Question about cloning
 

Hi folks,

I have bought a larger drive to use as my main boot drive in a Mac G5. My drive currently has 4 partitions and I want to clone them to the new drive. I have found SuperDuper and CopyCatX which both appear to give me this kind of functionality.

Reading the SuperDuper pdf, I see a screenshot which says that all files will be copied except certain "temporary and system-specific files that Apple recommends excluding."

Is this a disadvantage? I want an exact copy of my system drive so that I can continue working as before with minimal problems. I have lots of music software with authorisations and also would prefer not to lose these.

Is SuperDuper the magical app I am looking for?
Any help would be most appreciated.....

Regards - Colin

Authorizations, if specific to the hard disk or its structure, won't get copied, Colin -- or rather, while we'll copy them, they probably won't work on the new drive. This has nothing to do with the "temporary and system-specific files" (which are things like temporary files and VM swap files that have no meaning across a boot), but because of the nature of much of this copy protection.

CopyCatX, since it copies at a very low level, might allow these authorizations to survive... I honestly don't know.

You can *try* with SuperDuper! for free, of course, because you can do a full copy without registering.

Thanks for the swift reply Dave! (You guys are well-known for this kind of support! :) )
I understand that certain authorisations rely on a "profile" built on hard drive or ethernet specs so I expect to re-authorise some apps.

I'll certainly give SuperDuper! a try....

Thanks and regards
Colin

Happy to help, Colin. Let us know how it works!

To the SuperDuper team:

I finally got around to cloning 2 drives (5 partitions) using SuperDuper. All I can say is: :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

What a pleasure!! I was so impressed, I registered immediately. (I always pay for software that I use....) Everything worked perfectly, first time.

So, thanks so much and I'll now look into the other options of the app.

Regards - Colin

Hey, glad to hear you finally got started, Colin. Make it a habit! :-)