How do you clone a working system

[grc]

I have a vanilla system originally installed from iAtkos5i and subsequently patched up to 10.5.6.

 

I installed on to a 160GB drive, split in two partitions. Boot and Spare.

 

The iAtkos originally went on to 'Boot' partition. The bootloader shows both partitions as bootable options. When I was going to run Software Update to go to 10.5.6, I used CarbonCopyCloner to clone my 'Boot' partition into 'Spare'. I then booted from 'Spare' and ran software update. This worked great, updated to 10.5.6. I then installed all the major apps I want to use so I'm at a good starting point. I thought then I'd clone back to 'Boot' again so I ran CCC to clone 'Spare' back to 'Boot'

 

The system would not boot afterwards at all. To resolve it, I had to re-install iAtkos5i to 'Boot' partition, then I could use the bootloader to specify a boot from 'Spare' again at startup time.

 

A couple of questions I guess - what's the preffered way to clone working boot partitions from one disk to another, preserving EFI and all the bootloader stuff. Say I wanted to clone my working system, from this 80GB 'Spare' partition on to a whole new 500GB empty disk - what would be the procedure?

 

Thanks for reading, and for all the other help I've gotten from reading these forums.

 

Gary

[iamhappy]

Thats my way to make backups (i do this once in a while to get the speed back like a fresh install)

 

* SuperDuper! copy using "All Files" to Backup

 

* When this is done -> Chameleon Installer --> choose the Backup drive and install

 

Thats it

 

Now i select the backup at the "Boot Device Selection" (in my Case F11 after restart)

 

Boot from Backup, and SuperDuper copy "All Files" back to my "main" OSX partition. Again install Chameleon, this time of course to the "main" partition....

 

Now boottime is again @ 20-25 sec

 

ps: the only thing that "doesn't get copied", (dont ask me why) are the Little Snitch Rules. I have to export them, then import again on the cloned drive. Everything else works as before.

 

The system would not boot afterwards at all. To resolve it, I had to re-install iAtkos5i to 'Boot' partition, then I could use the bootloader to specify a boot from 'Spare' again at startup time.

 

Made this mistake too until i realized that i can "hijack" the bootloader from the DVD, boot to my OSX install where the bootloader was broken, and install the bootloader again