Re: Backup question

In article <howard-9E82C6.18520209122005@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Howard S Shubs <howard@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> In article <u1134151340@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> sheilaepke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (SJME7) wrote:
>
> > I just bought a Lacie 250 GB Fire Wire hard drive. My intent was to
> > back up my G4 Mac on it. My brother suggested that I install Tiger
> > on it and then install the basic files (system programs) on it and
> > still have room to store all the pictures I am working on. I need a
> > little better directions than he has given me. All he said was ?put
> > the install disk in and follow the directions?. Can you recommend a
> > site that has more specific directions?
>
> It's a good idea to be able to boot your system from your new drive.
> Here's what I suggest:
>
> 0) Plug your new drive into the machine.
> 1) Using /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility, create two partitions on
> the drive ("Backup Boot"), one around 15GB and one for the rest of the
> disk ("Backup Data"). You can name the partitions what you like, but
> I'm going to use the names I suggest later in these directions.
> 2) Put your current MacOS X installation disk in your machine and open
> the disk when it appears.
> 3) Run the application on the MacOS X disk. It'll reboot your machine
> from the installation disk.
> 4) When you get to the point where it wants you to tell it which disk to
> install on, select "Backup Boot".
> 5) Proceed as the installer directs.
> 6) With MacOS X 10.4 (I forget if earlier ones do this), when it asks if
> you want it to move data from an old Mac, tell it to copy from your
> internal drive, JUST THE NETWORKING AND USER INFORMATION.
> 7) When the installer is finished, the machine will reboot from your
> external drive, ask for some information (if I remember correctly), and
> run Software Update. Accept all the updates. It might reboot once or
> twice and run Software Update again. Accept all updates until it stops
> rebooting and asking you.
>
> When you're done, you'll be able to boot from your fully up-to-date
> external drive, and you'll have a data partition for whatever you wish
> to backup.

This is an excellent suggestion. I did something like this several years
ago when I bought an Other World Computing Firewire drive. I would add
only two things:

(1) I see no need to partition the external drive. The backup files and
the system software can coexist within the same partition.

(2) After installing system software on the external drive, install
copies of every repair utility you own on it too, as well as your backup
utility. My Firewire drive has DiskWarrior, TechTool Pro, and Retrospect
on it, as well as all the Apple-supplied utilities such as Disk Utility.
It's much faster to run, for example, DiskWarrior from an external
Firewire drive than it is from the DiskWarrior CD. And you can run
different repair utilities in succession from the external drive,
without having to reboot using a different CD.

David

--
David Ryeburn
ryeburn@xxxxxxx
To send e-mail, use "ca" instead of "caz".
.

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