Redux--Fix for Mac OS X 10.2.6 External FireWire Disk Boot Issue

On our Monday-Tuesday edition last week, we posted a fix that worked for us on all four of our external FireWire hard drives that were rendered unbootable by updating to Mac OS X 10.2.6 with the combo updater. The fix:

Use the 10.2 CD to do an "Archive and Install" of 10.2, then boot from the external drive and use the Software Update preference panel (not the stand-alone installer) to update to 10.2.6 and to install all of the other components.

While most of our mail thanked us for the tip, it still didn't work for one drive. We also had another tip which didn't work on that drive:

A tip from Mack Willingham: "I had the same issue on a machine that was running 10.1.5. I installed 10.2, and attempted to go to 10.2.6 with the combo update via software update. The update went fine, but when it came time to reboot, all I got was the grey screen of death. Ran DiskWarrior again and found nothing wrong. I backed up and reinstalled 10.2 over 10.2.6. I found a thread on the Apple site about the same exact situation. The fix was that I had to install the 10.2.3 combo update first, then the 10.2.6 combo. Seemed strange that the 10.2.6 combo didn't fill in all the blanks since 10.2. Worked like a charm. Just a tip."

From our own Dana Baggett: Dana's 40GB BUSlink external FireWire hard drive (model MFW40DB) would not boot after installing 10.2.6. Unfortunately, using our Archive and Install procedure above did not work. He wrote that Mack Willingham's standalone 10.2.3 combo updater trick did not work either. "The FW hard drive booted my Cube fine after running the 10.2.3 combo installer. Then I downloaded the 10.2.6 combo update via Software Update preference panel. It ran fine but the drive wouldn't boot my Cube. However, in this and in every case when I've tried Safe Boot, that works. So, I reinstalled Mac OS X 10.2 and ran the combo installer to get to 10.2.3 again. Then, I downloaded the 10.2.4 stand-alone updater and ran it. It installed successfully but the drive wouldn't boot into it. As before, it boots with Safe Boot mode. So, something about the 10.2.4 updater that is carried forward to 10.2.6 is affecting the FW drive. BTW, the drive checks out fine using DiskWarrior 3.0."

Nothing ever seems to be 100 per cent in today's computing environment.