Questions from another newbie trying to get it right.

[dnanian]

Hi, Steve.

This isn't going to help, probably, but here's the thing: it's hard to know what systems are going to have problems with the drive naming, since it's entirely dependent on the programs you're running, and their behavior. If your set of apps makes use of aliases that cause this kind of trouble, then you need to name the backup the same as the source when you boot from it (and the original drive is available) if you want to guarantee that everything you do after boot is occurring on the backup.

Think about it: what might happen, in the "Backup" case, is that some aliases will be pointing at the original drive. But, if you're just testing your backup, that's OK: it's not a big deal if a file is opened on the original, since you're just testing things out.

In the case of a profound failure -- when you *really* need to boot from the backup -- it's likely the original volume won't be there. As such, the alias thing won't be a problem!

The biggest issue occurs when something at startup requires the volumes to be named the same. This is rare, but I've seen it with older versions of Norton Personal Firewall and some other stuff. In that case, the drive won't boot at all named something other than the original.

In that case, it's necessary to name it the same as the original, or you can't boot.

So, it's a big case of "it depends". To simplify things, I'm suggesting to people that they name the drive the same as the original if they want to boot from it. It might not be required in all cases, but to explain the whole thing (as in the above) in every case, and diagnose every person's individual setup, would be difficult (and confusing). If there's a problem that might be attributed to this kind of thing, it's the go-to first step toward fixing the issue.

I know that's less "obvious", but do you find it any clearer?

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If you're concerned about needing to revert from Tiger back to Panther due to potential issues with Tiger, then you can install it on the Safety Clone and check it out first. Note, though, that there are some "data storage" incompatibilities between Panther and Tiger, especially with regard to iCal and Mail. See the FAQ about Tiger Compatibility for more information.

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Finally, I'll check out the part of the manual you're referring to, and see if I can make it clearer: thanks.