Partition
 

Using SuperDuper, I cloned my iMac Hard Drive to an OWC FireWire Drive. Using the FireWire Drive as a startup drive, can I 'safely' partition my intel iMac hard drive and then use SuperDuper to clone one partition of the iMac?

Sure, but let me suggest that you name the FireWire drive the same as the original source drive partition. That'll make partitioning easier since no aliases will be accidentally resolving to the original drive.

Partition
 

Thanks! It worked like a charm. I cut my teeth on macs as a Chem professor in the early 90's doing molecular modeling on the old Quadras and system 7.1. The only way to crash one of them was to throw it out of a 4th story window. Then the switch to (ugh) windows. Now retired, I still have a PC. It's down in the basement. My iMac and my iBook are great.:)

Glad it worked out as expected!

Partitioning an Intel Mac
 

Dave:

I found this on MacFixIt this morning:

"There is a bit of confusion about what is needed for a bootable disk.

"I use SuperDuper and Synchronize Pro X to create bootable disks on external firewire drives. I have both Intel and PowerPC machines. My firewire drives are partitioned and the partitioning system is the Apple one, not GUID.

"You must install OS X for an Intel machine on a drive which is partitioned using the GUID system. That is, if you want to do an ORIGINAL installation of OS X for an Intel machine.

"However, if all you are doing is copying your system to the firewire drive, then the partitioning does not need to use the GUID system, and the bootable disk will boot both the PowerPC machine and the Intel machine.

"I consulted both SuperDuper and Synch Pro about this and got this information. And I've made my bootable back-ups and they work like a charm on my PowerPC machine and my Intel machines. None of my firewire drives has the GUID system."

Now, back to my ignorance ...

I am very, very, very close to getting a MacBook Pro, so right now I have a iMac G4.

Right now I have two Firewire external drives, both formatted by my G4 with Tiger. One of these has your SuperDuper clone (shared users and apps). Yes, I know that I will have to totally re-do the clone when I get the MacBook. No big deal.

However, it is my understanding that this external drive MUST be formatted using GUID or whatever it's called in the Apple/Intel world.

In short, will I have to totally re-format both externals in the Apple/Intel format and start over (backup + restore) with these externals?

John Love

External drives can be used as either APM or GUID format with an Intel Mac, and both will boot. Internal drives, or OS install targets (with the DVD) need to be GUID.

So -- a drive that's used for backups (even bootable ones) can be APM or GUID with an Intel Mac.