Is There Any Difference Between OS Installed From Disc vs A Clone Copy?

[Wie Gehts]

Is there any special kind of whamma-jamma that might make installing your OS (and applications as well) onto the HD directly from the installer discs versus copying a clone of that system onto your HD any better than the other? Or are they both equally rock solid as far as your computer is concerned?

tanx

 

[calderone]

It depends on how you plan to use the image.

If you are going to use it on one machine. It is the same, but of course it is better since you can customize to your liking and drop it back down (much faster) when you need to.

If you are going to use it on multiple machines, you need to pay attention to the ByHost preferences as they are tied to the UUID of the machine (pre-Leopard it was the Mac address). So if you have any byhost preferences set you will lose those unless you change them to the UUID of the new machine.

One problem is using it on new machines released from Apple that may contain new hardware. Say Apple releases a new Macbook with graphics not used anywhere else in the lineup, even though they may release it with 10.6.1 they have drivers that you will probably not have in your 10.6.1 image. So you will need to: wait until Apple releases 10.6.2 with the new drivers, or make a new image with the Macbook.

Sometimes, drivers are not included in the updates. Which means you will need to have a custom image for that Macbook.

The advantages of using an image outweigh the potential problems you may encounter IMO.

If you simply want speed when getting an OS on a machine, take an image of the install DVD and restore it to a partition on a firewire drive. Much faster than the DVD.

 

[Wie Gehts]

Alright, thank YOU!

Basically my concern is that I installed SL from scratch, plus all the included iLife stuff as well as iWorks 09. Then I installed Logic.

I then made a clone using superduper.

Then I installed a suite of plugins for Logic thats an 11 hour install. However, they keep crashing. The software manufacturer turns around an says...well, we're probably not going to upgrade that version for SL, you'll have to buy an upgrade to the version that was just released. (and even thats iffy with SL as of yet)

So barring that I can't uninstall all that stuff without an uninstaller, I was just going to go to my original, pristine cloned copy. So I want to know if these clones really run just as well as the disc installs...that is, that they are indistinguishable.

 

[Richard1028]

So I want to know if these clones really run just as well as the disc installs...that is, that they are indistinguishable.

The clone is a byte for byte duplicate of the resultant DVD install from your hard drive.

So in that respect, they are the same.

For those that have the drives, it's very common to keep a "cloned" copy of the Install DVD with all the updates therein. Saves a lot of time. I keep one for Leopard and SL.

 

[Wie Gehts]

Thanks.

You're saying that besides the usual clone copy of your system drive, you also clone install discs themselves? If so, would using a clone, or a dmg copy of an installer disc make using that for installing go a lot faster?

If wanted to copy the actual disc onto a hd, do you use a cloning app or just make a discimage of it and save that? Is there a difference?

 

[calderone]

Thanks.

You're saying that besides the usual clone copy of your system drive, you also clone install discs themselves? If so, would using a clone, or a dmg copy of an installer disc make using that for installing go a lot faster?

If wanted to copy the actual disc onto a hd, do you use a cloning app or just make a discimage of it and save that? Is there a difference?

1. Take image of disc via Disk Utility
2. Use Disk Utility to restore to a drive or partition, one that would be faster than a DVD is preferable, i.e. an external firewire drive
3. Then you simply boot to that parition/drive and install OS X.

It is indeed faster than using the DVD. Whenever I get a new OS (or software for that matter) I take a disk image for archive and install purposes.