selective cloning.

[simian_warthog]

Hi
I have a mac mini. It has about 80gb space I think.
I had it all set up the way I like it.
Some time ago I ran out of space with large numbers of photos, so I cloned it to an external 500gb seagate drive using SuperDuper. No problems at all.
Now the trouble starts....
I bought a copy of Windows XP.
I had to wipe the original drive in order to partition the mini the correct way and load windows, so I designated the Seagate as the startup drive.
Now I want to clone my Seagate drive back to the original drive, but there is now too much stuff to fit everything on the mini.
I need to clone EVERYTHING EXCEPT the photos, which are about 200Gb.
Can anyone tell me how to do this? I dont really care if I lose XP. I just want my Mac Mini back the way it was.
Thanks for reading this, double thanks for answering!

[dnanian]

The User's guide explains how to exclude files from a backup -- have a chance to look there?

[simian_warthog]

Thanks Dave. I didnt know there was even a users guide, but I got there in the end, and it worked....HOWEVER
Now the Icon of both hard drives doesnt show up.
Although I can see them in Super Duper, I cannot see them on the desktop...
Any suggestions?

[dnanian]

Is that option turned off in Finder's preferences?

[simian_warthog]

Dave
No the option is checked in finder.
Researching this issue, I find it is fairly common, and the relationship with your software seems entirely coincidental. Apple has never come up with a fix for this, neither do they seem to even acknowledge the problem. I cannot find it in any search Ive tried on the apple website.
I can no longer see the startup disk OR the external disk as they should be, an icon near the top right of the screen. Neither do they show up anywhere else.
EXCEPT they appear as options in superduper, and their functionality appears to be unchanged in sd..
It is, however, impossible to locate them to designate a library manually in Iphoto, which means, for me, I still need to startup using my external drive.
I have found various temporary fixes on the net, all of them way above my level of competence, and all said to revert after computer restart anyway.

If anyone here has any knowledge of this, I suppose it is off topic, but I would love to know how to get my hard drives back!

[dnanian]

I assume you've tried turning on invisible items with one of the programs that provides that functionality?