Backup without erasing?

[jefferis]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Hm. OK. I've done this for years, on many OS release, and haven't seen a problem.

If anyone remembers what this might be, please let me know.

Here is one report:Tuesday, January 11 2005 @ 03:00 AM PST
Mac OS X 10.3.7: Secondary volume booting problems
Mac OS X 10.3.7 may not properly boot when it is installed on a drive that is secondary at the time of installation. In other words, for some users, when Mac OS X 10.3.7 is installed to a volume other than the current boot volume, the secondary drive will be non-bootable.

The most typical instances of this issue involve external FireWire drives that are used as backup or auxiliary boot volumes. When such drives receive an update to Mac OS X 10.3.7 while the user is booted from another volume -- such as the Mac's internal hard drive -- they may fail as boot volumes.

One intriguing theory on what might be causing the issue to occur is the presence of a script in MacOSXUpdateCombo10.3.7.pkg/Contents/Resources (also contained in the "delta" version of the Mac OS X 10.3.7 updater) called 'RunAtStartupm' which refers to a folder in /System called 'InstallAtStartup.'

Based on reports from MacFixIt reader Mike Barron and others, it appears that this script does as its name implies: installs additional items on the boot drive during that drive's startup process.

Thus it follows that the Mac OS X 10.3.7 updater fails when installed to a secondary drive, because the 'InstallAtStartup' items would be placed on the wrong drive and would never get installed.

Many users have had success working around this issue by first installing Mac OS X 10.3.7 on their currently active boot drive, then using a utility like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to replicate the initial installation on the secondary drive.

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?...50110174933755
SATA drive problems Last Wednesday we noted reports of an issue where volumes on internal, non-boot SATA drives will not mount from a cold boot under OS X 10.3.7 (and 10.3.6, according to some readers), but will mount after a restart. We continue to receive sporadic reports of issues with 2nd internal SATA drives. Daryl Klein writes:

"I recently added a Seagate 120GB SATA drive into my G5 dual-2Ghz three months ago. I had at that time OSX 10.3.6, and noticed that copying massive amounts of files was transfering a tad slower than usual. After installing OSX 10.3.7 through the Software Update...while trying to [copy] 1-5MB files off the drive, it started having a massive coronary trying to copy. The copying of about 200 files took 9 hours, after freezing and rebooting 45 times. The files would start to transfer, hesitate, transfer extremely slow again, then freeze. Hard rebooting each time allowed me to get most of it. I checked the disk with Disk Utility, and it said the drive was fine. But Apple Diagnostics [CD] stated there was some sort of I/O problem.
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?...+firewire+boot