[Lebodde]

I just tried to use the Restore utility for the first time. I use an iMac slot loading with 10.3.2 and I want to copy the internal drive onto a new LaCie 160GB external firewire drive. (The reason is that I bought a new Seagate 80GB to replace the current internal).


I go into Restore select the internal as the source, the external as the destination, select "Restore" , I get a dialog box that says "Will copy all data to the destination" (or something to that effect), then it appears to start working and within 2 seconds, I get this message:

Restore Failure
An error (2) occurred while copying

No other explanation of what might be the problem. I have double checked both drives, I ran disk first aid, I even repartitioned the new external but nothing works. I keep getting the same error message. I can copy files manually by dragging them in the Finder without a problem, so it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the drive itself. Does anyone have any idea of what that might be?

Thank you for any help.

[[APi]TheMan]

Restore utility? You must be talking about the "Restore" option in Disk Utility? I've never heard of anyone using that to make a backup. Anyways, I use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy systems from one drive to another, it's the best out there: http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

You can even make an image of your drive to use again and again.

[Lebodde]

Sorry, I should have been more specific. You are correct, the Restore utility is the one that is part of Panther's Disk Utility App.

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by Lebodde:
Sorry, I should have been more specific. You are correct, the Restore utility is the one that is part of Panther's Disk Utility App.

Did you check out Carbon Copy Cloner? It seems to be exactly what you're looking for.

What I'd do is:[list=1]1. Partition your external 160 gig with two partitions*, one to install Panther on, and one to store the backup of your drive, we'll call them "Panther" and "Backup".[/list=1][list=2]2. Install Panther on the smaller partition, "Panther". (Don't bother setting it up for running Software Updates on this one, you merely use it as a startup disk to make the copy.)[/list=2][list=3]3. Download a copy of CarbonCopyCloner and put it on "Backup"[/list=3][list=4]4. Boot to your Panther partition and run CarbonCopyCloner. Select your computer's internal drive as the source, and "Backup" as the target. You can play around in the Advanced options, clicking "Create image on target" if you'd like to have a .dmg created rather than a straight up copy of files and folders.[/list=4][list=5]5. Authenticate by pressing the lock in the corner, then click "start clone" or "start"...[/list=5][list=6]6. The clone shouldn't take long if you're on a newer machine, 15 or 20 minutes max. The program's usually very unresponsive while cloning, but it does its job well.[/list=6][list=7]7. After the cloning is done you can put your new 80 gig drive in and clone the "Backup" drive back to the new drive via the same process.[/list=7][list=8]8. When you're done cloning back to your 80 gig drive you want to make sure to boot up from a Mac OS X install CD to run Repair Permissions, this is often needed when using Carbon Copy Cloner. After that, when you're successfully booting from your new internal drive you can format the 160 gig back to one partition if you'd like[/list=8]

*If we had decided to keep the startup system and the backup to be created on the same partition, the process takes a lot longer because Carbon Copy Cloner has to copy file-by-file, rather than bit-by-bit.

Good luck.

[mmihalik]

Restore will make a bootable backup.

Just be sure to first:

- repartition your external hard drive into one or more Mac OS Extended partitions; can be journaled or not
- click check box to install OS 9 drivers if you intned to use under OS 9 as well as OS X
- after partitioning, be sure to erase each partition, to make sure no hidden files are present

Test the copy afterwords by using Set Startup Disk to select the boot drive/partition, and restart.

Should work fine.

Mike