Disk Cloning

Hey folks,
I have an SSD for my (E31 w/windows 7 Pro x64) system disk, and a 1 TB HD with three partitions on it...
As an additional safety measure I'd like to clone my system disk to the spare storage I have on my HD.
Yes I know about the source > destination disk size requirement (i.e. Destination must be at least as big as the source drive).
Are there any FREE and proven cloning apps out t here that anyone has used and can recommend?
Thanks!
Eric
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hi Erik,
Many thanks for that.
Since I posted the question I researched the matter further. I found EaseUS Todo Backup Free 6.0 and it's perfect for my workstation.
I simply cloned my boot/system partition on my SSD and placed it on a partition of equal size on my HD.
I tested the image by booting up to it and no problems at all.
So now if my SSD goes bad or won't boot, I simply hit F1 at computer start and chose the HD as my first boot disk.
Works great - and it's free... and free is good
Eric

Similar Messages

Suspend MDT, Sysprep for disk cloning, and resume with new hardware failure.

I am able to successfully Sysprep for disk cloning after pausing the Deployment (via LTISuspend). The problem is when I attempt to resume the Deployment after duplicating the hard drive and placing in new hardware it fails immediately stating that it cannot
open the TSENV.DAT (80090005). It works fine if you resume in the identical hardware it was built in.
The hardware is identical for all computers receiving the cloned drive with the Mac Address, Serial Number, and UUID being different.
Knowing that the TSENV.DAT is encrypted, is there a way to prep it for minor hardware (mac address, uuid, and serial number only) change prior to pausing and sysprep so it does not fail?
Using MDT 2012 and Windows 7 OS.
Thanks

Let me add to what Mr. Owen described.
We have a complex MDT. It has been used for years for a globally scaled corporate desktop.
What we are looking to do to is sysprep this machine 3/4 of the way through the process, clone the drive, and then use the cloned drive on like hardware models (we used PersistDrivers in the Unattend).
I initially ran sysprep outside of the MDT. It ran successfully, however when we moved the syspreped (and cloned) drive to another hardware of identical type we got the error Mr Owen mentioned. What we hoped would happen if we called Sysprep from
the MDT directly is the TSENV would be cleaned/updated to remove any workstations specific identifiers and thus eliminate the error.

Best disk cloning software

I need to upgrade the hard drive on my 2008 Macbook Pro (OS X 10.9.1 (13B42)).
I would like to clone the replacement disk using a USB-SATA adapter before installation. What is the best cloning software to use?
Thanks

Use Disk Utility, primarily.
Carbon Copy Cloner, secondarily.

Is there any Windows disk cloning/copy software that WORKS?

Hello,
I am trying to copy an XP SP3 drive to a newer hard drive. (Yes, this is going to get upgraded to Windows 7, but only AFTER I make a clone of the drive, in case
anything goes wrong, which it usually does). This is on a laptop. I have the new drive connected via a USB->SATA adapter. I have tried Ghost, which does not see the external drive. I've also tried Seagate diskwizard, which does not see the external drive.
Today I tried easeus, which sees the external drive, but complains about the sector sizes being different (I'm NOT trying to do a sector-by-sector copy) and does not do the copy.
Does anyone know of software that will successfully copy a Windows drive to another drive?
Thanks!!!

A sector by sector clone means that even blank sectors with no information will be cloned. Please see:
http://kb.easeus.com/art.php?id=10010
From Easus documentation :
...It is not possible to copy one to another if logical sector size of target drive differs from logical sector size of source drive. That is because data integrity usually cannot be ensured between different logical sector drives.
http://kb.easeus.com/art.php?id=10039
From Paragon kb :
A hard disk (HDD) has physical sector size determined by its geometry and logical disc sector size. Info about logical sector size is stored in disk controller and is reported to operating system (OS), determining how OS sees this drive: as 512
bytes per sector or as 4K per sector drive.
Common drives have 512 bytes per sector both on physical and logical level, while Advanced Format Drives (AFD) have 4096 (4K) bytes per physical sector but emulate 512 bytes per logical sector.
However some external USB boxes (especially if HDD was designed for external connection) provide 4096 bytes per sector for both physical and logical geometry. It is not possible to copy one drive to another if logical sector size of target
drive differs from logical sector size of source drive.
http://kb.paragon-software.com/paragon/include/templ/object2.jsp?catId=2124&objId=7018&statId=2368017&foLang=en
You will either have to find another external drive with the same logical sector size (I'm guessing 512 bytes) or you could try one of the workarounds offered by Paragon :
It may be possible to copy one drive to another using the following workarounds:
- Connect drive via eSATA cable (if external HDD case and PC itself support it)
- Take hard disk out of external case (if vendor allows it) and connect hard disk to PC via SATA port (in case of laptop with only one drive you may use SATA port for optical drive)
- Take hard disk out of external case (if vendor allows it) and use another SATA-USB case which will provide 512 bytes per logical sector (any cheap case should do it unlike special Seagate cases)
Alternatively, you can try to find a program that supports cloning irrespective of source and destination logical sector size (see link to HDClone in later post)

SPARCstation 10 Disk Cloning

I have a SPARCstation 10 that has a 1GB drive in it. I tried to replace it with a 2GB disk by using ufsdump to copy the data onto the bigger disk and then using the installboot command to install the boot block. When I tried to boot from the 2GB disk, the system would just sit at the power on banner. I have performed the same procedure on several SPARCstation 5 machines without any issues (cloning 2GB disks onto 4GB disks) so I know that this process works. Does anyone know of any issues with Seagate ST32430N 2GB drives and SPARCstation 10 machines (ie. OBP versions, boot partition size limitation, etc.)
Thanks!

OK. Here's the next part in the saga...
I'm using an external SCSI enclosure to copy the contents of the two internal disks onto the Seagate ST32430N. The external Seagate is set to SCSI ID 4 and the two internal disks are set to SCSI ID 3 and 1, with SCSI ID 3 being the boot disk. The copy goes just fine and I can boot from the external Seagate (SCSI ID 4 in the external enclosure) once I change the /etc/vfstab file on the Seagate to use c0t4. I then change the /etc/vfstab file on the Seagate drive to use c0t3, then take the Seagate disk out of the external enclosure, change the SCSI ID to 3, remove the two internal disks, and attach the Seagate on one of the internal connectors of the SPARCstation10. I turn on the SPARCstation10 and it tries to boot from SCSI ID 3 and just sits there. When I take the Seagate out of the SPARCstation10, leave the SCSI ID on 3, leave the internal SPARCstation10 bays empty, and put it back into the external SCSI enclose, and boot from the external enclosure, it also seams to just hang. My question is are the jumpers on the Seagate ST32430N suppose to be set a particular way in a SPARCstation10? Besides changing the SCSI ID on the Seagate drive, I have not changed the other jumpers. I'm not having any luck in finding any information on the Internet on jumper settings for a Seagate ST32430N in a SPARCstation10 so any info that you may have would be much appreciated.

Disk cloning on non-FireWire clamshell iBook?

Is there any utility that will allow me to clone the entire contents of my iBook's 6GB disk (which is about 80 per cent full) onto a networked Mac with more space, then copy it all back to the iBook when I've fitted it with a larger HD?
My iBook is the 366MHz 'special edition' Graphite one and it doesn't have a FireWire port so I can't use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! as they both require an internal or FireWrire drive to copy to.
Really hoping I won't have to reinstall everything from scratch...

When I replaced the hard drive in my iMac 350 MHz, I faced the same dilemma.
My solution:
I had each user log into their account on the iMac 350 and then remotely access their account on another Mac on the network.
Then the user used drag and drop to copy their /Users/username folder (from the old drive) into their account on the other Mac.
After everything was backed up, I replaced the drive.
Installed OS X and all the upgrades.
Installed the 3rd party applications we use.
I created all the same users with the same short username.
Again I had each user log into their account (account on the iMac 350) and then remotely access their account on another Mac on the network.
Then the user used drag and drop to copy their original /Users/username folder (from the other Mac) into their account on the iMac 350. This replaces the default contents of the new /Users/username folder.
Then the user logged out and back in. They had access to all their old files.
After ensuring that all their files were working as before, I put the original old drive in a FireWire enclosure and attached it to one of my other Macs.
I used Disk Utility to erase the old drive. I used the option to write zeroes so that sensitive data would be overwritten.

RAID 1 or Disk Cloning !

I'm currently preparing my PC for the installation Windows 7 Pro 64 bit on 22/10 by making a few upgrades.
I've increased RAM from 2Gb to 4Gb and I've now bought a Samsung F3 1TB drive for the OS. I've previously run two Samsung 400Gb hard drives in Raid 1 (mirroring) as the main drive for the OS and DATA.
I'm now wondering if I should by another Samsung F3 1TB drive and run them both as a RAID 1 for OS/DATA but understand that RAID 1 actually makes the system run slower than using one drive as everything has to be written twice.
Is this true and, if so, would using a second Samsung F3 to regularly clone the first F3 be a better option ?
Basically, I want to improve the overall loading times and speed of Windows as (with my current set-up) Windows seems a bit lethargic.
I also don't have unlimited funds and so I'm upgrading ona budget.
Thank You

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Disk cloning program for CNC machine hard drives ?

We have Agie Wire EDMs and DMG 5 axis cnc mills.
We are trying to make a clone copy of their hard drives.
We have replacement hard drives.
Which is the best software program to clone these hard drives?
Thanks

Hello,
The Windows Desktop Perfmon and Diagnostic tools forum is to discuss performance monitor (perfmon), resource monitor (resmon), and task manager, focusing on HOW-TO, Errors/Problems, and usage scenarios.
As the question is off topic here, I am moving it to the
Where is the Forum... forum.
Karl
When you see answers and helpful posts, please click Vote As Helpful, Propose As Answer, and/or Mark As Answer.
My Blog: Unlock PowerShell
My Book:
Windows PowerShell 2.0 Bible
My E-mail: -join ('6F6C646B61726C406F75746C6F6F6B2E636F6D'-split'(?<=\G.{2})'|%{if($_){[char][int]"0x$_"}})

How to use Time Machine with newly cloned source disk?

I've got an iMac (10.6.8) which I'm using with a Time Capsule and Time Machine.
Recently, the iMac's internal disk started to fail. Instead of going through the effort and expense of replacing it in a fairly old computer, I added an external FireWire disk, cloned the internal disk onto it using Carbon Copy Cloner, and then unmounted the internal disk. Now I'm running the exact same system off the external FireWire disk (with no obvious performance loss, I'm happy to say).
When Time Machine saw the new disk, it started to prepare to copy everything on it. I don't know if it was going to treat it as a separate set of backups (like a separate computer), or treat it as a massive update to all the files on the same computer.
Here's what I want to happen, in order of preference:
(1) Get Time Machine to treat the new disk as the same filesystem as the old disk, and update only the files that have changed.
(2) Have Time Machine start a new backup folder. The initial backup will be slow of course.
(3) Time Machine treats the new filesystem as continuous with the old one, but with 300GB of sudden "changes" (because all the files are "different"). This is my least preferred option.
Can anyone advise me as to what my options are, and to what Time Machine will do if left to its own devices?

I think that the way that Time Machine works, you will either have to go with your option (3) [inefficient from the perspective of disk space usage] or simply erase the backup drive and start anew with a new Time Machine backup process [efficient from a space usage perspective but you lose all the verisoning info from previous backups].
Time Machine will see the cloned drive as a physically different drive with lots of files that it has never backed up. I think the only way it could tell that they were the same files content wise as what you had backup up earlier would be to do a bit by bit comparison (which Time Machine does not do). I think Time Machine might look at some file meta data and there might be a way to spoof it so it thinks what you want it to think, but imagine the work required to do this for hundreds of thousands of files. Some disk clone software claims to try to do this and some have bit by bit cloning options, but Time machine will still see that external drive as a physically different (never backed up) drive from the internal one that it has backed up. It might be nice to have a Time Machine option so you could tell it what you want it to assume and do, but Time Machine has a fairly simple interface and doesn't present the user with such an option (to my knowledge).
If it were me, I would buy a new Time Machine backup drive and use that to backup the external cloned drive (now your primary drive), while saving the original Time machine backup drive as an archive with all its versioning, which provides you with additional backup redundancy and history. After some time has passed, you could eventually decide to erase that (by then, older) Time Machine backup drive and use it for some other purpose.

How to migrate win 8.1 from sata hard disk to ssd

I brought an Intel SSD 730 480GB 5GBs Sata 3
I also brought a RAID CARD SYBA| SYPEX40039 bootable. attached the ssd to that.
I like to migrate the Windows volume to the SSD.
but I have trouble to get the boot manager on to the ssd. despite not using uefi on the original install on the 1Tb drive. I can't use ghost. if I use ghost form the other partition(vista) I can clone partition but the 1TB is too huge to
for disk to disk cloning to ssd 480GB
Can I start w 8.1 DVD to do a repair on the ssd to get the boot manager to there?

Hi fs - ab,
Since third party clone software frequently cause system corruption and it’s not fixable, we only recommend two ways for system installation on new hard disk: performing a clean install or using windows system image restore and both ways need reactivate
Windows 7. And for system image restore, you can only do a system image recovery to a HDD or SSD that is the same size or larger than the one(s) included in the system image when it was created. You will not be able to do a system image recovery to a smaller
HDD/SSD. If the HDDs/SSDs are larger, then you will have "unallocated" space afterwards that is left over from the difference that you can extend into.
In that case, we VERY recommend you to perform a clean install for new hard disk.
Note: If you decide to use windows system image to restore your computer, you need to create a windows recovery disk (drive) for entry to Windows repair environment.
About windows recovery disk:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-usb-recovery-drive
Regards

Help with rescuing data from faulty disk

Sorry the long wall of text, I wanted to explained everything as detailed as possible to not mess with the chronological order (TL; DR down below!)
Ok, here's the thing. I have two hard drives, a ssd [sda] (for the OS [arch linux, ubuntu and win7], munchkin 240gb) and a sata 3 one ([sdc] wd, 1 tb) that I use for everything else. A couple of weeks ago I found there were progressive, unexpected and random behaviour particularly with windows, random freezes, no bsod, ecc... I finally found that the second hard drive was the culprit so I decided stop using a buy a new disk (while sending the faulty to RMA, since it's barely one year old, and I don't do nothing out of ordinary), I got a seagate with 1 tb.
I honestly didn't want to mess too much about the data and wanted to save the most without wasting time, so I decided to try to clone the whole disk with dd according to the wiki (Disk Cloning). I imagined that the "bad sectors" were from the ntfs partition, so I went with that. Clearly I could get corrupt files in linux too, but my guess was that the most important data was safe, because I had been using it for the last couple of days without problems. The process ended with a lot of I/O errors, but in the end it showed the same number of `in` and `out`. I regenerated the UUID for the new cloned disk and each partition, modified the fstab and restarted (fingers crossed).
I could log into arch linux without problems, used it for a while, restarted a second time (that windows habit that I still found hard to overcome) and everything was okay (yes I made sure I was actually on the new disk). Next was windows time, which to my surprise worked fine too, I even played a while. After patting myself in the back, I rebooted the machine thinking in how much work I would like to have done today, and there were an error that apparead on the login screen, just a ms before I pressed enter, I think I read it was referring to another partition of sda. The system got stuck in the middle of the "log in screen" and loading x with a black screen, nothing else. Waited a while, losing hope I pushed the RESET button.
Now, it was stuck during the boot up process, after "killing rf radio" or something. It was obviously stuck somewhere else... (that message had appeared there since I built the pc) it read though that the /var partition was clean, same with the root partition, next I tried with "recovery" kernels, and each other kernel I had still in grub; but the problem persisted. Tried with ubuntu, had to change fstab again, rebooted, tried to enter, stuck on the loading screen with the big purple background. I couldn't get anything else past that, neither to get a decent log.
I don't know why (or maybe because I was desperate) I entered the uefi/bios settings and found that the time was localtime instead utc.... weird I thought and I blamed windows (though, I had the registry hack working for a while) and imagined that I updated something that removed that *fixed* the blessed fix. Since I remember having issues with partitions not being correctly mounted once because of time issues, I thought it was a problem with the time... nope, nothing changed.
I tried again with the recovery kernel of the ubuntu install, I could drop on the root shell, and tried to fix the clock time after remounting, same with mounting the /var partition (ubuntu doesn't use that one), it threw that "bad superblock error", but fsck ran saying the filesystem was clean and it was mount normally later. Somewhere between, I mounted the home partition, no errors, gave a quick navigation. I tried to install ntpd to follow the "troubleshoot" from the Time arch wiki page, but HA, no internet.
Rebooted again, and from the menu from "ubuntu recovery", allowed me to enable networking. Quite nice I thought, and pressed enter. It politely informed that I needed to mount the system (root partition) in read/write instead read-only. I happily said yes (I already had remounted the ubuntu root as rw, and worked ok), but stopped at the home partition taking about 10 minutes in "phase 2", suddenly started throwing a lot of errors, about missing inodes, files pointing nowhere, etc. It put a lot of files into lost+found directory. Oh, there it was... I thought, let's go into Arch Linux then...
Now the system booted up quite fast, and I was welcomed by the black screen asking coldly for my login information, I wrote the credentials, pressed enter, aaaaand PAH, "/home/pablo" change directory failed: No such file or directory. HA, funny I thought, lsblk, the partition was mounted, ls -l /home/... WHAT? the folder wasn't there.
I looked for the lost+found folder inside the home directory, and it had a lot of directories and files called DXXXXXX.RCN, and IXXXXXX.RCN and some symbolic links. The directories had files inside, the IXXXXX are actually files, ecc.
Right now, I'm lost... I'm not scared about the data, because it's still living happily (?) on the bad disk, but I still need to recover it, so I can filter it later allowing to write zeros to the fault disk and send it for a replacement. Is there any chance to recover the data? (I rather not going into around 100 files/directories with cryptics names), or maybe use another method to "recover" the data from the previous disk? using cp or rsync? Any good experience or advice on this?
PS.- Sorry for the epic story, I hope I don't scare readers or other fellow members.
TL; DR
+ I have 2 disks (ssd [OS {win7, arch and ubuntu}] and sata3 [data])
+ Sata3 disk started to fail on windows (users folder it's on the sata3), arch/ubuntu never had a problem
+ I bought a new one, and I'm trying to send the old one for a RMA
+ Clone the disk according to the wiki and rebuilt the UUID
+ Change fstab to use the new cloned disk
+ Worked fine for a couple of times
+ Used windows, played, everything fine
+ Entered arch, now I couldn't it got stuck without showing any errors
+ Tried every kernel and recovery image without success
+ With Ubuntu I could drop into a root shell
+ Mounted home partition, no problems
+ Tried to activate networking, started to run fsck and threw a lot of errors (I remember I read something about "offset" not correcting) and moved files to lost+found directory
+ Arch Linux started, but I couldn't log because /home/pablo doesn't exist anymore and it seems everything lives now in the lost+found directory with weird names like DXXXXXX and IXXXXXXX
Aftermath: I have the original data, safe (?) on the bad disk (like I said, I never had any problem in my home partition). I really don't want to be nit picky about what I can save, I'll be happy to save as much as I can, but I don't mind losing corrupt files (that's why I thought cloning with filling with zeros would be enough). I just want to ditch the bad disk and send it to wd for a replacement.
End of TL; DR
2014/07/29: Added a TL; DR section
Last edited by pablox (2014-07-29 13:55:46)

I can see three possibilities:
1. The new HDD is broken as well.
2. The Linux partition contained a little garbage from old HDD's errors and that confused Linux and caused it to corrupt the partition further by writing more garbage to it.
3. The garbage from old HDD's errors contained on the Windows partition confused Windows and caused it to corrupt the Linux partition by overwriting it with garbage.
1. Rather unlikely if the HDD is new, but still worth checking. Install smartmontools and run smartctl -a /dev/new-hdd. On the "SMART attributes" list, check if any of "Reallocated_Sector_Ct", "Reallocated_Event_Count", "Current_Pending_Sector", "Offline_Uncorrectable" have RAW_VALUE other than zero or if the "SMART Error Log" contains any entries. If the attributes are all zero and the error log is empty, everything is fine.
2. Make new image of the old HDD. Make sure that Windows and Linux partitions don't overlap each other due to HDD read error. Run fsck on the Linux partition before mounting it to ensure that it doesn't contain errors which could lead to further errors. If it doesn't, it should be safe to mount and use it.
3. You said that Windows partition certainly contains error. Don't run Windows and don't mount this partition in Linux without running some NTFS checker (Windows tools on some other Windows system or ntfsck on Linux) and fixing all errors contained there. Alternatively, you can reinstall Windows on the new HDD and manually copy all the files you care about that are still readable from the old HDD. BTW, don't modify anything on the old HDD, as this would likely corrupt its other contents in the same way that modifying its copy corrupted other parts of its copy.
Last edited by mich41 (2014-07-30 22:30:11)

Hard Disk Problems - Any ideas anyone??

I recently replaced my ibook's HD with a new one, every thing has been fine until just recently. Mysteriously on my control click menus and other pop up windows like save and open, all system text has turned into code. use the following url for an example http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/whatapileof/menu.jpg . The text is now N21 and things like that. Any ideas? When i tried to do a HD repair in disc utility, the permissions are fine but when i repair the disc it fails each time. I have tried to reinstall the OS but that also fails. I am guessing that the menu text and this repair issue are hand-in-hand. Only thing i can think of is doing a re-format. There’s no other issues that i can spot and the problem is bearable. Im used to doing reformats with windows. never thought i would have to with OSX though. Any ideas how to avoid?? Cheers.
Intel iMac 1.83GHz Mac OS X (10.4.7) iBook G4, Cube G4, iMac G3

How did you install your OS onto the new hard drive? Did you do a clean install or did you use one of those disk cloning utilities?
Have you tried creating a new user and seeing if that new user also has this problem? If you restored your Library folder from an old OS installation, it could have corrupted some Finder preference.
If all else fails, do is re-format and re-install from scratch.
I have never seen this before. See if a new user has the same problem. If that doesn't help, since it is bearable, wait a few days and see if someone else reponds to this message and knows a quick fix. If that doesn't happen re-format and re-install.

Error message while trying to clone harddrive using Disk Utility

I've been trying to clone my MacBook Pro's harddrive in advance of installing Leopard. I've been trying to clone to a LaCie Ethernet Disk mini. It's connected to my computer with a USB cable. It does about 1/3 of the disk, then I get the following error message:
An error (2) occurred while copying. (No such file or directory)
At this point the disk cloning stops.
An advice would help, thanks.

kory wrote:
I'm trying to use Disk Utility to clone it. I have verified and repaired both the MacBook Pro HD and the external HD with Disk Utility.
*Hi Kory, Welcome (Back)* to Apple's Users Help Users Forums.
In addition to Utilities Restore, these are popular Cloners.
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
Purchase at $27.95 will allow smart backups that look at the bu files and only move over new ones. It's quick at ~7 mins to change ~1 gig out of 20.
Be sure to test that the clone boots and apps behave properly.
Here are other popular cloners.
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
http://www.prosoftengineering.com/products/drivegeniusinfo.php?PHPSESSID=909c070fb2e13b35097fa9cc1340bfc0
Good Luck, JP
Message was edited by: Jpfresno "In addition to ..."

"Failed" Xserve disk running well in USB enclosure

Hi everyone,
I'm curious if anyone else has tried this and what their results might have been.
I had a pair of "bad" Xserve RAID hard drives (250 GB Hitachi's manufactured in April 2004) laying around from the last year or two. I don't remember the exact error messages that they threw at the time of failure, but I swapped them out and the RAID rebuilt itself on the new disks without issue.
I was cleaning some junk out the other day and happened upon these disks. I decided to pop one out of its chassis and drop it into a Rockfish USB 2.0 enclosure to see what might happen. When I powered it up and connected it to my Intel MacPro (10.4.11), I was asked if I would like to initialize the disk. Did that, and to my surprise, the disk showed up on the Desktop without a problem.
At this point, I decided to "push" the disk to see if I could get it to fail. Did the following:
1) Ran a complete block scan with Drive Genuis. All ~490 million blocks passed and not a single bad one found.
2) Formatted the drive to MS-DOS with Disk Utility and did a block scan in XP. Got the same result as #1 above.
3) Successfully cloned my MacPro system using SuperDuper to the drive twice. Booted into the clones and ran them for most of the day without problem before cloning the USB back to the internal drive (again, without problem).
After doing this, I was curious on the status of the second disk. After swapping it into the USB enclosure, I found that it too seems to be "OK".
In case you are wondering, I also tried reintroducing one of the disks from the above into the RAID and it wouldn't accept the disk. My guesses are 1) the RAID is less forgiving to drive problems then having it in the Desktop setting; 2) the fact that S.M.A.R.T. is not supported via USB 2.0 is letting me get away with doing this since errors are not being reported; 3) the RAID drive chassis is the source of the problem. I would think that #3 in less likely then #2 and #1 since the chassis seems to be just drive and power cables.
Has anyone else tried something similar with "bad" Xserve RAID disks? If so, what were the results? At this point, I'm planning on using these disk as noncritical storage devices since they seem fairly solid. To bad they can't be put into the SATA bays of the MacPro....
Looking forward to input.
Cheers,
Scott

Here is an update:
The "failed" Xserve drive has been performing well over the last week. As Tony mentioned in a previous post, his attempt to freshly install OS X onto such a disk sometimes failed or during booting. To test this, I installed Leopard client to the disk successfully and was able to boot my desktop with it. However, after installing the 10.5.1 update, I could not longer boot from the disk. It would start the boot process, but would get stuck on the grey screen and not proceed any further (I tried it a few times, all cases ended just as Tony described). In fact, the boot disk seemed to stop spinning at that point and I was forced to shutdown using the power button.
Thinking that I may have finally "killed" the disk, I ran Disk Utility on it. To my surprise, it found no errors. So I erased the disk, cloned my Tiger 10.4.11 system and was able to successfully boot into it without problems.
SO.....
Booting from a cloned OS X system WORKS, but booting from a fresh OS X install DOESN'T?!?!?
Hard for me to explain why this might be the case. Any opinions from people reading this?
Thanks.

Back-up disk full

I was using time machine to back-up my media drive. My back-up drive is the same size as the media drive, 750 gigs. The back-up drive seems to need 100 gigs more than the media drive for time machine to work. This engaged a back up error because of lack of space. I do have about 200 gigs available on the system and application hard drive, but I will only allow access, I will not clear that drive and partition a space, it is too much trouble to reinstall all applications. At this time I'm using SilverKeeper as my back-up software. It seems odd to use this 3rd party application when this great apple application, time machine, is available. Would I engage issues by using my system drive as a second back-up drive.
Thanks

You should not use your startup volume as a backup drive. If you continue to use Time Machine you will need a larger backup drive. A TM backup drive should have at least twice the capacity of the drive you back up. In your case your TM backup drive should be at least 1.5 TBs. You could purchase the new Seagate 1.5 TB drive or add another 750 GB or 1 TB drive to your system and combine them in a striped RAID array.
Although TM does automatically remove the oldest files to make additional space for new backups, if it cannot remove enough files to accommodate a new backup, then you will get the disk full error.
As for using SilverKeeper I would suggest that you not continue to use it. It is not fully compatible with Leopard. Instead I would recommend using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! (You must buy SD in order to have use of it for more than full disk cloning.) You can download both at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.

Disk Cloning

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