Restoring main hard drive
 

I own an aluminum iMac w/500 gb hard drive. The HD is acting funny, and I'm not sure if it's going bad or whether it's the result of a power surge. When I boot up, I get the "kernel panic" screen ("You need to restart your computer" etc); yet, when I boot up from my SuperDuper backup, I can see the contents of this HD and write to it.

So I want to try to restore this drive before I have it replaced. The instructions in the SuperDuper User's Guide are very minimal, and I'm not sure I understand them entirely. Page 26 states:
"Restoring files from a backup:
"Recovering a single file - or a few files - is quite easy. Just attach the external drive or mount the backup image, and drag the file back to the proper location using the Finder.
"That's all there is to it!"

So, if I want to restore my main hard drive, all I have to do is:
1) Open Finder.
2) Click on my HD backup, and
3) Drag it to my "Macintosh HD" icon?
Is that really all I have to do??? Please confirm; thanks.

No, that's for a single file or a few files. To recover the whole thing, run SuperDuper! and "Backup - all files" using Smart Update back to the original drive.

OK, I've now tried that, but the "Macintosh HD" icon under "Copy to" is grayed out, which probably isn't good.

I've already looked into reinstalling Leopard with an "archive and install", but it wouldn't let me. It seems to let me perform an "erase and install." If I do that, and then install SuperDuper, could I then do "Backup - all files" using Smart Update back to the original drive?

Are you sure you're running from the backup, Estuary? Doesn't sound like it...

I believe I am. When I boot up while holding down the Option key, I'm presented two choices: Macintosh HD and iMac HD Backup. I choose the backup (if I choose Macintosh HD, I get the "kernel panic" screen). When Leopard finishes loading, I get the following warning:

"Disk Repair
"The Disk "Macintosh HD" was not repairable by this computer. It is being made available to you with limited functionality. You must backup your data and reformat this disk as soon as possible."

And I've just tried recovering the whole drive using "Backup - all files" and, again, Macintosh HD is grayed out as a choice for "copy to."

Hm. Perhaps the internal disk is read only. Try erasing it with Disk Utility, *then* restore.

OK, I tried that, and SuperDuper told me the restore was successful, including the ability to boot. But when I rebooted from the main HD, I got the "kernel panic" screen. So it looks like a hardware problem. I'm thinking of bringing the machine into the Apple store for servicing. If anyone has any ideas before I do that, I'd love to hear them.

But no kernel panic when you're running from the backup drive. Hm. It's possible that the internal drive is causing continued problems, and corruption there is what's generating the panic. Weird, though.

So if it's corruption, do you think reinstalling Leopard might work?

No: I mean corruption of the drive that's occurring during or after copying.

I've just picked up my iMac from Apple repair. It was a hard drive failure. They replaced the drive, I booted from my backup and restored. 90 minutes later, it's as if there was never a problem.

Thank you, SuperDuper!!! To anyone reading this who's considering buying SuperDuper, do not hesitate! I am in no way a techie; SuperDuper was easy to set up, Dave's support is amazing, and the entire experience far exceeded my expectations.

Hey, great: it defintely seemed like there was something quite wrong with the old drive. Glad you're all restored!

So, my computer's working fine now, and I've resumed automated backups using SuperDuper! The problem is, when I open SD, I get a message:

"SuperDuper! cannot find target volume "Macintosh HD". Please attach or mount the volume named "Macintosh HD." If you can't find this volume, or it was erased outside SuperDuper!, click Cancel."

Since I'm now backing up from the computer's internal hard drive, which Finder says is named Macintosh HD, SD must have assigned some special identifier to the computer's old internal hard drive.

How can I made SD stop giving me this message?

Start SD!, dismiss the message, choose the proper drive(s) and quit.