Trying to duplicate one Mac OS 9 HD to another failed, any suggestions?

Hi everyone,

A user in our office got a new PBG4 today, and I was going to basically duplicate the HD on his current laptop to this new one so that everything would be the same.

What I did was the following:

1. Connected both laptops together via FireWire cable

2. Booted *new* laptop in target mode.

3. Erased *new* laptop's HD.

4. Copied the contents of the *old* laptop's HD to the *new" laptop's HD.

The *new* laptop booted up just fine, but then everything started going funky. Network settings wouldn't stick, iTunes refuses to play any music, applications crash left and right.

What did I do wrong? What is the *proper* way to duplicate a HD running OS 9 to another so that it works just like it did with the old computer? One thought would be Carbon Copy Cloner but that's only an OS X program.

Thanks for the suggestions!

You can use Disk Copy 6.4's clone feature. Used it on my boss's G4 when he bought a new bigger HD. Pick source, pick target, away you go. Works like a champ. If you have trouble finding a copy of it, drop me a private message and I'll hook you up.

Bear in mind that the new Powerbook might require a slightly newer OS 9 version than the old computer, so that might be a cause of instabilities also.

--Josh

Retrospect has a disk copy feature.

But a complete disk copy may not be what you want. The great thing about a disk copy is that invisible files are copied properly. The bad thing is that the system folder will get overwritten. I agree with Gene Jockey that the system may be the problem. You should reinstall/update the system for the new PB.

Sidebar: Conflict Catcher has a merge system folders feature which may (or may not) be useful in this situation.