Mac Pro's (early 2008) Back up plan towards a possible OS upgrade to Yosemite

Question

Hello All. Here’re some of the details/background info…hopefully all this won’t be so annoying. Your feedback is highly appreciated. Thanks a bunch!
I have 2 Mac Pro’s (Early 2008) 3,1 both running SL (10.6.8). One I have been using non-stop throughout these years, I’d call it MP 2008 (A). The other one once belong to a friend who actually bought it around the same time I purchased mine, only that he didn’t use it much and just recently decided to sell it to me. I’d call it MP 2008 (B). Both MP’s are very light on data on the main, boot HD, just applications,… as everything I work on is kept in external hard drives and backups. I do not usually download any third party stuff (only when strictly necessary for my work) and essentially it’s all about the software and applications (Adobe CS3 and LR 0.2) I need to do my pretty basic work.
All pretty old stuff by now, I know.
Following a couple of mishaps and lots of good advice in these forums, (thanks to the hatter, etc.) I went ahead and bought 16GB of RAM for both, and an NVidia Graphics Card (all from Amazon.com) for my MP 2008 (A) to replace it after it went bad, and everything has been working just fine. As you can tell, I have not tried to upgrade much, but rather keep everything stock and running as smoothly as possible.
I am afraid the next big, important thing I MUST do is back up my almost 6 years-old HD (I know, it should’ve been done long ago). Frankly, I have never done it before because I didn’t even know that could be possible…I learned about it right here, in this forum. In this sense, much I have also read (here) about the SSD option, and about how great of an upgrade that could be too, but I have decided to stick to the regular 3.5” for now. (I just recently found out those SSD even existed!). Hopefully, once I gain a bit of confidence on how this works I’ll jump into the SSD option, cards, etc. So, I purchased 2X 3.5” SATA III HD’s to try cloning my MP 2008 (A) boot, main HD and get this process over with.
QUESTIONS
QUESTION #1: After installing the internal hard drives in bays 2 and 3: Do I have to specifically format them in order to turn them into bootable copies? If so, how do I do that? I have read about using ‘Disk Utility’ to format external hard drives for this purpose but I don’t know if that would apply for internal hard drives as well.
QUESTION #2: What are the settings/features you all recommend I should select/or deselect on CCC so I can have exact, bootable copies of my original HD? No fancy stuff, advanced options, etc…just what I need to have good enough copies that just work.
QUESTION #3: How do I test them?
I noticed that under “System Preferences/System/Startup Disk” I can select the drive/system I want to use to start up my computer from. My question is:
QUESTION #4: Can I permanently choose any of the Mac Pro four (4) bays/bootable hard drives as the main drive/system for startup? I always thought I could only be done from the original, ‘main’ bootable drive in bay 1.
QUESTION #5: What if the copy fails? How do I go back to the HD that works or to the next copy, for that matter?
About my MP 2008 (B): In an effort to sell me his MP, my friend (as knowledgeable as I am) messed up something that delays the start up a lot. I noticed that in the finder, the applications appear double, etc., so I am not so happy with it. Even though the little house icon has his name in the finder, he was able to make me the Administrator for the machine (I don’t know how). But again, it starts up to the typical chime, then a gray screen for quite a loooong while, then the apple logo, then the loading animation…and theeennnn it starts…and no known issues from there. In other words, I am sure he messed something up there while transferring this machine to me and now its startup is so delayed.
QUESTION #6: Let’s say that both the bootable HD copies I created on my MP 2008 (A) work fine: Can I take one out and install it in my MP 2008 (B) and eventually turn it into my startup drive and work from there too? Will this eventually lead to conflicting stuff? (Two machines, same identical cloned start up drive??).
Eventually, the plan is that I learn how to do all this so I can move on and upgrade with a clean install of Yosemite pretty soon.
Hopefully, both my Mac Pro’s 2008 A and B will last me a bit more and I can get to squeeze a few more seasons from them. They are awesome machines!
As you can tell, in theory I might have a little bit of a clue, but all is in the details. If you don’t mind, please shed some light on this process I am about to begin…thanks a bunch!

Answer 1

Thank you!
Kappy     Nov 24, 2014 3:01 PM 
  Re: Mac Pro's (early 2008) Back up plan towards a possible OS upgrade to Yosemite  in response to Juan Huerta      
All new drives need to be partitioned GUID and formatted Mac OS Extended, Journaled before they can be used.
OK, is that an option I'll be prompted to by the OS or do I have to "tell" that to...Disk Utilities (?)
If cloning is your purpose then use Disk Utility's Restore option. It will clone the drives and their Recovery HD partitions automatically.
I didn't know that Disk Utility had an option for cloning a bootable drive...is it better than CCC? (I have used neither one) I really would like to save $40 and avoid downloading additional software/applications...please if you don't mind...what option would that be once I click on "Disk Utility"? If you know of a good link or reliable article on the topic that will work for me too.
Test a clone be trying to boot the computer from it.
Any bootable drive in any bay can be used to boot the computer. Use Startup Drive preferences to set the desired boot volume.
Erase the target and try again.
But if the computer fails to start because I didn't create a good copy, how do I go back? Keyboard shortcuts? I keep reading that a wired keyboard must be used...and that's scary. If that's true, could I hook up any of my Windows based keyboards via USB?
Erase the drive and install OS X. You cannot use any software installed by the prior owner that was purchased via the App Store including OS X. You must start from scratch. (this actually is 5B rather than item 6.)
Well, he created an Admin account for me and I have been handling updates and everything with the new password he created for me. I wonder if I could access the Apple Store with my ID though...it's all under my name in that computer though, so I figure that at the Apple Store I'd just enter my ID...I guess, I have not tried that yet
Yes.