Is there an app that i could boot up off cd that will allow me to simply copy all my data from the harddrive onto an external one? Thus allowing me to than go back into disk util and erasing everything, reinstalling everything, and than move everything from my external drive back onto my laptop?
*I skip a bit around so read this all first before you try it.*
It might sound as though I'm making this all up as I go along [I kind of did in the sense that I'm pulling this from memory] .... but that's because I've never physically done this myself so I can't guarantee anything. The tech at the Apple store I work at has told me about this for general backup purposes. If something goes wrong don't blame me, I'm just trying to help. Also note that If I had nothing else, I would definitely try this.
Free or paid, I'm not too sure what there is for OS X. That was one of my BIGGEST pet peeves from switching from 9 to X was the fact that you couldn't simply access the drive as normal in order to do such things.
Hmmmm, so you have an external drive already, eh? Well, in 10.4 [Tiger] there is probably something you can do for this, though I'm not sure if all the files will be accessible [because of the sibling link error].....
To check this out, plug in your external drive and boot up to your system cd.
While in DiskUtility, when you select a volume there are about five options to choose from. Amongst "First Aid", "Erase", and "Partition" there is a "Restore" option.
While deceptively named it does allow you to create an exact [and from what I hear, bootable] backup of a volume; however; I'm suspecting that you would need an external drive with enough free space to copy the entire contents of the harddrive as you cannot simply pick and choose files.
If that's the case, what you would do is drag, from the left side of DU, your volume ["Macintosh HD" by default] into the "Source" section of the window.
Then [hopefully the external drive should be listed on the left of DU as well], you drag the external drive icon from the left into the "Destination" section.
Upon clicking "Restore" it will copy all of the contents from the source into the destination. Again, your internal drive as the source of the "restore" and your external being the destination of the backup.
Oh, and be warned that if there are any duplicate files on the destination it may replace them [like if you have a /Library or /Applications folder in the root directory of your external exactly as they are on your internal drive]. Otherwise any regular file that is on the destination won't be replaced/deleted unless you select the "Erase Destination" check box.
Now, if that all works as it should [try to view the files on the external before initializing the drive, just in case] I wouldn't recommend fully restoring the disk [the opposite way we just backed it up], but rather dragging and dropping only necessary files back to your internal drive after reinstalling the system. Pictures/movies/music/documents and such, otherwise
*I have no idea if the same directory issues will transfer back*
Whew. I hope you try this as I would like to know how it works.
Good luck!
