Cloning system to new drive
 

Hello! First-time poster here ...

I am running Leopard on a Mac mini and have a 160GB drive that I would like to use to replace (physically swap) the 80GB that shipped with, and is currently in the machine. I realize that SuperDuper! is not yet Leopard-compatible, so I am waiting for that to become available. In the meantime I wanted to make sure that what I have planned will indeed work!

Seems like this is simple enough, but let me know if I am missing anything here. My plan is to connect the new drive via a USB-to-SATA interface, use SuperDuper! to make a bootable clone of the existing internal drive, then swap out the drives. Is it just that easy?

I made bootable clones to FireWire drives under Tiger, and they seemed to work fine, but I wasn't sure if there was anything different to consider when the drive was destined to be the internal.

Any tips, tricks, advice appreciated!

Assuming it's properly partitioned for your Mac, and you make sure the new drive is named the *same* as the old one, yes. Should work fine.

Dave, thanks for the quick and personal response! I setup the drive with a GUID partition table, which I believe is what it should be. I wasn't aware of the naming convention though -- it is OK to give the external drive the same name as the internal during the copy process, or should it be renamed after it's installed?

Rename it before you try to start up from it.

Could I ask why you recommend this?

I keep a clone on a partition of my internal with the same name as the boot, which means if my boot fails I can switch to it and all aliasses etc will be correct and I could carry right on.

I agree it is potentially confusing have two same name disks. When it comes to saving files etc, there is potential error of saving to wrong one. I actually Keep the clone unmounted to reduce this.

I have booted from the clone to test it without seeing a problem.

I should say I have only been doing this (same name for clone) since Leopard, and until SD is compatible I am using Disk Image to make the clone.

Is your reason for saying re-name the clone a Superduper! specific one, or for any clone?

Thanks

Mike

FYI, tonight just for yuks, I decided to try cloning my internal drive to a SATA drive connected via USB using Disk Utility. Although I had named my destination volume as simply "Seagate," as soon as I started the cloning process, Disk Utility immediately changed the name of the drive to "Mac mini HD," which is the name of my internal drive.

When the process was through, I put the cloned drive inside the mini, and so far, it is working great. Haven't noticed anything unusual (which isn't to say that I WON'T ...)

I recommend the same name because aliases might resolve to the wrong volume if the drive names are different.

Understand! I thought you were saying he should rename it to something different.

OK, I think I'm a bit confused here about the need/benefit of naming drives...

I've been using SD! for a number of years, and here's what I do:

1. I have a main drive I partition into two: G4 and SC
2. I then do a safety clone from G4 to SC sharing user/apps
3. I boot from SC and I'm happy as a clam
4. When I install new stuff (including incremental OS updates), I apply them to SC. Once I determine the machine is happy (usually days/weeks later), I boot from G4, apply all changes/updates since my last safety clone, and then remake a safety clone onto SC, and cycle back to step 3.
5. Periodically in this process I do a complete backup clone (not safety clone) onto another drive called G4 Backup. This has two purposes: (a) something really gets hosed on the G4/SC drive, (b) horrors! G4/SC physically crashes
6. Just to be on the safe side, I also back up my documents folder nightly to yet another drive, using Synk, and archive to protect myself from stupidly deleting a file I didn't mean to delete.

Now, where in this process should I be using two drives with the same name in order not to confuse aliases and get them resolved to the wrong plac? (I think this has happened to me before and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why some aliases were resolving to the wrong drive).

Aside: I don't frequent these forums often, but today I see there has been some "back and forth" recently that has gotten a bit heated. I just want to say that I consider SD! to be a lifesaver. I have (knock on wood..) never needed it to recover from a disaster, but I sleep better at night knowing I am less likely to lose stuff if disaster strikes, and I HAVE used SD! several times to upgrade my hard drives via cloning, although I admit to a bit of nervousness when I do so!

It's just if you want to boot from G4 Backup, and the original volume is still there, renaming it ensures that aliases resolve to the backup and not to the original.