USB Boot drive created by Rescuezilla won’t boot Macbook

[Paul]

Hi,

I am using Ventura 13.0.1, on a 2015 MacBook Pro.

I created a USB flash installer using Rescuezilla-2.4.1-64bit.jammy.iso and Balene Etcher.

But, when I reboot, holding down the Option key, then selecting ISO, then click on the installer, what results is a blank screen.

No matter how long I wait, the installation never appears. Just the blank screen.

Anyone have any suggestions how to overcome the problem?

Thanks.

Kind regards,

Paul

[Rescuezilla]

I see you made the same report on the Clonezilla forum.

The instructions you're using should work, and it should display a hard drive icon representing the Rescuezilla bootable drive.

My advice is to try a different USB stick. I would also try other USB port if possible. I've used Intel-based Mac Minis that would only detect the USB stick on the third (of four) USB port due to a design decision, and I found people on the internet with the same experience (though I can't find a source right now).

To be clear for anybody coming across this thread, I have certainly booted the 64-bit Rescuezilla version on an Intel-based MacBooks and Intel-based Mac Minis several times. And I have successfully created backup images, wiped the disk (for testing) and restored images using previous versions of Rescuezilla on both HFS+ and APFS disks without issue. Side note: Unlike Clonezilla, Rescuezilla images for APFS are very large due to making a raw copy using the reliabledd tool, because I purposely don't use APFS filesystem-aware support in Rescuezilla as in my previous testing it wasn't stable (I'll be re-evaluating this as part of task #65).

Noting for transparency I recieved a recent report of a failed APFS restore. That user that looks to have been experimenting with other backup tools before attempting to use Rescuezilla, and I haven't received any other reports. Still, I recommend being conservative (eg, creating a backup with both Clonezilla and Rescuezilla) as I haven't yet had a chance to try and reproduce/retest Rescuezilla's handling of Intel MacBook imaging with the latest version of Rescuezilla. I previously had access to Intel-based Apple devices to test on, but now I currently don't have access to any Apple devices.

[Paul]

Thanks for the guidance.
A you advised I used a different USB stick.
This time a microSD 32GB SanDisk in a SanDisk holder.
This works really well.
Best regards,
Paul

(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)

[Paul]

Hi,

Because, when I used the SanDisk, it did mount properly, and started making
the clone, I thought it was working.

But when the Mac was restarted, the clone showed on the computer screen,
but it would not open.
And I got the same blank screen again.

I tried this a few times more. Even formatted the USB drve again and made
the installer anew, but the result ws the same.

I also tried it with a few other USB drives. The result was never any
better.

Do you have any further advice?

Thanks.

Kind regards,

Paul

(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)

[Rescuezilla]

Great that you were able to boot into Rescuezilla on your Intel MacBook by using a different USB stick.

I am a bit confused at what you did next. It sounds like you're using the 'Clone' option on the menu, not the 'Backup' / 'Restore' option. What did you select your source and destination disks as?

Typically for Macs you would use the 'Backup' option (or in Clonezilla, savedisks) to make a complete "image" of the drive onto a folder that resides eg, on an external USB drive. The 'Clone' feature is designed to make a 1-to-1 clone, which is generally used for a wholesale hard drive replacement.

My historical testing with Macbooks (with both Clonezilla and Rescuezilla) has been to backup the macOS operating system from the original installation drive, wipe the drive (for testing), and restoring the image to the same physical disk. I haven't tried cloning the internal operating system to a separate drive and booting from that drive (which is something I've done for Linux and Windows environments).

Given I'm not quite sure what you've done since successfully booting Rescuezilla in your earlier two replies, you should tread carefully in case we need to work through any recovery steps.

From your last two messages, I am getting a bit worried that you may have mis-selected your destination drive as your internal MacBook hard drive and overwrote existing operating system. So just to confirm: without any USB sticks you can continue to boot into your main macOS environment right?