[redandwhites]

Allo,

I've got a new external firewire drive (LaCie) and thought backing up my HD might be a good idea.

Do I need to just drag n drop the volumes on my desktop over to the firewire drive and that's it?

Does that mean I can then reformat the HD and chuck everything back over again?

Also, I've noticed that if I put the stuff in a folder on the firewire drive, and reboot and hold down F, that the firewire drive can't boot the OS. Does this sound about right?

OS9.2
G3500

Cheers.

[Big Mac]

You shoudn't have any problems simply dragging and dropping -- that's one of the only great advantages classic has over OS X. Note the following, however:

1) Perhaps the reason you're not able to boot from the Firewire drive is when you drag your HD to your Firewire drive, you're creating a folder on the root named for the source drive. It sounds like that could be what you're doing, since you state you've put everything in a folder. If you want to boot off a drive, make sure the System Folder is located on the first level of the disk rather than in a sub-folder. (It should be viewable when the drive is double clicked)

2) You should definitely verify that your firewire drive is bootable before you screw with your internal drive.

[bradoesch]

You might have to "rebless" your System Folder once you've copied it to your FireWire drive. Look at the System Folder's icon and if has the normal icon for a System Folder, you're set. If not, then you need to rebless it. Move the Finder and System suitcase out of the System Folder, then move them back in. That should do the trick.
I also agree with Big Mac that you should keep your System Folder at the first level of your hard disk and test that you can sucessfully boot from your FireWire disk.

[Cipher13]

Rebless it; but in the end, your FW enclosure may not support booting.

Can the startup disk control panel see a system on it?