Feb 15, '07 07:30:01AM • Contributed by: louisxv11
Reporting this crisis again on the forum, I was advised to buy Disk Warrior for what might be a once-in-a-lifetime problem, or else I should back up my data and re-install everything. With help again from Dr Smoke, I made my firewire disk bootable for Intel Macbooks (must be partitioned with the GUID option selected), and searched the forums for a way to get going again without forking out $100 for Disk Warrior. Learning a little from each of several other posts, I put together the following solution which is easy to execute, and the time consuming elements can be left to run at night or when away from the computer. You may see possible shortcuts as you read through to make it even simpler.
Here's a summary of my solution: I cloned everything to an external hard drive, made sure it worked as expected, then erased the internal drive and cloned everything back. Read on if you'd like a more-detailed step-by-step tutorial...
[robg adds: What follows will seem simple and obvious to those who have cloned and restored systems before. But for those who haven't, it may provide some useful tips...]
Here are all the steps I used to clone and restore my system:
- I downloaded two disk cloning programs -- Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper (which I preferred).
- I partitioned my Firewire disk in two (32GB and 8GB) for future convenience, and zeroed the disk after Dr Smoke's advice.
- I installed the basic OS X package onto my 8GB Firewire 2 partition using only Install (DVD) disk one, which takes up less than five gigabytes. (In Setup, one chooses to not install the additional programs -- iPhoto, etc.). I checked that I could boot from it and that it was healthy by running "verify disk" when booted from the internal drive.
- While booted from my internal drive, I cloned Firewire 2 onto Firewire 1 (the 32GB partition). I verified the disk (no problems), then booted from it and assured myself that I had a fully working copy of OS X.
- I booted from Firewire 1 and used Migration Assistant to import everything -- files, programs, the lot -- from my internal drive with the node structure problem. My FireWire disk was now using 25GB; the same as my internal drive. It now had two users, both shown as administrators. I booted to my newly-imported user ID -- the original one that was on my internal drive. The only problem reported by Migration Assistant was that Missing Synch for Palm might need to be re-installed. This would not be surprising, given what it does. Later when all was done, I discovered that the migrated programs had been placed in a folder on my desktop, so I opened it and moved them all into the normal Applications folder created by my new basic install. (Some programs don't like running from anywhere other than the Applications folder.)
- I worked from Firewire 1 for a day, trying out every program to make sure everything was working normally. One thing I noticed was that iTunes seemed to import as the original Tiger 10.4.6 version, so I needed to install the update to 7.02 which I had kept in my download folder. I also tried to install the OS X update to 10.4.8, but a dialog informed me that I could not do that on this (external) disk. I don't know why, but later on I updated to 10.4.8 overnight using Mac Update.
- Make sure all your data has been backed up somewhere, and that there is nothing of value on your internal disk. Take a deep breath, and wipe it! I did this using Disk Utility (from Firewire 1), and took the chance to partition my hard drive into 32GB, 18GB and 6GB partitions. I chose GUID partitioning and zeroed the disk. No going back!
- I booted from Firewire 2 and installed SuperDuper. Then, from Firewire 2, I cloned Firewire 1 onto my new 32gb internal partition. (SuperDuper does not call it cloning but rather copying all files.) It booted and works fine, and I then verified the disk when booted from one of the FireWire partitions and all was well. Phew! I ran sofware Update and it offered to update Java, OS X for Intel, Garageband and Quicktime.
Note: There may be a few things to reinstall, or some prefs to reset, but in general this method worked well. I mentioned having to re-update iTunes.I also had to reset the Quicksilver's prefs, and maybe I will yet come across something needing to tweaked again. FireFox did not run well, so I re-installed it, but Microsoft Office 2004 worked flawlessly.
I share this in appreciation for the help of Dr Smoke and others who answered my questions, and for those whose posts were helpful to read, and for the benefit of others who may find them selves in the same predicament as me. And, oh yes, the trouble was not enough to cause me to go back to that other OS!
