Any way to verify my boot CD is correct before I format HD?

[harrisjamieh]

I have made the custom CD as per the instructions, but before I format my entire HD and go thru the hassle of backing everything up etc, is there a way to verify the CD i made is ok?

I tried just putting the CD into the drive and restarting the mac holding 'C', but that didnt work, though I dont know if it SHOULD do anything bearing in mind I haven't partitioned my HD or installed the custom bootloader to get the crystal apple or the windows logo at startup.

Anyone know if I should be able to get somewhere with the disc I made without making any mods to my system (and hence my CD is a dud one), or is it right that the CD, with my hardware in its factory state, will not do anything upon booting?

Cheers

[maconlysource]

I hope there is a way to verify a boot cd.
Its ok to try with a stock install, but after 2 months it might be a hefty backup processdure.

[mcnaugha]

I have made the custom CD as per the instructions, but before I format my entire HD and go thru the hassle of backing everything up etc, is there a way to verify the CD i made is ok?

I tried just putting the CD into the drive and restarting the mac holding 'C', but that didnt work, though I dont know if it SHOULD do anything bearing in mind I haven't partitioned my HD or installed the custom bootloader to get the crystal apple or the windows logo at startup.

Anyone know if I should be able to get somewhere with the disc I made without making any mods to my system (and hence my CD is a dud one), or is it right that the CD, with my hardware in its factory state, will not do anything upon booting?

Cheers

First of all, the best thing to do for a backup (because it's the easiest) is to create a disk image of your hard drive contents (or potentially a clone to another disk). Do you have another hard disk, e.g. a firewire drive or iPod, with sufficient capacity? If so, you'd use Disk Utility to create an image of your hard drive - use the "new image from FOLDER" option for best results. Once you got that, you can re-partition and then use the Restore tab in Disk Utility to perfectly restore from your disk image to the new partition - of course this will only work if your new partition is also sufficiently sized.

Testing the modified WinXP CD could be a challenge... all I did was verified a PC could begin booting from it... it could so I went ahead and tried it. I ran into the compatibility problems though as I tried it on systems that the current xom doesn't work.

[harrisjamieh]

First of all, the best thing to do for a backup (because it's the easiest) is to create a disk image of your hard drive contents (or potentially a clone to another disk). Do you have another hard disk, e.g. a firewire drive or iPod, with sufficient capacity? If so, you'd use Disk Utility to create an image of your hard drive - use the "new image from FOLDER" option for best results. Once you got that, you can re-partition and then use the Restore tab in Disk Utility to perfectly restore from your disk image to the new partition - of course this will only work if your new partition is also sufficiently sized.

Testing the modified WinXP CD could be a challenge... all I did was verified a PC could begin booting from it... it could so I went ahead and tried it. I ran into the compatibility problems though as I tried it on systems that the current xom doesn't work.

Cool, I have an iPod, though its on a 15 gig, and its 1/2 full with music. I am making a disk image of my Documents folder, which is about 6 gig, and I will put that on my iBooks HD for the time being (though even that is only 30 gig). I take it that you can't make a disk image of your entire HD, because a) I don't have anywhere to store a 150 GB disk image, and b) I doubt you will be able to restore such a large image as the newly partioned drive will be smaller than the disk image.

[mcnaugha]

I take it that you can't make a disk image of your entire HD, because a) I don't have anywhere to store a 150 GB disk image, and b) I doubt you will be able to restore such a large image as the newly partioned drive will be smaller than the disk image.

Have you filled up 150GB or is that the total capacity of your hard drive? Check what you've used by using the Get Info command on your hard drive.

The disk imaging process (if "from folder" is used) will only take the actual data... it's not going to need the free space. For example, I have used 39GB of a 60GB partition. So the disk image will be 39GB (or less if compressed). When you use the compression option though, you may need up to twice the space on the drive you're saving it to... although I think I heard they'd improved that situation recently. Disk images made using the "from folder" option are 'stretchable'. This means they can be restored onto any size of parition provided it's large enough to support all the actual data. They are also inherently defragmented and this is a great way to defragment your Mac too. It's literally the only Apple-provision for defragmentation (excluding the support in the OS that adapts to fragmentation).

[harrisjamieh]

Oh right, OK, no I have only filled 35 gig, though I don't have anywhere to store a file that large, so I will make an image just of my Documents and my Applications folders.

Before I go ahead, what is the success rate of this whole installing windows thing? Do I have a good chance of it working, or is there a high possibility it will fail and I be a total waste of time?