Ask Jacob
Hard Disk Dilemmas and Cloning
Friday, May 26, 2006 / Hardware
For the record, I have a PowerMac G4 (Mirrored Doors) with 2 internal hard disks. I consider myself to be a full-fledged “Mac enthusiast” and I now have a hard disk storage problem. The first hard disk is 160 GB and is partitioned into 6 volumes. My startup volume is located on this particular hard disk and has approximately 1 GB of free space left on it. The second hard disk is 250 GB and is partitioned into 4 volumes. I have plenty of free space left on the 4 volumes and was wondering if I could copy my existing startup volume to one them safely without data loss issues. The reason for this drastic measure is because I would like to install iLife ‘06 on my PowerMac G4 but obviously I don’t meet the necessary “Apple system requirements of 10 GB of free space” on the startup volume. Correct me if I’m wrong, but would this method actually work or would you recommend another solution to my hard disk dilemma?
You sure can move your Startup Volume. I would recommend using Carbon Copy Cloner to do this. It is a free utility that works flawlessly at moving data from one volume to another. It will even make sure that the new volume is bootable. After you are done cloning just use the “Startup Disk” preference window to change the Startup volume. This is the same utility I use to completely backup my home Mac.
