Nervous abt restore
 

Good afternoon Dave. First many thanks for fixing my user name. The fourms have been great help. But I'm a bit nervous about using SD restore.
Background: my 3.5 year old Imac G5 desktop died last week and trouble shooting said it was the logic board. Apple support confirmed. So its SD to the rescue. I have been doing a sand box back up every Friday evening since I got SD, to an Iomega external drive, with nightly backups to a flash drive of my data folder (mainly Quicken data and Excel speadsheets, and a couple of others, FWIW). Now that the new Imac has arrived I'm going to use the back up drive to get the files off it into the new computer and be back in business, thanks to SD.

I've read a goodly number of posts and your replies, but most seem to be either restoring data after a crash back onto the "crashed" computer, or getting data onto a Macbook. Which is the better course, migrate or restore. And the dead Imac was prior to the Intel chip, which the new Imac has, BTW. AND....can I get the data off the external drive without SD being installed on the new Imac? Haven't unpaced the new one yet, so I'm not in trouble. Yet!

Thanks again, Spencer

Wait: you've been making Sandboxes, and not backups, Spencer?

Been racking my feeble brain since I saw your reply, and for the life of me, I just can't picture or accurately rememberd what I was doing. After a quick look at the manual, I THINK I've been doing a smart update and not a sandbox. Pretty sure about that, but not 100% positive.

Smart Update is different, too: that's a copy method. You should have been doing "Backup - all files" with "Smart Update".

Can you start up from the backup?

Good morning sir. Some more background before I answer the question. Saw a couple of posts that suggested using migrate to get the files on the new computer from the backup, so I have not fired the new computer yet. I have attached the external drive to my Ibook G4 and while it loads, I have not been able to use it to boot up. Should I now connect it to the new Imac and see if I can boot from the external/backup drive? Thanks, Spencer

It's not going to work as a startup drive on the new Mac. Because we're sort of "after the fact" here, it's difficult for me to determine what you actually did on the drive.

If you look at the "Users" folder on the backup drive, do you have folders in there or do you have aliases?

Good afternoon and sorry to be so long getting back to you. Been at tire store solving new tire problems. Anyway.....the user folder on the back up drive contains aliases. There is also an Applications folder that has the applications in it. Spencer

If it contains aliases, it sounds to me like you made a Sandbox, not a backup. Your user data is not present.

Thanks Dave. Will ponder it some more and probably attempt to see what I can pull off the backup drive onto the Ibook. If that works, then I'll try the same with the new Imac. Really appreciate you time and help. Spencer

The basic problem is that it's not a backup drive if it only has a Sandbox on it, since a Sandbox is not a backup. Anything that was 'shared' was shared only with the data on the original drive. If you don't have the original drive, that data is likely lost.

Good morning and thanks again. Have finally concluded that the data is not on the backup drive. My sister reminded me this morning that she still has her older Imac, same model as mine, and working. Kids use it mainly. Can I I swap out the drives, i.e., take the drive out of the dead Imac and put it into her's? When I had the back off my dead one, I seemed that removal of the HD would be fairly straight forward. If that'll work, then I could install SD on her drive and do a full backup to the external. Once that's accomplished I'd the external drive to the new Imac and do a restore. And probably have to install Leopard on her Imac first as it had Tiger on it. Your thoughts? Spencer

Assuming the drive is fine and the computer is what's broken, yes, you can do that.

Thanks for the opinion. Will let you know how it turns out. Sister is out of town this week though>