Can SuperDuper just copy/install...

[Walter]

I have installed a fresh copy of Snow Leopard to an external FireWire drive because the previous Snow Leopard on this drive started to crash my desktop/screen saver My Living Desktop. I tried removing and re-installing My Living Desktop and also doing the permissions thing with no luck. Based on those crash reports the programmer of My Living Desktop suggested i re-install Snow Leopard. After re-installing Snow Leopard to the external FireWire drive all is well with My Living Desktop screen saver.

I am also having the same crash issues with My Living Desktop in my main hard drive of my Intel Mac late 2009 edition with the OS Snow Leopard.

Sorry but I don't know enough about your program: can Super Duper copy just the apple stuff from the external FireWire Drive to the main hard drive of the Intel Mac and not touch any applications on both drives ?

If so how do I set that up please ?

I should note for those that are not aware that the Snow Leopard installer can no longer do an archival installation. For some reason Apple has removed that feature in Snow Leopard. It's all or nothing installation.

[dnanian]

No. You just reinstall Snow Leopard: the default reinstall *is* an archive-and-install.

[Walter]

But that just wipes out all "my" special midi/audio applications and their related system files.

I started out with all my files on the main hard drive then "cloned" a copy to the external drive using SuperDuper.

Then somewhere along the way the main hard drive file My Living Desktop got corrupted whereby that corrupted main hard drive was then cloned to the external drive. I was not aware of the corruption until several days after using the main drive and then trying the back updrive to realize both are corrupted.

Can SuperDuper clone the main drive similar to Apple's Time Machine whereby I can go back to a back up version that is not corrupted ?

At this time I feel that the SuperDuper back up process has proven to be costly in terms of dedicating an external hard drive to be a back up drive and a absolute waste of time because now I have to do a fresh install to the main drive.

[dnanian]

It shouldn't do that, Walter.

You can make multiple backups with SuperDuper!, as explained in the Introduction to the User's Guide, to cover this case. But as I said, you should be able to do a reinstall of Snow Leopard, which is the equivalent of an archive-and-install. They just renamed it to make it clearer to most users.

I'm sorry that you're frustrated, but it seems that "My Living Desktop" should have a way to restore its own functionality without requiring this kind of extreme action... note that you could try the OS reinstall over the backup to see if you get the result you want, too, without affecting your regular drive...

[Walter]

But as I said, you should be able to do a reinstall of Snow Leopard, which is the equivalent of an archive-and-install. They just renamed it to make it clearer to most users.

Yes i did run the Snow Leopard installer but but it overwrites the entire drive and all my previously installed programs are completely erased and i ended up with a fresh Snow Leopard with just Apple programs. My previously installed applications such as midi/audio programs and games were gone.

Apple has removed the ability to do an archival install which in previous operating systems would create a "new" set of systems folders and move the previous set of systems folder's to a separate folder named "previous".

Reading the various postings at Apple's forum concludes that the Archival install is no longer available.

However, if you have tried and succeed an archival install with the Snow Leopard installer whereby all third party applications are still there then please let me know how that is done because all my third party applications were erased. It even warns you about that when you launch the installer.

I'm sorry that you're frustrated, but it seems that "My Living Desktop" should have a way to restore its own functionality without requiring this kind of extreme action... note that you could try the OS reinstall over the backup to see if you get the result you want, too, without affecting your regular drive...

I did try installing the "combo" OS but that did not solve it.

With My Living Desktop you can remove the installation but when i removed it and then re-installed I had the same problem. I did the permissions thing but still no luck.

You can make multiple backups with SuperDuper!, as explained in the Introduction to the User's Guide, to cover this case.

I will have to study those instructions and see if SuperDuper can create a series of backups to go back to rather then making a copy of a corrupted operating system which is what happened to me.

Thanks again.

[dnanian]

I didn't do anything special to reinstall Snow Leopard other than reinstall it. It did not wipe out my data. Perhaps your system was corrupted enough that even the installer didn't recognize that it could reinstall?