Originally posted by wshelley46060:
I have cloned my Imac's internal HD to a firewire HD. If I boot from the firewire HD, can I format the internal HD? Could I then clone the firewire HD back to the internal HD? Would this work? Would the machine fail to start up?
Yes, but you must be careful to do an exact clone with something like Carbon Copy Cloner ... just dragging files from one volume to the next will not give a true clone.
I've done exactly what you are asking a few times in the past and have never had a problem.
I don't know why you are cloning back and forth, but when I did it, it was for one of 3 reasons:
1) Replaced an internal hard drive and cloned my exact previous system back to it from an external firewire backup.
2) Re-partition my internal drive and cloned my external FW backup to one partition while leaving another "permission free" volume for shared media files, etc. Its pretty much the only way to do it if you want to partition or re-partition the internal drive on a system that only accommodates a single internal drive (i.e. everything except a Power Mac).
3) Bought a new machine of the same type as one I had and seamlessly transitioned my entire setup to the new machine
Even though OS X doesn't technically require it, I still find several good reasons to keep 2 partitions .. especially on larger drives.
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