Copy from external drive using upgrade assistant

I use super dupper to back up my internal drive to an external (thank goodness) as I have had to do several erase and reinstall lately. I thought that the upgrade assistant would then read my external like it was in target mode and copy over applications and documents but it never seems to recognize the drive. Whats the best way, short of reinstalling all of my apps from the original cds, to copy stuff back from my external drive?

Well that's the thing. I can't put my external drive into target mode and my fresh ly installed system on my machine does not see the external drive as a "bootable system" when I run the upgrade assistant (which starts after a fresh install). I have been able to clone the backup back to the internal drive but I always worry that is a system file gets corrupted and then cloned to my external drive, when I clone it back, I end up with another problem.
What I was trying to achieve - and maybe I can't, is to do a fresh install and have the assistant read my backup and copy my applications, documents and user files like when you buy a new Mac and transfer everything over from your old Mac.

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Hello!
I have repeatedly had the same problem with my computer and external drives. I have 2 hard drives (150 gig Western Digital in an external USB 2.0 enclosure, and a 160 gig Maxtor in an external Firewire and USB 2.0 enclosure) from which I often cannot copy. I've never had problems writing to the drives, but sometimes copying from them freezes.
I am a professional photographer and at any given time I'm working with far too many photos to fit on my laptop, yet I often need a particular project on my laptop so I can edit on the road. So I'm frequently moving projects to and from these drives.
This problem is not only with photos, however. When I recently reformatted my hard drive (too many old programs installed and it was faster to just start over from scratch to clean up the drive), I first made a backup onto each of these external drives. But when I went to copy my iTunes library back onto the laptop the copying would freeze. I'd relaunch Finder and start it again and it would freeze on the exact same file. I did all the disk utility first aid operations on my laptop drive and the external drives and it still happened.
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When this problem is happening it doesn't matter which drive I use or by which interface, it always freezes on the exact same files. But if I open that file from the external drive in the appropriate application it reads it just fine. It's only when I'm copying the file. And it doesn't matter if I copy 10 gigs at once or one file at a time, the same files freeze up. If this was just one file every 6 months I could probably deal with it, maybe even just delete it and move on (as I've done with MP3s, since I own all the CDs and can re-rip the song). But when in a set of 10 gigs even if I delete one photo it freezes up again another couple hundred megabytes later.
I'm baffled. I don't know what to do. The fact that it happens with multiple drives and multiple interfaces makes me think that it isn't a problem with the external enclosures or those drives. The only things in common are the exact files I'm transferring and the PowerBook.
I'm really frustrated because I've found a situation where my XP box performs better than my Mac, and I'm a little shaken up about it.
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12 PowerBook G4 1.3GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9) 1.25 gigs, combo drive, all updates installed except Tiger.

Yes, it's from a camera.
Again, the file is not corrupt. It can be read by my Windows XP computer, opened in Photoshop, and all the data is present. And if I remove the file that isn't copying and start over it freezes on another one later. And then another. And another.
I was forced to edit this wedding on my Windows box (with an older version of Photoshop - much slower than using CS2 on my Mac) because I have been unable to copy them to my PowerBook. This is incredibly frustrating. I've run all the disk utilities on my Mac and on the external drive. Nothing has improved the situation.
This question has not been answered. Please help!

Re-Creating Entire System on New Mac From External Drive Using Time Machine

Hi all -
Sorry if this question has been posted, I've look extensively and haven't seen it in this exact form, and I'm paranoid about this stuff. I also can't get a straight answer from Apple store employees.
I travel extensively with my MacBook, and when I'm home, I use Time Machine to back up all data from my MacBook onto an OWC external hard drive.
My question is, if my MacBook is ever lost, stolen, or damaged, and its internal hard drive is no longer accessible, and I have to buy a new MacBook, can I use Time Machine to access the backup data on my external drive and transfer it to my new MacBook's internal drive, thus re-creating my entire system on my new MacBook, including all settings, preferences, files, absolutely everything exactly as it was on my old MacBook?
This is by far the most likely need I'll ever have for this backup data, so if Time Machine doesn't help me to re-create my system exactly as it was on a new laptop, it's not of much use, and I'll switch backup software.
Related question - I read somewhere that Time Machine keeps making backups on your external hard drive until it runs out of space. Does that mean it literally uses up every bit of space on the external drive? Because overstuffing my old external drive is what killed it, and cost me a huge chunk of change and several weeks to get the recoverable data off the drive. Or does Time Machine know enough to stop backing up when there is only "X" amount of space left on the drive, and if so, at what amount of remaining free space does it stop?
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If you need to restore everything to a new Mac, you simply have your TM drive connected when you start up the new Mac and during the Welcome routine that runs when you start up a new Mac for the first time you will be presented with the option of migrating your user info, settings, files, applications, etc., from a Time Machine backup. You just click "Yes" and all your backed-up info will be transferred to your new Mac.
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Cant copy from External Drive get error Code 50

I have a Mac Pro and suddenly it won't copy files from any external drive, or write them either. The drives mount and show up in fiinder, and they start copying, but after about 30 seconds they error out with "The operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code 50).
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[email protected]

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
The purpose of this exercise is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party system modifications that load automatically at startup or login. Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Boot in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. The instructions provided by Apple are as follows:
Be sure your Mac is shut down.
Press the power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple icon and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).
Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including wireless networking on some Macs.
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Hello forum geniuses
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But some part of her may live on! You see, we had the hard drive taken out and put into one of those Hard drive shells, so it now works as an external hard drive. I plugged it into another iMac G5 and it works fine as an EXHD. However, I have been working with some very complex Final Cut pro projects so I ideally I want to boot the computer from my original hard disk to preserve all of my file paths. Since it is the original system disk, it should contain an installed copy of Mac OS 10.4 and the original system folder, and it should work as intended, correct?
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Thanks for the reply. A couple of things...
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Just so you know I've done some homework:
I've scoured other Logic forums and found these relevant threads that in the end did not solve the issue. They mostly seem to refer to Logic 8 which does not have this issue.
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Thread 2
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I just installed LP9 and all my loops and samples are on external drives. The drag and drop onto the browser method worked fine and I WAS given the option to move the files or not. The only exception to the above is Ultrabeat samples. They seem to want to be on the System drive.
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"attempting to copy to [external drive] failed. the disk could not be read"

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Thanks so far.
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Leopard Won't Boot from External Drive

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I have installed Leopard onto the new external drive using the Leopard install DVD. The installation was successful, and the new external drive mounts on the desktop. In addition, I can see all of its contents, and it appears as a startup disk in the startup disk preference panel. However, when I select it as the startup disk and restart the computer, it will not boot from the new external drive.
Notes:
1. The drive is formatted in the Apple Partition Map scheme.
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Copy from external drive using upgrade assistant

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