Will bootable copy of drive recreate problems with overheating?

Question

Hi, all, first let me say I am outside of my comfort range with my skills so some of these questions may seem pretty dumb. So, sorry for that.
Through my own posts and reading the posts of others, it is clear I have to take in a MacBook Pro 17" Core Duo Intel to get it fixed (almost out of warranty so I have to move on it). It spins and gets hot with the lid closed, freezes when opened and requires restart a couple of times a day, sometimes has a long buzz on force restart. I probably mangled the transfer of files from an iBook, though using migration assistant - may have transferred incompatible settings somehow. I got an external drive from OWC and am ready to download SuperDuper! at the recommendation of many of you experts. We run Leopard on the Pro 17" and will need to use a MacBook Pro 15" Core Duo Intel running Tiger as the "keyboard and screen" from the bootable drive I plan to create on the external drive. (BTW, I have never done this before) Would we expect any of the power management/sleep issues to be recreated? Obviously if it is a hardware issue, I would expect NOT to see it, but is there a chance it is software related and would therefore show up on the clone? Thanks.

Answer 1

Yes it does sound like you need to send in your MBP soon before the warranty expires. Be sure to do that. My niece did that recently, and got a very fast turnaround. She sent it off at 6:00 PM on a Tuesday, and it was back by Thursday morning.
It is a little difficult to say what is going on from your description, and I'm not entirely clear on what you are doing.
Super Duper (which I use) will make an exact copy of your hard drive on the new external drive. If you have corrupted software or something like that, it will be the same on the external.
To make the clone, you connect the new drive to the 17" MBP and when it has mounted, just launch Super Duper and specify the source and target volumes and Super Duper will do the rest. You will then have an exact bootable copy of your drive on the external drive.
You will then be able to boot the 17" MBP from the clone. I don't know if you can boot the 15" from it or not. If the builds of the two machines are different, you may not be able to. However, you should still be able to mount the clone on the 15" MBP and access the data.
I have read of many problems in migrating data from a Power PC platform to an Intel Machine using Migration Assistant, so you could have some problems with that. Here is Kappy's Guide for doing this:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=435350&tstart=0
For power management and sleep issues, have you tried resetting the SMC?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1411?viewlocale=en_US
It probably won't fix all the problems on your 17", but it could fix some of them.
Have you tried running the extended version of the Apple Hardware test on the 17"? It might give an error code saying what is wrong with it. If so, let Apple know when you send it in.
The real question is whether or not the 15" MBP will boot from the clone. I don't know if it will if the machine builds are very different. If it does boot, there is still a possibility that it may not run perfectly due to the difference in build.
The real value of the clone is to preserve all your data before you send the machine in. You may even want to wipe the old drive of any sensitive data before sending it off. If the old drive is replaced under warranty, you will not get it back. Even if it is not replaced, often the drive is erased and the OS reinstalled in the troubleshooting process, so there is no counting on getting back your data unless you make a backup, which is exactly what you plan to do.
When you get the 17" MBP back, you can use Super Duper again to clone everything back from the external drive to the internal drive.
I'm not sure if this answers your question or not. Please post back if you need further clarification on anything.
Good luck!