New User - Restore Question

[teasip]

New Mac convert and thus SD convert from Acronis TrueImage. I have been able to successfully back up my drive to a 120MB WD FW/USB combo ext. drive. Yesterday I attempted to restore the backup using disk utility and was approximately 10% into the process when I received a kernal error which was duplicated when I tried again. HD incompatability? I can pull files off the drive and boot from the drive. Why was I not able to restore the HD image? Ideas?

[dnanian]

Kernel error meaning a kernel panic when booted from the OSX install CD?

What I'd try, at least to start, is mounting the image with File > Open Image..., then restoring volume-to-volume rather than image-to-volume. See if that works...

If not, it's quite possible that the drive uses a chipset that's not compatible, but it's difficult to say without the panic log.

[teasip]

Dave, thanks for the quick response. I had a backup to the ext. drive (as performed via the basic backup window in SD). I connected the firewire cable, saw the ext. disc mount, then went to Disk Utility and selected the ext. HD image, then clicked restore. It started the restore and as previously noted probably got about 10% into the process when it pulled up a gray, checkerboard appearing window on the screen saying that I needed to restart the computer by pressing the power button. I'll try your suggestion here momentarily.

[teasip]

OK, I go to Open Disk Image, select the ext. HD, and at that point I'm not allowed to select the "Open" button.

[dnanian]

Well, you wouldn't want to choose the destination. Rather you want to mount the image file. Since you're already running full OSX, you can simply double click the image file to mount it.

Otherwise, you'll choose the image in File > Open Image.

Also, please send me a copy of /Library/Logs/panic.log (to the support email address). I might be able to help you determine what's wrong with your low-level environment.

[teasip]

I guess I'm confusing the matter. I'm attempting to select the backed up file on the ext. drive whenever I select the "drive to open". Whenever this is selected it opens another window that has the heading of "select image to attach". This is where I would anticipate the OS seeing the backed up image so that I could select it.

[teasip]

OK, I think I have it. Disk image on ext. HD. Reboot (or boot if trying to restore) and hold down "option" key. Select external HD as boot drive. Once booted up, open SD and instead of the typical Mac HD to ext. HD backup do the opposite, backup the ext. drive to the Mac HD and your set. I apologize for any confusion. As much as I think I know Windows like the back of my hand I'm still getting used to the Mac OS. Thank you for your assistance.

[dnanian]

Right -- that assumes you're writing directly to the external, which is what we suggest. But this doesn't explain the kernel panic you experienced...