Hold my hand: Recovering from failed HD
 

I am sure I am over thinking this and surely over panic'd on this even though the manual tells me to not panic!

The situation is that the internal drive in my 20" iMac died. I took the unit into Apple and they replaced the drive. The machine has been returned to me with a loaded copy of OS X.

I've been using an external USB drive and SuperDuper for my daily backup. Because the drive is USB I can not boot directly from it but rather will have to boot from my OS X install DVD.

My question is, once I boot the machine with the DVD and then choose the Disk Utility / Recover option do I check the option to "Erase Destination" or will the recover wipe out/update/modify the existing OS X installation that is on the new hard drive?

Is there anything else that I need to do to complete the recover?

Thanks!
Rod

It'll definitely wipe out the existing OSX installation, yes -- you'll want to use erase. But, if you've done a "Backup - all files", that's OK, because the backup has the OS on it...

Great, thanks! I'll take a shot at it this evening.

SuperDuper was configured to backup all files. My copy is a licensed copy and luckily I got the external USB drive at Christmas. It's all about timing, isn't it?

Rod

You're a lucky guy, Rod!

An update: I booted my iMac from my OS X Install DVD. I chose Disk Utility from the menu, and then selected the Restore tab. I selected my USB drive as the source disk, and chose "Macintosh HD" as the destination drive. I checked the box to "Erase Destination."

I crossed my fingers and told it to start. It was SLOW, but I expected that as my drive is a USB and not Firewire. I checked in on it periodically and after a couple of hours it was about 1/3rd of the way complete. Off to bed I went.

This morning just before leaving for the office I checked in on it again. It appears the restored completed and no error messages are on the screen. I left the computer just as it is and will shut it down and start it up properly tonight.

Is there anything I need to do on first boot, or just power it up?

Thanks!

Just power it up!