Restoring to wiped drive
 

I have a corrupted hard drive and I have been told by Apple that I need to completely erase the drive and reinstall the OS.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht204904

I'm using El Cap right now and I have a Super Duper bootable clone on an external USB drive.

After I completely wipe the drive, how do I restore from a SD clone?

I looked in the instructions and I can't find exactly what I'm looking for.

Thanks,

Paul

You have two basic choices:

- Reinstall El Capitan from Apple (using Network Recovery, I assume, if you have to completely wipe the drive). Then, when it asks you if you want to restore during the first boot, point at the SuperDuper backup.

- Boot from the SuperDuper drive. Properly erase and partition the drive. Then use SuperDuper's "Restore - all files" to restore.

Wow, thanks for the quick reply, Dave. Much appreciated.

p.s. I joined this forum in 2010 which means I purchased SD around that time. Can't believe it's been that long and I honestly don't remember actually ever needing to restore like this before. But it's been a huge peace of mind. Wouldn't live without it.

Glad it's working well for you!

I've actually created an El Cap install disc on a usb drive and will boot off that and then erase and partition the drive.

If I then do the option to Restore - all files, does that also restore applications as well?

Thanks

Yes, it'll restore all the files on the backup. If the applications are on it, they will be restored.

Will it also restore the OS too? The issue is a corrupted hard drive and we don't know w where it exists. So I want to install OS first and then bring over user files including app. I'm afraid if I copy everything it will bring a ver what's causing the corruption.

If the OS is on the backup, yes, that's also restored. But I don't know what the "corruption" is, or whether you've tried simply reinstalling the OS, so it's hard for me to answer "what will happen" definitively.

If your drive is mostly failing, well, restoring won't help.

Sorry, I was actually in the Apple store and typing quickly on my phone.

I create a full bootable SD backup to an external hard drive so I assume the OS is on that.

We have no idea where the corruption is either. Not sure if it's on the root level or user level. I'm hoping it's at the root level and that a clean wipe of the hard drive and then a restore of the user files, including apps will work.

But as I thought about your last reply more, I have a better understanding of what the SD restore would do and it's not what I think I want.

I can do a restore at the user level from Apple just showed me so that SD clone is perfect for that.

Yes, you can migrate from the copy to bring your applications and data into an existing system.