Newbie Restore Question

[davpel]

I have just incorporated SuperDuper into my daily routine. I have a 750GB external drive which I was using exclusively for Time Machine. Following the instructions in the FAQ, I used SD with Smart Update to clone the internal drive of my Mini to the external drive. Thereafter, I successfully booted to the external drive using the SD-created image.

My question is this: in the event that my Mini's internal drive dies and I need to boot from the external and then restore my data to a new drive in the Mini using Disk Utility, my only option appears to be restoring the entire contents of the external drive (i.e. the SD image, plus the TM backup data). The problem is that with both the SD image and the TM on that drive, it would be way to large to restore to the Mini. Right now the data size on the external drive is close to 550 gigs due to the TM backups.

Am I missing something here? Or do I have to start my backup scheme all over, reformat the external drive, create two partitions (one for SD and one for TM). If this IS necessary, it seems contrary to the instructions in the FAQ for using both TM and SD on the same drive.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

[dnanian]

You'd use SD!'s "Restore" script, which doesn't copy the Time Machine backups back to the internal drive.

[davpel]

Originally Posted by dnanian

You'd use SD!'s "Restore" script, which doesn't copy the Time Machine backups back to the internal drive.

Thanks. But where would I find this script? The only one I can find in the AppSupport folder is "Restore All Files." Is this the one you are referring to? Also, the user guide only discusses copy scripts. How does one execute a restore script in conjunction with disk utility?

Sorry if these questions are too basic. I did a search but couldn't find the specific answer. It might be really helpful to add specific instructions for this into the FAQ covering SD/TM.

[dnanian]

My apologies: I missed the bit about Disk Utility. You can't do it with Disk Utility if there's Time Machine data on the drive and you don't have enough space to hold the whole thing.

But why would you? As you said, you're able to start up from the backup drive. As such, you would do so, then restore with SuperDuper! using the "Restore" copy script.

[davpel]

Originally Posted by dnanian

My apologies: I missed the bit about Disk Utility. You can't do it with Disk Utility if there's Time Machine data on the drive and you don't have enough space to hold the whole thing.

But why would you? As you said, you're able to start up from the backup drive. As such, you would do so, then restore with SuperDuper! using the "Restore" copy script.

Gotcha. So am I correct then in assuming that after starting up from the backup drive, rather than opening Disk Utility (or SD, for that matter), I simply click on the "Restore All Files" script icon included with with SD and the restore process will be initiated, without the TM files being copied over?

[dnanian]

No. You'll open SD!, choose the external as the source, the internal as the destination, and "Restore - all files" as the script. You'll want to use either Smart Update or Erase, then copy, then "Copy Now" as normal.