Sandbox Procedure Clarification Needed

[DebNCgal]

Maybe my mind is too weary to get what may be obvious. :) Nevertheless, I need to ask the following questions regarding creating a Sandbox. I'm getting ready to upgrade to a larger hard drive. Are the following steps the simplest steps to creating "Macintosh HD" and "Sandbox" volumes on a new hard drive?

1) First, clone my main "Macintosh HD" volume to a second internal drive.
2) Remove the current "Macintosh HD" drive and replace it with a new (uninitialized) drive.
3) Boot to the newly created clone on the second internal drive. Use Disk Utility to create two partitions on the new hard drive and name the largest partition "Macintosh HD" and the 2nd partition "Sandbox."

On p. 35 of the User's Guide, it indicates, after having created the partitions, to choose "Copy Macintosh HD to Sandbox" and "Sandbox - shared users and applications." That's where my confusion begins:

At this point, with SD using the above settings, will SD create the "Macintosh HD" and "Sandbox" clones on the new hard drive in ONE STEP — that is, while I'm booted onto the 2nd hard drive? Or do I first need to create the partitions on the new hard drive, then clone to the "Macintosh HD" partition from the second drive (using "Backup - all files"), and THEN boot to the new "Macintosh HD" volume and use the setting, "Sandbox - shared users and applications"?

The way the User's Guide seems to read on p. 35 is that you create the two partitions and immediately open SD to create the "Macintosh HD" and the "Sandbox" volumes.

Sorry if this should be obvious — but thanks for any help and clarification!

[dnanian]

Not necessary. The question really is: are you the kind of user who needs a sandbox? Do you jump on every update as soon as it's released and get burned when they don't work?

[DebNCgal]

Dave, I'm not a hasty adapter, but I've still been burned, even when waiting a bit before applying updates. As a result, I now routinely go through a number of cumbersome, time-consuming precautions before applying any system updates.

I think a sandbox will save me a lot of unnecessary precautionary efforts and will make any recovery, if needed, much quicker/simpler.

Does my initial question make sense? I'm not sure how else I'd word it. I apologize if the answer should be self-evident. Sometimes I'm so analytical that I can't spot the obvious!

Thank you.

[dnanian]

OK. Well, the first thing you need to do, before you start partitioning the drive, is create a Sandbox on a drive with a lot of space. Just try creating it, so you can see how large it'll need to be in your case.

Once you've discovered that, you'll need to do the partitioning (or, you can use a Sandbox on an external drive rather than partitioning and losing the internal space). You can't make a Sandbox and backup in "one step" - it needs to be made from the original drive, and I'd suggest doing so when you're actually running from it.

Remember: you must still back up - a Sandbox is not a backup. And you must back up the original volume, because that's where your data really is.

[DebNCgal]

By addressing separating the creation of a Sandbox from the partitioning of the drive, I'm wondering how, then, I am to create the Sandbox. (Sorry if that should be evident.) Can you elucidate a little on that?

The new drive I'll be adding is a 1TB drive. The used portion of my current main drive is approximately 220GB.

Thanks for the reminder that it's the original volume that must be backed up, not the Sandbox.

Thank you for your patience — I appreciate your help!

[dnanian]

Do it, as a test, to a sparse image stored on your backup drive, or something similar, so you can get an idea of how big a partition to make when you get to that point.