[joemac]

hi shirt pocket staff...sorry for the long first post.

i am new 2 mac last week. so of course new to unix, superduper and most things apple.
i read the 60 pg manual, the forums here and lots of other mac docs in the last few days...
so perhaps the answers to my questions have already been through my brain...but didn't stick.

intel macbook pro os 10.4.7...
smartdisk firelite 120gb firewire
downloaded superduper trial...
i will register tomorrow likely.
wanted to make a clean clone (is it called a clone?)

i followed the instructions and think i've made a clean copy of the mac hard drive as new and after the autoupdate for mac&tiger.

now i want to check for success...
--so it looks like i restart with option key and select the firewire drive? this will load the cloned copy and i'll be working from there?

--if i open any applications or files, i expect they will be a little slower running from the firewire...
but if i made any changes to these files while using them what happens?
or if i down load applicaitons or surf....all from the clone what happens to it?
does it change in any way?

--also if i update the cloned copy after a day or a few days, how long will this take.
i understand times may vary based on volume of changes...
but lets say i've added 500mb of photos, a few bookmarks and an application or 2...?

it took over an hour to complete the first clone which was about 20gb of 'new mac' drive stuff.

--i'm complusive on my pcs at backing up files
and my understanding on the mac is i should use .mac, another hard drive or other storage media for file back ups...
is that best even while using superduper?

--i did occasionally need to use the system restore feature of winxp,
taking my drive back to a previous state (usually related to a software download that didn't work as expected)...
super duper doesn't make indexed backups that allow this does it?
i'd need to rotate 2 ext hard drives each with clones to do this, correct?

i've read that restoring, repairing, recovering with the new mac os is easier than winxp
but i'm not ready to give up the old habits of multiple recovery options...
but any easier game plan is appreciated...

again thanks for answering my newbie questions...

the download and initial backup process went smoothly and was pretty simple...

regards
joemac