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restore disks, full OS X?

J

JustGretchen

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 2, 2008
464
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I've always wondered how restore disks were tied to a specific machine. For instance on my MacBook Pro and Mac Mini, the 1st disk is labeled as an OS X 10.5.6 install disk...

When you examine the disk, it looks to be the same as a Leopard 10.5.6 retail disk as far as contents are concerned unless I am missing something.

Would they work interchangeably on these machines like a normal leopard disk? Supposedly they are not able to be used on another machine, but how can that be if they are simply copies of Leopard.

Can anyone shed light on this? Thanks!
 
the grey discs (i.e. restore disks) only contain drivers for THAT machine it came with. no way would a MB restore disc install on a MP. they have code that checks the configuration of the machine..

sometimes the restore discs will work with other computers with similar configurations.. e.g. a 3,2 MB restore disc might work on a 3,1.. or somehting like that.( just randomly picked numbers lol)
 
Gotcha.

My retail Leopard disk got scratched pretty badly, so I was just wondering if I could use one of those on an older machine. I figured I couldn't, I just needed to know why.

Thanks
 
See, I tried to make a backup in the past and I have a DMG that seemed to have successfully extracted from my DVD, then soon after it got scratched, soon after that i had the need to reinstall leopard.

When i tried to burn that dmg to dual layer dvd-r using 2 different machines and different media, I never got a disk that my computer would read. I wasted like 5 or 6 dvd-r DL disks so I gave up because they're not cheap.

I should try calling apple to see if they will replace it. That'd be nice of them.
 
JustGretchen said:
See, I tried to make a backup in the past and I have a DMG that seemed to have successfully extracted from my DVD, then soon after it got scratched, soon after that i had the need to reinstall leopard.
Click to expand...

Hmm, if you have a "correct" image you can restore that to an external harddrive and boot from that to reinstall: that's what I do. It's much faster than a DVD. But most likely you have an image of one of the partitions on the DVD and are missing the various driver/boot partitions so your DMG is not going to work...
 
Please pardon my intrusion on your topic. But I need to ask a question on this subject.

If I CCC my hdd to a Firewire external hdd,would I be able to boot into an active OSX 10.4.11 (my current OS) in the event I want to upgrade my 25gb hdd to a larger drive and then CCC onto my new drive off the external?

I purchased my MAC 2nd hand and don't have any software, but do have an old 20gb ext. in a FW case.

Thanks for any help you can offer.
 
dogtag1968 said:
Please pardon my intrusion on your topic. But I need to ask a question on this subject.

If I CCC my hdd to a Firewire external hdd,would I be able to boot into an active OSX 10.4.11 (my current OS) in the event I want to upgrade my 25gb hdd to a larger drive and then CCC onto my new drive off the external?

I purchased my MAC 2nd hand and don't have any software, but do have an old 20gb ext. in a FW case.

Thanks for any help you can offer.
Click to expand...

if 20gb is enough then yes, you will be fine. just make sure to plug everything in, boot up the computer, and hold the :Option: button. this will give you the option to choose which boot partition to startup from. easy
 
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