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gooser · Oct 15, 2012, 03:06 PM

as i have posted on another thread, in the first quarter of next year i will be buying a used macbook on e-bay. in the meantime i've been window shopping and what i've found is that it's next to impossible to find one with system restore discs. are they even necessary these days? with programs such as superduper and carbon copy clone can't i just copy everything over to a firewire drive and if my hard drive crashes or i replace it use the copy to restore everything? what am i missing?

D R Turbo · Oct 16, 2012, 12:18 AM

You might need it. I use a product called Scannerz to do drive tests. They recently released a large, free pdf book on hard drive troubleshooting which you can get from:

http://scsc-online.com/Downloads.html

If your system is having problems of an intermittent nature, like a cable with intermittent faults in it, it can actually cause bad data to be written to a drive. Early iBook G4's were notorious for this problem because they had a cable that runs from the top side of the logic board to the bottom side, and it was almost like it was spring loaded. The cable after enough time would work it's way partially off causing intermittent data transfers. This would cause not only delays reading and writing data, but occasionally cause the drive to write corrupt data to the drive. The company has an Intro video that you can watch at:

http://scsc-online.com/Videos.html

I wouldn't waste a ton of time on the video, a lot of it is beginner nonsense like how to load the app into the dock and how to start a scan (have Mac users REALLY gotten that bad?!?!?!) but in the last 5 minutes or so of it they actually show the difference between how a drive with bad sectors appears and how a drive that's OK but has a bad cable looks. Let the movie load fully in QuickTime and just scroll to the last 5 minutes or so and you'll see it. The movie is huge in size and in pretty hi res.

The reason I say this is that if you're relying on cloning, and something like intermittent problems are plaguing you, then it's entirely possible you could end up cloning a drive with bad data on it.

What I might suggest is to take your external drive, split it into 2 volumes - 1 small and 1 large, then clone the base OS onto the smaller volume, and then use the other volume for regular cloning of your drive with all apps and data. If something goes wrong and you had to do a re-install, then you could use the data on the smaller volume to re-install the OS. Another trick would be, if possible, to clone the base OS to a flash drive, but it will be abysmally slow, and if you do so, make sure Spotlight is disabled. Spotlight will write too many blocks of data to a flash drive and thus end its life prematurely, plus on a flash drive, it's really, really slow.

One of the nice things about the newer OS releases are that they're downloadable and not that expensive. I've seen copies of Leopard and Tiger on eBay run as much as $100 (or more).

Hope this helps.

P · Oct 16, 2012, 02:50 AM

There are a number of ways to do without system restore disks. One way is if you use Time Machine - if you do, you only need any OS install disk (or, if you use Lion or above, network restore) to trigger the restore. If you use something like CCC, just make sure that your clone is complete enough to boot from (and check that you can boot from it before you actually need to).

bowwowman · Oct 16, 2012, 11:29 AM

When selling a used computer, the SELLER should be completely wiping the HDD and either re-installing the original OS from the restore discs, OR leaving it blank for you to install whatever OS you have or get on your own. The status of the OS & disks should be clearly stated in the listing. If it is not, then ASK THE SELLER THE QUESTION !

So you have 3 options.....insist that you get the original system restore disc(s) with the computer, buy a set off ebay, or just buy a RETAIL set.........

The only real differences are that the restore discs are made for the machine they shipped with, and the retail ones can be used with any compatible machine.......

good luck with your purchase

jmiddel · Oct 16, 2012, 10:23 PM

You are going for a major upgrade, and you want your MB to come with at least OS 10.6.x, so that you can access the AppStore so you can download 10.8.x. If not, you'll have to do an intermediate upgrade from a previous system which is ~100 bucks. Moreover, can you even clone a G4 to an Intel? It's been so long I don't remember

Let us know your thoughts about this upgrade, many here have good ideas.

gooser · Oct 17, 2012, 03:36 AM

even though a 2009 macbook can go to 10.8, i will probably park it at 10.6.8. at least for a while. nothing against 10.8, i just have too many power pc applications i want to use. it looks like if i buy a 10.6 disc and backup everything else to an external drive then i should be well protected. am i right or wrong?

jmiddel · Oct 17, 2012, 05:22 PM

10.6.8 (SL) is great, ultra stable. Why not use Migration Assistant to transition all your stuff from one of your current machines to the new MB? Simply connect the older one to the MB via FW, start it in Target mode (Command-T at boot), and do the SL install, it will ask you whether you want to migrate, and will guide you through the process. Of course erase and partition the MB so you're starting fresh.