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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Move bootable USB drive to internal SATA

mentalfl0s - Feb 16, 2008 - 11:51 pm

I did the following to upgrade the hard drive in my intel macbook:

1. Mounted a new drive in an external USB case
2. Formatted the drive as HFSJ using DiskUtility and zeroed the disk to pre-detect bad blocks (to prevent unrecoverable write errors).
3. Used Carbon Copy Cloner to create a complete file-level (not block-level) duplicate of the drive, erasing the drive during the cloning process. According to CCC's meager documentation, this is sufficient for a bootable copy.
4. Shutdown and swapped the USB drive into the laptop, connecting it to the SATA bus as the primary disk.
5. On boot, the Mac detected the new disk, made it the default startup disk, and then booted properly.

Most everything seems to work -- however, a few things are flakey which makes me suspicious.

1. During the first few minutes of interactive use, the OS would repeatedly hang for a minute or so (It would not respond to input immediately, but it would buffer input commands, which would execute at the end of the timeout). After this occurred perhaps 3 times in 5 minutes, the symptom went away. (Note: Spotlight had already finished indexing the drive by this time.) The problem has not repeated itself. I chalked it up to initially small page files (since they are not copied by CCC).

2. I did the duplicate running 10.5.1. If I perform a software update on the old drive now, it detects the need for 10.5.2. But, if I run software update on the new drive, it says the software is up to date. I have confirmed that the new drive is only running 10.5.1

3. After I log on, the OS opens a local file (the Japanese support page for Canon BJP printers) in my web browser. This happens repeatedly, but it never happens on the old drive.

4. All the printer icons, which used to resemble the actual printers, have become 'generic printer' icons.

While none of these are critical problems, they do not engender confidence in the clone. I have repeated the formatting/cloning process three times, and these symptoms persist.

Q: Was my procedure safe?

1. Can you really make a true-bootable copy using file-level copy with Carbon Copy Cloner? Perhaps it is buggy? E.g., hidden info, block-level references, etc.

2. Is there a major/minor device ID problem, or similar problem, with moving a USB drive to an internal drive? E.g., on-disk pointers looking for a certain device?


Thanks,
Scott

RAMPCHECK - Feb 17, 2008 - 8:13 pm

Scott,

The procedure is safe, for the most part. I have had minor problems in the past with CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner) but they are few and far between.

The only thing I can think of that might be causing this is, when you format the drive, make sure its using the GUID partition Table and not the Apple Partition map. in General, This should not cause the problem you are having but it might account for some of it.

This would be the case if the drive was formatted using a PPC machine before connecting/installing into a Intel machine.

The other thought that I have is the drive has a failed install. This can happen if you attach the drive to say, a MacPro, then install the drive in a macbook after using the leopard install disk from the MacPro.
This does not sound to be the case.

I would try a archive and install with the disk installed in the current computer and see if that corrects it. Either way, respond back to me and let me know the outcome.

mentalfl0s - Feb 18, 2008 - 9:23 pm

The following additional problems appeared:
1. Microsoft Word 2008 would not open because it could not read Normal.dotm
2. Preview would hang and could not even be made to force quit.

Booting from the install DVD, I used DiskUtility to unmount the drive and scan the drive for errors. There were both filesystem and permissions problems. I decided to scrap the image altogether. I mounted the original disk as a USB drive (while still booted from the DVD) and scanned it for errors. The same inconsistencies were were detected in my original copy. It appears that these errors, combined with CCC, led to my problems.

I fixed the filesystem and permissions on the original disk (USB mounted), and then used DiskUtility (not CCC) to do a block-level copy. I did not reinstall the OS.

The resulting disk/image appears to work fine. All noted problems have gone away.

Lesson: Be sure the filesystem and permissions are consistent before cloning a drive.

Thanks for your help!
-Scott