[pcd2k]

It may be obvious but I haven't done this before I am about to clone my system across to the other bigger drive. When I do this; Will all my Applications and other Folders and stuff on the original drive still work even though I am booting off the cloned system or should I simply copy everything else over? I'm kind of nervous about losing all the net related parphenalia that is linked but not necessarily part of the system. I wished I could just simply copy the whole drive across to the other one, but apparently this would not quite work, something to do with disk permissions ?

The internal drives are 5400 rpm. One 6 Gig which has Jaguar and am going to clone it to the 80 Gig, I'm doing this largely because I want to install Panther, and everyone tells me you need more space ?

Eventually I will get faster internal drive but until then -

I am soon going to connect a 7200 rpm external to get into moviemaking etc, but am now pondering whether I should have the movie software on the external drive or whether this matters or not ?

[angelmb]

"pcd2k: It may be obvious but I haven't done this before I am about to clone my system across to the other bigger drive. When I do this; Will all my Applications and other Folders and stuff on the original drive still work even though I am booting off the cloned system or should I simply copy everything else over? "

I have a 17" PB (60 GB internal HD) and a d2 LaCie 80 GB external hard disk, with SuperDuper! I can boot from the firewire hard disk and run all my apps that are placed into the internal hard disk, sounds like what you want to do

[MountainMac]

Well, it's not "obvious" if you need to ask.

I haven't used SuperDuper, but Carbon Copy Cloner will do exactly what it sounds like you're looking for. It will copy your drive exactly as it is to the other drive

Your 80GB 5400RPM external drive will be fine for digital video. However, you are correct that the 6GB drive will feel cramped with Panther. Sounds like you've made a good choice.

MM

[stuffedmonkey]

I would like to say also that carbon copy cloner is the greatest thing ever. We use it all the time at work to deploy systems off a standard image. Great stuff - you get a true exact copy, down to icon placement.

[JLL]

Originally posted by stuffedmonkey:
I would like to say also that carbon copy cloner is the greatest thing ever. We use it all the time at work to deploy systems off a standard image. Great stuff - you get a true exact copy, down to icon placement.

In Panther it's built in:

http://lunddal.dk/images/blog/osx_restore.jpg
Please read and obey the new image posting guidelines. This image was much too wide! -- tooki

[Jellytussle]

Originally posted by stuffedmonkey:
I would like to say also that carbon copy cloner is the greatest thing ever. We use it all the time at work to deploy systems off a standard image. Great stuff - you get a true exact copy, down to icon placement.

if you do this all the time, you should really look at NetInstall or NetRestore, since block-copy deploys are an order of magnitude faster that file copies. CCC is great, but you don't want to be doing it to 200 machines!

[pcd2k]

Sorry, I feel a bit confused ?
So Carbon Copy Cloner copies everything from one drive to the other drive, or just the system ?

[chabig]

So Carbon Copy Cloner copies everything from one drive to the other drive, or just the system ?

It can do either, depending upon which you choose.

[hudson1]

Here's another vote and testimonial for Carbon Copy Cloner. Over the weekend, I installed a new hard disk drive in my eMac. These are the steps I used, all made possible with CCC:

1) Repaired permissions on the old drive to be removed (CCC can be set to do this for you if you want).
2) Opened CCC, set the hard drive as the "source", the Firewire drive (root directory) as the "target", and selected "Make Bootable".
3) Cloned the internal drive to the Firewire drive. (Aside - CCC will not wipe out any existing data on the target root directory, a nice bonus)
4) Tested to make sure the Firewire disk will boot the eMac by holding down the option key at the startup chime and then selecting the Firewire drive. Worked fine.
5) Shut down the eMac to install new drive.
6) Booted from Firewire drive with option key pressed, opened Disk Utility off of the Firewire drive to initiallize the new internal hard drive.
7) Opened CCC, selected Firewire drive as "source", deselected the couple of folders that were previously on the Firewire drive and not part of the actual "clone", selected the new internal drive as the "target, selected "make bootable", and started the transfer.
8) Started eMac with option key held down, selected the internal drive and voila, it booted up as if I had never the touched the machine in the first place. Then reparied permissions for good measure.

[TimmyDee51]

Originally posted by Jellytussle:
if you do this all the time, you should really look at NetInstall or NetRestore, since block-copy deploys are an order of magnitude faster that file copies. CCC is great, but you don't want to be doing it to 200 machines!

This is true, but I still use CCC in my build process. I used to create ASR images the old fashioned way -- image the drive as R/W disk image, delete unnecessary files (swap, etc.), and then convert the image to read-only and then scan for ASR. Since I discovered CCC, that cuts everything down to one step. Now I don't have to worry about losing time if I forget to do a step right after the other is finished.

I then upload the resulting image to our Xserve G5 and we're ready to roll complete with NetRestore and it's block-copy restores.

[SMacTech]

CCC can have issues if you don't use the erase destination folders feature or use a cleanly erased drive. Otherwise, it works well and I have used it for sometime and even donated to Mike for his great work.

[pcd2k]

I am about to use CCC but since reading about the preferences settings and options settings at their 'read me site'

(I tried pasting the link to it here but when I did the result absolutely destroyed my post so I went undo and the tried the 'insert a link' button and got the same result it destroyed my post, the link is about two lines long !)

become a whole lot more nervous about pushing the button because all this information about which preference and options to use or not about compression and disk images is rather complicated to understand. I kind of wish this thing was made for dorks like me. As you may have guessed by now I'm not exactly a Mac os x expert but I love the power and ability it offers even for a sedentary user for everything it does in photography and movie making etc., but I wish their was an option that said CLONE AS IS or something to that affect !

[jmiddel]

No need to worry. I have done this hundreds of times.
The first time, click on preferences and select: Repair Permissions, Make bootable. . Ignore everything else. click SAVE. You are now back into the Cloning Console window. Select source and target, click on the lock and enter password, click CLONE. It can take a while, so plan on doing it when won't need access for at least 50 minutes, and if you have a lot of data, longer.

Next time ignore the preferences, they are set. It's that easy. I use CCC as my main backup utility.

[pcd2k]

Well I did it but it didn't quite turn out all roses the CCC seems to have invented a couple of folders. I did exactly what jmiddel recommended I do. The extra folders are called etc and var, so what has happened ? Is there anything to worry about ?

Now since I have two disks with what would appear to exactly mirror each other in content and although I restarted my computer by changing the startup disk in system preferences to the new external 80 gig., how can I actually tell if all the system software I currently use is actually being used from the new disk ?

Should have I wiped out all the entries in the dock and or removed everything off my desktop first or has CCC placed everything where they all originally were ?

I'm now thinking that I may as well simply use my original 6 gig internal as the back up, and use the new 80 gig 7200 rpm as my source start up disk, simply because of the speed enhancement is a noticeable improvement, what I'm interested to know is,: is it ok to use my external as my main system drive now ?

[hudson1]

OK, you need to give us a few more details. Specifically, what model Mac are you using?

The very simple way to tell where your Dock icons point is to either right-click or control-click on one of the application icons in the Dock and from the contextual menu that appears, select "Show in Finder". The Finder window that pops up will allow you to figure out which drive that application is on.

More importantly, is there anything that prevents you from switching the drives so that the 80GB drive become the internal drive and the 6GB drive is housed in the Firewire enclosure for backups of key data? This is the ideal way to go. Others will chime in but I don't think you should view booting off of the 80GB Firewire drive as the permanent arrangement.

[pcd2k]

Thank you Hudson1; I own b/w G3 350 mgtz revision 2 with 384 ram running Jaguar. One 80 gig 5400 rpm internal for files and major programs, and the 6 gig internal primarily for the system.
I recently enrolled in a university postgraduate program mostly for the purposes of getting some training in movie making.
The college has a lab of the best dual G4's and another of dual 2 gightz G5's. I am only just begining with iMovie and will soon jump to FCP. Everyone that I have got to know there suggested I get a firewire device for uploading/downloading ie transferring files of movies/files between college and home and the choice was between a DVD Burner or a 7200 rpm external drive. Now I figured that my movie training efforts will probably be quite modest in actual meg/gig size so I got the Hitachi 80 gig. I somehow came to the conclusion that I needed my system on the 80 gig if I were going to use FCP at home although I understand rendering things on my equipment will be somewhat slower, I can't quite remember who suggested to me that I needed my system on the new drive in order to run/use the FCP program.

I would sure to love to do what you suggested, but how would the 6 gig 5400 rpm cope with copying the video footages/sequences I make/render at college ?

[hudson1]

OK, now I understand what you're trying to do. The Firewire drive is really a video file transport device as much as a backup device.

My guess would be then to put the new 80GB drive in your B/W Mac and the old 80GB drive in the Firewire enclosure. I assume that they are both standard 3.5" drives that can be switched.

From there, the question is whether you want to make the new 80GB drive your boot volume or not. You could leave just the system on the 6GB drive and put everything else on the new 80GB drive. The only issue with that is that you have to go through the excercise of moving your User directory onto the different volume. If you haven't done that before, Mike Bombich's website, www.bombich.com, has the instructions.

Also, there have been some problems in the past with updating Apple applications if they are in some place other than where Software Update thinks it should find them (/Applications). Maybe others can comment on the current reliability of Software Update when Applications is moved to a different volume or drive.

If those things are something that you want to tackle, then your setup would be:

6GB internal: System and Unix folders only
80GB internal (7200 rpm): Users and all apps (Apple and 3rd party)
80GB Firewire (5400 rpm): Clone of 80GB internal

If you don't want to make those moves, then you can still put everything on the 7200 rpm 80GB internal and use the slower Firewire drive as the clone of that and just forget about the 6GB drive.

Others have any thoughts?

[dcmacdaddy]

Originally posted by stuffedmonkey:
I would like to say also that carbon copy cloner is the greatest thing ever. We use it all the time at work to deploy systems off a standard image. Great stuff - you get a true exact copy, down to icon placement.

Yet another enthusiastic for CCC. Although I only support two dozen machines so I don't have the issues others might with the time required to touch each machine.

As we can't have Mac servers where I work--We are a Novell shop for file and print--NetInstall and NetBoot aren't an option for me. Whenever we do a major OS update I just create a "ghost" image and get our most demanding users to test it for a month. They work out the kinks--there are less and less now as we are preparing for the move to Panther--and then I create a new master "ghost" image that gets put on all the Mac's.

Edited to add: Do like everyone else says and erase the target hard drive before installing the image. Never had one problem doing it this way.

[pcd2k]

Thanks again Hudson1, some friends assure me that as long as I only use the 6 gig to copy stuff onto at college and/or home, then I should be able to use that until I can afford something bigger and better.

Yes basically all I need to be able to do is 'transport' the saved bits between college and home. So it looks as though I did a lot of unnecessary worrying, sorry about that. But anyway I'm still kind of worried about the cloned copy on the 80 gig 7200 rpm, as I said before although it seems to work ok, after I rebooted to that drive I noticed 3 extra folders called
etc tmp and var
which appear to be 4k aliases although etc and var seem to have lots of stuff in them whereas tmp has nothing visibly in it.
Are these folders integral parts of the system that weren't properly put away or what are they, and/or should I be concerned about them ?

So when I go ahead and swap them over I imagine I while have to empty the dock and the desktop ?

[hudson1]

Those three "extra" folders are really not extras at all. They've always been there but simply hidden. They showed up when I made a clone, too, but they'll revert to "hidden" if you log out and then log back in. So, there's no need to worry about those at all.

Also, you shouldn't need to touch the Dock or Desktop. Those are both part of the Users directory which will copy just as you would expect.

[pcd2k]

Thanks again Hudson1.

So I guess this closes this thread.