Help with Tiger backing up

[MacBH928]

Hello

I need to backup my old imac 17 using the disk utility(I heard you can then boot from the disk on another computer, is this true?)

What I want to know is if I make an external HD the destination, will it use all the HD?
Because my imac capacity is only 80 GB and the smallest external HD I found was 250.
I mean can I use the rest of it for backing other files on my newer leopard system or not?

Plus will the backup work with the slower USB, because I can't find smaller HD's with firewire.

 

[strack]

Backing up Tiger

I need to backup my old imac 17 using the disk utility(I heard you can then boot from the disk on another computer, is this true?)

I don't know about disk utility as a cloner, but there is a product called Carbon Copy Cloner that works really well. You can download the software from bombich.com As far as booting another machine from the disk, as long as the hardware is similar enough it should work fine.

What I want to know is if I make an external HD the destination, will it use all the HD?
Because my imac capacity is only 80 GB and the smallest external HD I found was 250.
I mean can I use the rest of it for backing other files on my newer leopard system or not?

You can choose how you want it to go. You could partition the external drive to two partitions and clone to one of them, or you could choose to use the entire drive. In the latter case you still have all the room you would otherwise, just on the same drive is all.

Plus will the backup work with the slower USB, because I can't find smaller HD's with firewire.

If by slower you mean usb 1.1 then it will probably work, but take a really long time. If you mean usb 2 having slower transfer rates than firewire, the difference shouldn't be a lot in a situation like this.

Hope this helps. Good luck. Cheers!

 

[MacBH928]

Thanx for clearing everything up
I got the imac 17 , flat panel, they call it the lamp I think. Its from 2002 so I guess it is usb 1.1 .

I will boot from macbook 13, its similar enough I guess

One final question. If I clone the HD, there are pictures on that HD with "created" dates, its very important that I know when I got those pictures, if I clone the HD will they keep their original "created" dates or will it change to the date of the backing up

 

[strack]

When cloning a drive all permissions, dates, file info, etc. should be preserved. Carbon Copy Cloner is very good at doing that. I used it to clone my current drive from another one. Worked like a charm. Dates and other metadata on photo's should be preserved no matter what method you used to copy them.

Hope that helps. Good luck with the upgrade and Cheers!