Best process to replace internal hard drive using SuperDuper!?

[firas]

Just out of curiousity dnanian, as I might be doing the same thing soon with my MacBook. What's the reason for renaming the External Firewire backup drive to the old internal drive's name after copying and before restoring to the new internal drive?

Thanks.

[dnanian]

It ensures that aliases and other file references that explicit include the volume name point to the "new" volume and not the old one.

[firas]

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the info and the great product! I just purchased it a few days ago after reading and hearing all the great reviews from MacWorld, Macbreak, as well as others and I just love it so far. Keep up the great work and service!

[dnanian]

Will certainly try to!

[ScottE22]

I'm bumping this thread to make sure I understand this process...

My 12" PB's HD died. All my important data is backed up, so no issues there...

I bought myself a new Macbook, and in addition I bought a new HD with the intention of transitioning my wife from her aging G3 iBook (Panther) to the Powerbook. I just want to make sure I understand the process in the simplest terms.

I suppose I could install Tiger on the new drive in the PB and then use Migration Assistant to move her stuff, but what I'm hoping is that I can use SD! to clone her iBook's HD and restore it on the new HD in the Powerbook. Just seems so much simpler.

Anyway - I'm confused about something and perhaps I'm reading too much into it.

1. In the absence of a FW drive put the iBook in Target mode and run SD! on my Macbook to make the image -- store the image file on the Macbook.
2. Put the new machine with naked, brand new HD in Target mode and push the image from the Macbook.

Am I oversimplifying this?

It seems to me from my days as a tech guy cloning machines with CCC that you cannot boot from the image when you're trying to restore the image, but I figured using my new Macbook as the go-between would work.

Thanks in advance.

[dnanian]

No, it really should be about that easy...

[ScottE22]

Originally Posted by dnanian

No, it really should be about that easy...

Thanks, Dave. After reading the step-by-step post that started this thread, I thought I was missing something...

I plan to clone her HD and move it over and then do the upgrade to Tiger (she's still running Panther on the iBook G3). She'll be moving from a 20GB drive to an 80GB one that I'm installing.

One more thing to confirm -- once the new HD is installed in the PB, I'm thinking I'll need to boot it in Target mode and format it using the Macbook. Is my thinking correct, or can I just restore the image to a naked, new drive?

[dnanian]

You'll definitely need to format it. Make sure it's properly partitioned as "Apple Partition Map" for your Power PC Mac, too.

[ScottE22]

Dave - thanks so much for your responsiveness!

One thing I guess I'm not clear on even after reading the manual is whether you can use SuperDuper to backup or restore the volume that's used as the Startup disk.

It looks to me like you can, which is something I've never done before. I used to install OS X to a FW drive, then boot from the FW drive to make an image of the machine I want to clone. Can SD! clone the booted volume so as to make this unnecessary?

[dnanian]

You can certainly back up the startup disk. You just can't restore to the volume you're booted from.

[ScottE22]

Originally Posted by dnanian

You can certainly back up the startup disk. You just can't restore to the volume you're booted from.

Well that clears it up then -- it's really easier than I thought...

So, then, can I install SD! to my wife's iBook and just copy the entire volume (which I'm booted from!) to the Powerbook (booted in Target mode, of course) without some intermediate step, or do I need to create a bootable backup image and then restore the image to the new drive?

Sorry for all the questions -- I guess I missed a huge piece of SD!'s basic functionality in my reading...

[dnanian]

That's right. You can just copy it.