[visiondr]

My Mac Mini is giving me a grey screen - no "spinning gears" on grey background - just grey and frozen there with the CPU (and the fan) ramping up to full speed. To make matters worse, I can't startup from my system disk or from any other CD/DVD because the computer won't accept the disk in the drive - it just nudges it out. I've tried all the usual startup keyboard sequences, to no effect. Fortunately I have religiously backed up my Mac via SuperDuper to an external Firewire drive. Unfortunately, this isn't a bootable backup, it is a disc image and there isn't room to restore back to that same drive on its other existing partition. Now, I will have a friend's Firewire drive to use to facilitate a swap of data via my wife's MacBook. Here's what I propose to do. Can you tell me if there's anything I'm missing?

1) physically connect the MacBook, Firewire drive A (with OSX disc image), and Firewire drive B (blank and formatted "Apple Partition Map") - I understand Firewire drives can be daisy chained together.

2) Restore from Firewire drive A to Firewire drive B

3) connect Firewire drive B to Mac Mini and attempt to start Mini via drive B (option key held down to force Mini to search for an alternative boot source)

4) run Disk Utility to determine physical and software health of Mini HD. Attempt to repair Mini HD system.

5) If Mini HD is physically sound (no damage), but System is not repairable, then reformat Mini HD.

6) if Mini starts up from Firewire drive B and operates normally, then use Super Duper to copy files from drive B to Mini. Restart Mini on its own.

7) If Mini operates normally on its own, run Disc Utility on Mini HD to test/repair.

8) Backup Mini to Firewire drive A - this time no nore disk images!

So, do you think this might work?

Thank you.

Ron