Newb here, 1st post (Help)

[chazzx11]

Hello to everyone! Ok, to make a long story short... My nieces 1st model macbook crashed, HD problem, so i replaced it with the 60gb (the same size). I have a backup of my HD (10.6.8) on USb external from an earlier macbook that i can boot hers to but how do i transfer that OS to her new external? It just shows the blinking folder if i remove the external USB HD. I have tried for over a week now and cannot figure it out. It boots with the external but i cannot figure out how to transfer my OS to her new 60gb HD. Please help lol, im at my wits end once again and she needs it back before Christmas. I went to disk utility, restore, then choose My OS from the volume scheme, then choose her internal as the destination. Chose restore, took 2 hours, then at the end of the restore it said ( not able to complete because the 2 file names are the same) I went to startup disk, and chose her internal because for some reason it lied to me and then i chose restart. It then said, cant start from the disk because bless tool wont allow or something like that. I then changed the name of my external then completed the procedure again. It automatically changed the name to what my external HD was and then said the same thing about the file names being the same?

 

[MisterMe]

OK. You can't just copy files to a drive in your Mac and expect it to boot. Your backup must be bootable. To be bootable, the drive must have a compatible file system with a compatible OS. One of the first compatibility issues is that Macs generally cannot boot from versions of MacOS X that are older than the version that shipped with the computer. A favorite utility for creating bootable backups is Carbon Copy Cloner. It works well and is free of charge. You might use CCC to "restore" the the bootable external drive to the new hard drive in the MacBook.

If CCC doesn't do the trick, then come back for additional help. To get help, however, you should be clear about the specific model Macs involved and the specific versions of MacOS X that are installed on them as well as the specific versions of MacOS X installed on your external drives.