Disk icon won't drag when trying to restore in disk utility

Question

Hello
Not sure what I'm doing wrong but when trying to back up my (original) Macbook Pro onto an external hard drive (to create a bootable backup) the MBP disk icon won't drag into the Source of Disk Utility Restore....
Have booted from the MBP disk etc. Am running Tiger w/latest software update. Tried using a mouse rather than the touchpad, but no luck either...
Any suggestions?
Many thanks.

Answer 1

Disk Utility is not very prolix when it comes to error handling. Try this:
Start "Utilities -> Terminal App"
in terminal start:
"/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app/Contents/MacOS/Disk Utility"
the normal disk utility comes up. Try what you want to do - and check for error messages on the command line. maybe you can correct the problem.
-------------- IF THAT FAILS AND YOU WANT TO RESTORE IT BY HAND:
use the disk utility to
1. mount your target drive
- double click on the target drive - make sure it's mounted
2. get information about target drive
- click the PARTITION (not disk) you want to restore
- click INFO. Note the Disk Identifier e.g. disk0s2
3. mount your source image
- go to 'restore' of some drive. select image
- search for the image to restore
- image comes up in list on the left. double click it
close the disk utility.
open Terminal.
check with 'ls /Volumes/' which Volumes are mounted. Check which Volume is your SOURCE.
you can use 'asr' to restore your drive e.G.:
asr restore --source "/Volumes/Mac HD" --target /dev/disk0s2 --erase
PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT YOU GIVE THE CORRECT SOURCE AND ESPECIALLY TARGET!
asr is the restore tool used by disk utility. Be sure to have a second backup of all your data. If you use it in the wrong way, you can delete all data (including the backup attached via USB).