1. Reformat worked, then problem recurred a couple months later — FAIL
2. My TM drive is internal — FAIL
3. I dual boot OS X and Win7 from two SSDs — FAIL
4. Clover works great — SUCCESS