Still Waiting For Root Device In Mac



Although unable to boot, your data should still there. You could retrieve your data by connecting your Mac Mini to another computer by FireWire. To do so just: Connect the computers with the FireWire cable. Boot your Mac Mini holding down T. The Mac Mini's HD will be mounted as an external HD in the non-corrupted computer. Find and save your valuable data. Get a IDE Hard Disk (you can attach the IDE hard disk, but still install the OS on the SATA drive. It just helps to get past the 'still waiting for root device error'.) If accompanied by a CMOS checksum bad error at boot, reload BIOS optimised defaults, change to AHCI and HPET to. Still waiting for root device Still waiting for root device Still waiting for root device.forever and ever amen! That was NOT fun to type! Can anyone translate and decipher from that what might be wrong? Ibook G4 Mac OS X (10.4) airport card.

  1. Still Waiting For Root Device In Mac Os
  2. Still Waiting For Root Device Mac Os X
  3. Hackintosh Waiting For Root Device
  4. Still Waiting For Root Device Macbook

What does “Still waiting for root device” means? It means that a driver/kext for the source from which you are booting is not detected properly by the mac operating system (USB kext not detected or loaded) Mac OS released prebuilt with the latest drivers that supports SATA out of.


This annoying statement ususally comes up befor DVD can boot or after installation before the OSX boots for the first time.

if you haven't used a Leo4All or did not use -v option then the screen will not look like the first image in this post but it will look like this (no entry sign/ stop sign/ no smoking sign without the cigaret):

What does this error mean?
well it means that the OS is set to boot from a drive and partition that does not exist.
for instance the Darwin boot loader is talled to boot from Disk1 (Disk 1= second hard drive (starting from 0)) and there is no such disk.
What can you do?
if you know the number of your Hard Drive then at the Darwin prompt (after boot press F8) write: rd=DiskX where X is the number of your OSX hard drive.
for instance if your hard drive is 0 (zero is the first hard drive) then write:
rd=disk0
if you do not know your hard drive then there is a try and error method of trying all the disk possibilities on your computer starting with: rd=disk0 then rd=disk1 then rd=disk2 then rd=disk3 etc.
another good option is to disconnect other HD and leave the OSX HD as first and write disk0.
How to set the RD for every boot?
once you succeed and don't want to write the rd parameter every boot, then write it in your boot plist file.
this is a file that configure the system boot parameters. the file can be found at: /Library/Preferences/SystemConfigurationVirtualbox macos still waiting for root deviceStill Waiting For Root Device In Mac
the file name is:

Still Waiting For Root Device In Mac Os

com.apple.Boot.plist and you edit it as root and change the DeviceKernel Flags value and add to it the rd parameter like this:
  1. open terminal
  2. write: sudo -s and press enter
  3. enter your password when asked and press enter
  4. write: vi /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist and press enter
  5. in the vi editor use the arrow keys on the keyboard and navigate the cursor to the tag: after the <key>Kernel Flags< /key > line.
  6. the string tag might be empty or not, if it is not empty then add space and then write: rd=diskX where X is your hard drive number.
  7. press keyboard button Esc (in order to exit insert mode)
  8. write: :wq and press enter (notice the : sign)
  9. then reboot and thats it
here is a Bofore image of my file (it will help clear things up):
and here is the after image (note the space between the -v and rd parameter):

most common mistakes are to write full path to the drive like this: rd=/dev/rdisk0or rd=disk0s2 instead of: rd=disk0. (only when you are trying to load the install DVD, not after the install has finished successfully).
the rule is that before the install (if the DVD will not load) then use the rdiskX format.
if you are after the install then use the rdiskXsY format.

after the install has finished successfully and you get 'Still waiting...' then you can use the partition value as well in this form:
where X stands for the number of the leopard disk and Y stands for the partition number of the leopard disk. examples:
disk0s2 (first disk second partition)
BIOS options
there is another option that your bios is not set as required.
if you have a SATA hard disk, then they can support several work modes,
IDE legacy, or IDE native, or native AHCI, also there is a S.M.A.R.T mode that can be enabled or disabled, and the actual strings as always depends on your BIOS.
i also had an option of 'Hard Disk Pre Delay' that gives the hard drive delay time in order to let the hard drive time to react after reboot and when disk is mounted or plugged in, i set it to 5 instead of default 0.
so you should play with these options until you cover all options one of them will fix your 'Still waiting...' situation.
you should set it up as follow:
Configure SATA as: AHCI

and a closer look:

this option not always work, it didn't fix the problem forever, but i have successfully finished the install process.

Still Waiting For Root Device Mac Os X

follow these next steps:

Hackintosh Waiting For Root Device

  1. boot from the install DVD into single-user mode
  2. flag any partition other then the leopard partition as bootable
  3. then you reboot, again from the install DVD into single-user mode
  4. next flag back the leopard partition
RootVirtualbox mac still waiting for root device
thats it it should help, if you have any problem please post here,

Still Waiting For Root Device Macbook

Enjoy.




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