System format & restore: is this safe?

[DaveF]

To reinstall BootCamp with a larger partition, I need to reformat my hard drive in my MBP and restore everything. I plan to do the following:

* Make a complete, bootable backup with SuperDuper! to an external hard drive.
* Boot from the external drive
* With Disk Utility, erase / format my MBP's internal hard drive.
* Use SuperDuper! and restore / copy the external drive to the internal drive.
* Reboot my Mac with the internal drive like normal.

Is this safe? Have I missed anything important for doing a system wipe and restore? Thanks!

 

[blodwyn]

To reinstall BootCamp with a larger partition, I need to reformat my hard drive in my MBP and restore everything. I plan to do the following:

* Make a complete, bootable backup with SuperDuper! to an external hard drive.
* Boot from the external drive
* With Disk Utility, erase / format my MBP's internal hard drive.
* Use SuperDuper! and restore / copy the external drive to the internal drive.
* Reboot my Mac with the internal drive like normal.

Is this safe? Have I missed anything important for doing a system wipe and restore? Thanks!

Sounds good to me

 

[DaveF]

It's safe. Works like a charm. The only downside so far is that TimeMachine registers every file as having changed, and does a complete copy of the hard drive on its next backup.

 

[HLdan]

I'm lost as to why you want to reformat the entire hard drive just to get a larger partition for bootcamp. All you have to do is drop the bootcamp partition and start over again with a larger allocation right? Or did you have something else in mind?

 

[sickmacdoc]

I'm lost as to why you want to reformat the entire hard drive just to get a larger partition for bootcamp. All you have to do is drop the bootcamp partition and start over again with a larger allocation right? Or did you have something else in mind?

I was wondering the same thing- but also using the free cool little utility WinClone ( http://twocanoes.com/winclone/ ) you can enlarge the Windows partition without the time wasted having to reinstall Windows- detailed instructions (that work, I might add!) are incuded in the FAQ section of the site. Not that it applies here, but it also has a procedure for shrinking the Windows partition too.

 

[DaveF]

I'm lost as to why you want to reformat the entire hard drive just to get a larger partition for bootcamp. All you have to do is drop the bootcamp partition and start over again with a larger allocation right? Or did you have something else in mind?

That's what I thought too. But I encountered a not-uncommon BootCamp error during partition that said some files could not be moved and I'd have to do a system format/restore to make it work. So I did. It's a disk fragmentation issue, I think.

I could have repeated my original 15 GB partition without problem. But I was in so deep, I might as well fix the partition size that had been an annoyance.

Re: WinClone: I've now used it to backup my partition in case of future trouble

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

I've had that problem too. So I backed up my windows and mac partitions and system wiped everything. started fresh and it works like a charm.