A slightly different Boot Camp question, I think

[soulbarn]

I am planning to use SuperDUper to restore my 80gig drive to a new 120 gig one. I want to install Boot Camp on the 120 gig drive...so my plan is:

1) Install a fresh copy of Tiger on the 120gig
2) Install Boot Camp
3) Then restore my old drive (system included) to the Mac partition on the 120gig

I'm not totally savvy on how SuperDuper works, but with the modfied boot partition on the new drive, will my plan work? If not (or if so) are there any better ways or tips for this procedure?

Thanks,
Dan

[dnanian]

I'd probably just copy your drive to the 120GB one with SD, then install BootCamp. No need to install a fresh copy...

[soulbarn]

Ahh, I forgot to add one thing: Boot Camp is not allowing me to install on my current drive..I am getting the "Your startup disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved" message - which is not related, actually, to partitioning or anything else, it appears to be a bug in Boot Camp related to the way free space is arranged on the drive (I have over 30 gigs of space, so that's not an issue.) Apple offers a bunch of troubleshooting solutions, but if they don't work, they recommend a format/fresh Tiger/Boot Camp/manual restore.

It is the manual restore part that I am trying to avoid.

thanks.

[dnanian]

Right. Since your move to a 120GB drive will basically move all your files to the "bottom" of the drive, you should have plenty of (contiguous) space for the BootCamp partition. So, I'd still suggest copying to the 120, and then install BootCamp.

[soulbarn]

So Super-Duper does a sort of defrag when it copies, rather than duping an entire disk, a la Ghost?

[dnanian]

That's right: we go file-by-file.

[obeechi]

So you could improve your internal hard drive... by ... cloning to an external drive... then booting from the external... then ... use the external to wipe the internal with zeros.... then... reinstall to the internal ? ? ? How often should we do that ... every 3,000 miles... ?

[dnanian]

Yes, you can do that... but it's not something I'd do routinely.

[obeechi]

well then ... what's your frag routine...

I just became aware of Diskeeper for NTFS... which defrags.. automatically in the backgound 24/7 as long you're powered up... with I-FAAST which is said to improve access to files...

Any good things out there for the Mac... ? I always hear of DiskWarrior.. but they're not for defragging...

[dnanian]

In general, HFS+ doesn't get hugely fragmented under OSX... it's just not much of a problem.