Disk Image OSX 10.5

[Ryan5505]

I have some questions on a disk image:

I want to take my current internal hard drive and completly copy it. This is a disk image correct? Once I do this, say my system crashes or my mac is distroyed.

Can I take a new mac and use the disk image I loaded on my external hard drive and load all my files and applications onto the new mac?

Is it as easy as that?

My reason for this is, I have OSX 10.5 and I have a lot of valuable information and programs and I do not want to loose them if I have to format my hard drive. At my office we had to format a HD of a macbook to get 10.5 loaded on. I also plan on moving over to intel from PPC and would like to just move all my files and applications over with out taking a day to install programs.

Thank you

 

[Makosuke]

Basically yes, that should work. You won't be able to boot from the disk image, but it should contain all your data.

I'm not entirely sure whether Disk Utility makes images that can easily be cloned back to a partition and booted, but I'm nearly certain CCC will--I've used it that way.

Regardless, you can always mount the image and then just grab files manually or use Migration Assistant to import users/data/etc from the image. Alternately, you could clone it to a partition and even if it's not bootable do an archive and install to get a bootable install with all the data.

 

[FreeState]

cloned back to a partition and booted, but I'm nearly certain CCC will--I've used it that way.

I just used CCC last night to clone my hard drive to a USB 2 drive. It took about 2 hours. It boots from it too.

 

[Consultant]

Boot up using OSX install disk. You can use disk utility to make a disk image.

Verify the image and you are done.

You can restore that disk image to another volumne in the future.