Home Forums Peripherals & Multimedia Peripherals Backup drive not visible with Option key

I have an OWC 500GB OTG-S 7200RPM Firewire drive for my Super Duper backup and it has always appeared as a choice for the startup drive using the Option key after a start or restart…..until this past week.

A week ago I used used TechTool Pro 6 to do a directory rebuild which took much longer then normal….nearly an hour. (I usually use Disk Warrior and the job is always over in about 15 minutes. Lesson learned…TechTool won't be used ever again.)

Anyway, I tired everything including a complete erasure of the backup drive (using Disk Tool) and a fresh recording of the backup using Super Duper. To erase I had to try a couple of times as the dialogue box said it could not unmount the drive.

On the first reboot the Option Key showed everything - Main Drive, Super Duper Backup Drive, Recovery Volume and Time Machine Drive. Since then, I see only the Main Drive and the Recovery Volume.

If I click on the Recovery Volume and get rid of the OSX Tools dialogue box, I get a restart dialogue box that offers the Main Drive and the Super Duper Backup Drive.

So, my machine is able to see the Super Duper Backup….but it doesn't want to see it when I use the Option Key at startup. Why would that be?