Trying to clone a bootable partition usinf Superduper.

[almac68]

Hi all,

Need some help. I am trying to clone my snow leopard partition using the latest copy of Superduper (SD) but it says SD will backup all files except temporary files and system specific files that Apple recommends excluding.

So if I clone my drive, it won't make my cloned drive bootable since SD won't copy all the system files. This is contrary to a lot of postings I have read where people are able to clone a bootable drive from the parent drive onto say a FW400 external drive and the drive will boot. I am confused.

Any help appreciated. Thanks.

Alex

 

[gr8tfly]

They're probably talking about temporary cache files and the swap file. That said, you can just use Apple's Disk Utility to make a bootable clone. Bootup on your OS-X install DVD, launch Disk Utility, then use the Restore function. Check "erase destination" (which enables block copy mode). That's pretty much it. You should end up with an exact bootable copy of the source drive.

 

[someguy]

Try Carbon Copy Cloner if you're worried that SuperDuper won't do what you need (it will, by the way).

 

[almac68]

They're probably talking about temporary cache files and the swap file. That said, you can just use Apple's Disk Utility to make a bootable clone. Bootup on your OS-X install DVD, launch Disk Utility, then use the Restore function. Check "erase destination" (which enables block copy mode). That's pretty much it. You should end up with an exact bootable copy of the source drive.

Thanks for the info. Will give your advice a go later when I get home. I went ahead with teh cloning and I currently have SD cloning my drive. Should be done when I get back for lunch later. Will see if that works.

Try Carbon Copy Cloner if you're worried that SuperDuper won't do what you need (it will, by the way).

I tried CCC, I clicked on 'making the drive bootable' option, still nada. And strangely enough the cloning took only 10 mins when I specifically chose to erase the target drive and copy all files. I don't think CCC did that at all. It seems to just copy some files over. But when i was doing this, my target drive wasn't empty. It had the previous cloned copy of my SL which didn't boot up.

Oh! there was this message from bootcamp when I tried to select startup drive. Something to do with BLESS not being able to select this drive as startup drive. Any idea what it means? Sorry if I got the word wrong. Can't remember for sure if it is. Thanks.

 

[almac68]

Update:

I managed to Superduper my OS onto my external drive and its working fine.

Now I would like to split my external partition into 2. I know bootcamp won't help in this situation as it does not support partitioning an external drive. What options do I have to put windows in my external partition? I have 2. Please let me know if one or both will work. Thanks.

1. Use Disk Utility and partition the external drive and format in Fat 32 mode. Then install windows into this partition. Of course at one stage I have to format the partition with NTFS. I have done this before but somehow the partition won't boot and it messed up my internal windows partition.

2. Plug the external drive via USB or FW into my pc and partition the drive with Partition Magic. Then install windows into the external partition. Once finish I will plug the drive into my mac and boot off the new windows partition. Again not sure if it will boot.

What do you guys think? Workable solution or just a waste of time. If neither one will work, what better way is there to do this? I have been searching the net and haven't found one way that helps to do this. Thanks.

Alex

 

[someguy]

Long story short, I probably wouldn't waste my time installing Windows on an external hard drive. If you are planning to use Windows on your Mac, I would use Boot Camp to create a small partition on your internal hard drive (5-10GB) and install Windows there. Your external drive could then be used to simply store data that you do not need to keep on your Mac, such as music, pictures, documents, etc.