Duplicating a laptop onto DVDs

[John Goodman]

I am going to give my laptop to my daughter who needs it asap. I do not have a new laptop to replace it so I cannot "clone" the old data to anything. I cannot dupe it to another hard drive because I'm currently in my Kauai house and there are no computer stores that sell hard drives on the island. Mail order is too slow to meet my deadline.

I have read that CCC can clone to a Disk Image, and then you can break up the disk image onto multiple DVDs. Any tips on how to split the disk image onto the DVDs? Or does somebody know a better solution?

John Goodman

[Chris Waldrip]

You're going to need plenty of disk space first and foremost. The disk image is going to be at least as big as all your current data if you want to clone all of the data.

So say you have an 80GB drive, and 60GB of data - you'll need a total of more than 60GB of free space.

My suggestion is that you backup your home folder. This should contain all the preferences, music, movies, documents, and other files and settings that you use. It won't include applications, but then you most likely have the installers for them (or can re-download them from the internet in the case of shareware). Since their settings and perferences are saved in your home folder you won't have to reset them.

But, just like the first statement - you'll need at least as much free space as your home directory is large. So if the above 80GB drive has 20GB of space, and your home folder is 30GB... you'll need to delete at least 10GB of space to make room for the disk image.

Your best bet to backup your home folder is to simply insert a blank DVD, let the Finder mount it, and start burning DVDs (drag over files until the disc is full and then burn and eject the disc). This also requires some free space (about 5GB free), but is probably the safest bet if all you have is your laptop's drive and blank DVDs.

The best solution is an external hard drive (either USB2.0 or Firewire 400 or 800). You can buy drives from the likes of Weibetech and LaCie. But I prefer to buy the case and the drive seperately. For about $125 I've got a 300GB FireWire 400 drive that I just put together (42� a megabyte is a pretty good price).

[John Goodman]

The best solution is an external hard drive (either USB2.0 or Firewire 400 or 800). You can buy drives from the likes of Weibetech and LaCie. But I prefer to buy the case and the drive seperately. For about $125 I've got a 300GB FireWire 400 drive that I just put together (42� a megabyte is a pretty good price).


Chris, I know that an external is the best bet, and I already have one. BUT, it seems that it didn't survive my last plane trip. It was in my checked baggage.
Time is my big issue and there are no hard drives under $300 on the island (70 gigs at Radio Shack). I've already started burning everything to DVDs and the last obstacle is cloning the system stuff to a size that will fit on one DVD. I do not have any of the original install discs with me (they're in Georgia) so I have to be able to create my hard drive on a new computer that I will buy in Honolulu AFTER I give up my laptop.
I absolutely hate OSX! I wish I'd never left 9.2.  Back then you could drag and drop all the stuff you needed. These new invisible files suck.
John

[Richard Lyon]

Well....... this might or might not help. Superduper (backup utility) won't duplicate directly onto DVD, but it will duplicate to a disk image. So if you have lots of free hard drive space, you could create a disk image, then somehow span it across multiple DVD's.

Or, another option would be an Ipod. Buy one of the big ipods from a big box store, backup your mac to it, return home, restore, delete data off ipod and return it to the store. Not 100% ethical, but you do what you gotta do. (And you can probably find an ipod somewhere on that island for sale). The biggest drawback here is the large outlay of cash, even if for a temporary time.

I wish I could offer better suggestions. Good luck!

[John Goodman]

OK, I think I've got this figured out. Almost everything can be copied to DVDs without any problems. Carbon Copy Cloner can copy the stuff that has to be cloned to a disk image, but I haven't figured out a way to split a large disk image to fit multiple DVDs. However, I can make everything fit on one DVD if I get rid of the iTunes & iPhoto files in the Library.

The obvious question is can I burn the iTunes & iPhoto files to a DVD, and then trash them from my Library without loosing something? Will dragging the files to the new Library on the new computer later on restore the files? Or is there some step I have to go through to properly export them?

John

[Chris Waldrip]

In iTunes simply make a new playlist and copy all of your music into it. Then go to iTunes' preferences and change the disc format to Data CD in the Advanced section. Lastly select Burn Playlist from the file menu. When the first disc is full it will eject it and ask for another until everything has been burned to disc.

For iPhoto select the Library, then choose Burn from the Share menu. I believe that this will let you span across multiple discs as its burning. But I'm not 100% sure of that.

[John Goodman]

Well, I finally got it done. There is a trick to all this that I'd like to share. Most stuff you can just copy to DVDs and it's no problem. The stuff you have to clone is doable on DVDs and here's how.
Chris's suggestions on copying iPhoto & iTunes works. After making copies, you need to delete them from your user library. I'll get to the reason in a moment. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to do the cloning. Step one is to use the Disk Utility to make a new disk image the size of a DVD. Step two is to open CCC and select the original hard drive. Then you need to delete most of the files near the bottom so that what's left will fit. Applications can be a big one so I selectively "trimmed" it down earlier keeping only the Apps I knew would act up by being moved.
Set the disk image as the target and start cloning. If the disk image fills up you will get an error message and the process stops; but everything copies except the last file. Delete the last file from the disk image and close the image. Move it off the desktop. Make another image, and repeat the process from the last file. It works great until you get down to the Users folder. Guess what's in there? Your user desktop, which contains a disk image the size of ... the disk image. The best way to deal with it is to make a smaller disk image for the Users folder cloning. It's a pain but it's all doable. Remember the iPhoto & iTunes files? That's the reason you have to get them out of there. Otherwise you'll never get the user files copied.
Toast Titanium 6 worked great by using the disk copy feature. Use the Advanced side bar to select the second choice: Image File. You will get a button that asks you to select the image file. Select the appropriate file, then a Mount button pops up. Click it and the image of a DVD will appear on the desktop but not much happens in the Toast window. Click copy and it's done.
The final trick is that you need to use CCC again to move the files to the new hard drive from the DVDs so the invisible stuff goes. An external hard drive is definitely the better way to go but this works if you need it.
John