Copy mac os x to external (firewire) hard drive

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Hey,

I have an imac g3 with a 30gb hd running tiger, and is it possible to move tiger to a 30gb external firewire hard drive??

I dont have it yet but im buying one soon and ive never dealt with (external) hard drives before.

IS it possible???

what about carbon copy cloner or whatever its called?
Also,
could i change the size of the mac os part of the hard drive in case the size of my external hard drive is a little tiny bit under 30g?

Thanks to all.
Tanner.
 
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Yes, Carbon Copy Cloner will clone your HD to an external HD. You can choose what to copy over, but I don't think there's an option to make it smaller. But as long as your internal HD isn't 100% full, a 30gb external should work fine.
 
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I used SuperDuper to clone my hard drive to an external drive.
 
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Tanner31593
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So,
could i just copy over all the mac os x files, which are what, like 6 or 7 gig or something, onto say a 15g hard drive, and have like 8gig free space?
Sorry, im new the external hard drive/dvd drive,
i had no idea you could just stick any old hard drive into the right enclosure and have yourself an external hard drive until yesterday.

What else has changed since 1999?
hahaha.
 
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Tanner31593
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lol.

ok a serious question,

my plan is to copy tiger from the 30gig internal to a 30gig external,
but i then want to copy the 30gig internal to a 60gig external,
how would that work as far as the size of it??
like would it be the same as having a 60gig hard drive with a normal instalation of tiger ?
i guess what im trying to say is when you clone a hard drive to another external hard drive with a bigger size (in this case, a 30gig to a 60gig), am i stuck with the exact size as the internal drive (30gig), or does it clone mac os and then the rest of the drive is free space (so i would have more than 30gig free space)????


My apologies again for not having a clue as to what im talking about.
 

bobtomay

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The file sizes do not change from one drive to another. Yes, the rest would be free space.
 
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ok ONE last question and im set.

can you clone from an external drive to an internal drive?????
wow, that sounds stupid.
assuming that the internal drive is empty.

my bottom line is that i want to clone my way to having tiger on my 60gig hd which is currently INSIDE my imac g3 and has 10.2.8 on it,
but i really dont want to have to take the 60gig drive out,
but i may have to,
but im freaked out because ive never taken apart a mac before and it doesnt look easy.
 
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Yes, I shall be doing that for my MacBook when my new hard drive arrives - tomorrow (hopefully).

SuperDuper can make the external drive bootable, as long as it is Firewire. I have read elsewhere that it works for USB2 also, but I am not sure that is correct. Perhaps someone here confirm/clarify?
 

bobtomay

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Have been looking at OWC drive enclosures - am fairly new to the Mac side, but their info so far seems pretty reliable

According to OWC's info - when you have a proper, supported OS installed on the external drive:
FW800 - All Apple models equipped with this port support booting this drive
FW400 - All FW equipped Apple models since 2001 support booting this drive
USB 2.0 - Apple officially supports booting from this drive with all Intel based models (there is unofficial support for some PowerPC models and OWC will not support PowerPC boot)

If you can boot from a drive, with the proper software, you should be able to clone it to any other drive it can see. My only concern (here is my "other" side showing since I don't know about Mac's) - I "assume" OS X uses a MBR to boot any drive? If so merely copying files from one drive to another would not make it bootable, and do not know if cloning would take care of this or not. Have never cloned a drive, with windows, this is just not a good idea if your install is over a year old in my experience.

Someone else on this?
 
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SuperDuper (SD) can make the cloned drive bootable - I have already done that.

I am just copying the data from a USB drive prior to seeing if SD can clone and make it bootable.

I clone hard drives (including RAID0) on a regular basis in Windows wih no problems with booting.

[EDIT: Hard Drive cloned to USB drive, and it's bootable, as I am using it as I type.]
 

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