Restoring from a disc image

[Ravich]

So I had to have my macbook pro HDD replaced (applecare) and I made a disc image backup beforehand and put it on my external HDD.

I just picked it up from the apple store today, and called tech support for help with restoring it from the disc image. I was instructed to put the install disc in and boot holding the 'c' key, then go to disc utilities, to the restore tab, find the image as a source, and then drag the internal HDD volume to the destination field. It didnt work, so I was transferred to a senior advisor, who told me to do the same thing. The only time it would work is if I dragged the indented one that reads "Macintosh HD" instead of the one with the GB size and brand name. The senior advisor told me that it wouldnt work for him either (dragging the volume) and dragging the macintosh HD isnt how it's supposed to work, so he couldnt guarantee a proper result. It didnt work anyway. I dont remember the error message.

So he starts telling me that the best option might be to install the operating system from the discs, update to 10.5.8, and then just copy the "user" folder and then move everything where it is supposed to be. I wasnt particularly impressed and I'm not convinced that it has to be that difficult or time consuming.



Any advice? I feel like it should be a simple process.

 

[Peace]

Do you have an OS on your HD already?

If so it needs to be the same version that is on the restore disk image.

 

[spinnerlys]

Have you checked any of the links found via http://www.google.com/search?client...s+x+restore+from+disk+image&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 or http://www.google.com/cse?cx=011016...e:forums.macrumors.com&hl=en&as_qdr=all&meta= ?

 

[Ravich]

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6357285


There it is. Had to google the error message. Guess I could have done that to begin with, but I figured tech support would have that written into the process -.-


Thanks

 

[Ravich]

Well, it finally finished, and when I booted from the internal drive, I was surprised to find the desktop blank and applications folder reduced to defaults.


This article:

http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=20040726230142403

Watch out here for applications that are single licensed. Those will need to be installed after you restore the image. This might seem like a pain, but if you can cut the time needed to build a new workstation from 4 hours to 30 minutes then you are still way ahead.

Also keep in mind that some settings are what is called ByHost. These preferences are tied to the MAC address of each Mac and won't work if copied to another machine. Some common ByHost prefs are Classic, iTunes authorizations, display prefs, and screensaver prefs. You can always copy these to the appropriate user folder and fix them up after you restore the image, but that is a different article!

So I didnt have any luck figuring out what I can do at this point to copy settings over from my disk image... am I stuck reinstalling absolutely everything and entering all serial numbers again?