12-30-2007, 11:59 AM

I am relatively new to MAC's and just upgraded this morning from Tiger to Leopard. I created a clone of the Tiger install with CCC. The erase and install was flawless and very fast; less than 3 hours from Tiger to a fully working Leopard with all applications and settings via CCC.

I have a question regarding CCC and Time Machine. It seems to me that CCC will and would have brought over any corrupt, unneeded, or "not pristine" files into Leopard. I would think Time Machine in it's out of the box setting (backing up the entire drive) will behave the same way if you were to perform an erase and install and then use the migration wizard to restore the workstation back to where you were. If you wanted to erase and install and make sure the install was as perfect as possible how would you proceed? I'm guessing that maybe only backing up the user folder would prevent some garbage system files from coming into the new install but for a lack of knowledge, I think that may miss some of the functionality to get the machine back to where it was including all applications and settings.

12-30-2007, 12:23 PM

you can use migration assistant if you want to pull back all the apps and settings from your cloned tiger install

otherwise you can just do it manually

12-30-2007, 03:31 PM

So the migration assistant will not pull all of the system files; just those files needed to install the applications and user settings?

12-30-2007, 04:44 PM

I think I found the answer:

My Backup Plan - comments?

It appears Time Machine does not move over system files.

12-30-2007, 04:50 PM

Just remember that SuperDuper! works in OS X Tiger 10.4.x but is not yet entirely compatible with OS X Leopard 10.5.x. To use it under Leopard you will have to wait for the update, but it works perfectly well in Tiger.

12-30-2007, 05:19 PM

Thanks MacHeadCase.

I just tried a few scenarios to see how things worked. SuperDuper definitely did not boot Leopard for me with a WD USB2 drive. I gave it 20 minutes; nothing. The same version of SuperDuper worked fine yesterday restoring settings from Tiger into Leopard.

Other point of interest. I just called Apple support and asked if my original question was possible via Time machine. The answer was no. I specifically asked if it would be possible (in the event I was dorking around where I did not belong and jacked up some OS files) to do an erase and install and then as part of the install point the installer to the Time Machine backup and only pull applications and my user preferences (mail, bookmarks, Adobe Bridge preferences, ect). The tech stated that the installer program will overwrite system files from the Leopard disk with the Time Machine files.

If the tech is correct it would appear that in this scenario the Leopard disk is more like a Windows boot disk to get the system running and then copies from the Time Machine backup. In effect you bring the bad data with you if the bad files were in the Time Machine backup. Next step; test if the installer will prompt for the version or date of Time Machine backup to restore. Next weekend.