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ramblinwreck001 06-15-2009 05:09 PM

question about use of restore function
 
Hi,

I purchased SuperDuper about a year ago and have been making full backups ("Backup – all files") on a regular basis, with the hope that I'll never need to try the restore function. :)

Having said that, I took a look at the Users Guide and there's one thing I'm not clear on (I'm probably just not looking in the right places).

It seems the instructions assume (?) that the restore will always be on the same physical drive that was backed up (e.g. drive crashed -> data lost -> restore on same drive).

How do you deal with catastrophic drive failure (or theft)? Lets say I've got a full backup sitting on a drive off-site, and my home machine is stolen (or gets flooded, burned, etc). So I purchase a new machine (new hardware), and I bring home my off-site drive that has a full SuperDuper backup of the old machine on it. What is the best way to proceed at this point?

I'm thinking I can't just do a plain vanilla SuperDuper restore because the new hardware (drive, I/O devices, etc) are different. In this event, what is the proper procedure to restore the new machine to be (from an applications + user data perspective) as close to the old machine as possible?

Do I use the Mac (new machine's) built in restore function? Or do I just connect up the drive with a firewire cable and drag over some folders manually (which ones?). I'm guessing I would need to reinstall applications manually (I have all my old registration keys so that wouldn't be a problem).

BTW - SuperDuper has worked flawlessly for me for backups ever since I purchased it. Great product, and I hope I never have to use the restore function, but nonetheless I thought I should try to understand how to use it in case I need it!

Thanks - ramblinwreck001

ramblinwreck001 06-15-2009 05:39 PM

after further reading..
 
It seems that (in my hypothetical catastrophic loss/theft scenario) you could use the new machine's Migration Assistant asisstant and point it to the SD clone to pull all the data from the migration. Is that correct?

If so, is there some documentation on doing this. For example, I found instances of folks having problems if they didn't use the Migration Assistant on the initial boot of the new machine, but rather launched it manually after using the new machine for some time.

I guess it would be the same procedure for a drive replacement in an existing machine (new drive -> new Leopard install -> on first boot run M.A. and point it to SD clone). (?)

Thanks
Chris

chris_johnsen 06-15-2009 11:29 PM

The "initial boot" migration is special in that it has a better chance or migrating everything with as few changes as possible. Migrations can be done after that, but they may not work as well (among other things, a later migration may not be able to assign the same numeric user ID to an account as was used in the original system).

If the machine has already been through its first boot, you can reinstall the OS to the internal drive to re-enable the "initial boot" prompting and migration.

During the initial boot you will be prompted for various stuff like time zone, Internet connection, and whether you have an previous Mac from which you would like to copy your data. This last item is the "initial boot migration" option. Instead of connecting another Mac (booted into FireWire Target Disk Mode), just connect the backup made by SuperDuper! (target disk mode makes the other machine look pretty much like a FireWire disk, your SuperDuper! backup disk will function in the same manner).

If you are just replacing an internal disk (keeping the rest of the hardware the same), there is no need to go through a clean install and migration. Instead, boot off the backup and use SuperDuper! to copy it (the backup) to the new drive. If you have an convenient external adapter, you can even do the copy before physically swapping the old internal disk and the new internal disk (unless your internal disk has failed in a way that prevents operation of the system as a whole (like it did for me)).


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