[X-Newbies] How to back up a Tiger hard drive?

[Al Poulin]

On Jul 18, 2007, at 11:23 PM, D.F. Manno wrote:

> I have an iBook G4 with SuperDrive. I would like to back up the hard 
> drive before making some changes (including installing Classic). 
> However, I have no backup software and no external device to back up 
> to.
>
> Can I just double-click on the HD icon, and copy all folders (System, 
> Library, Desktop Folder, Applications and Users) to DVDs?

Much depends on whether there is a high risk or a low risk that you 
will need to restore.  You can copy your Users to DVDs and restore them 
to your hard drive just fine.  The other files make things more 
complicated.  The best overall approach as others have mentioned is to 
use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper.  Lately though, I've seen some 
comments about problems using CCC, and SuperDuper seems to be the best 
solution.  Whether you need an external device depends on the size of 
your holdings and on whether the cloning utilities work with multiple 
DVDs.  Do they?

The least aggressive approach may suffice.  If there is a very low risk 
that your changes will cause you to restore, you could get by with just 
copying your Users to DVD, provided you have access to all media 
required to reformat your hard drive and to do a fresh install of your 
OS and applications.  In this case, it would be a good idea to print 
out the list of your applications to help in this process.  Open up 
some of the subfolders in the Applications Folder to reveal their 
contents, particularly the Utilities Folder.

Al Poulin