Reluctant HD

[jamerican]

I just had a serious problem where my computer, after booting, would not go into OS X. I booted from the OSX Install disk and erased, then partitioned the drive, but for the life of me, when I reached the page "select HD on which to install OSX", no disk showed up for me to select. I then switched off the system, switched it back on, and booted from a backup disk, then the newly repartitioned disk showed up on the desktop. I am now reinstalling OS X on the Macintosh HD.
My question is, after the installation, should I transfer the data from the backup disk to the freshly installed system, or should I do a clean install of all my programs and create new user preferences? I am of the opinion that some of my preferences on the back up disk may be corrupted (as the backup is a copy of the disk which would not boot), and would hate to recreate the problem.

 

[Cheryl]

If your back up copy was not done with CopyCloner, you will not be able to boot from it. There are several invisible files that are needed for the system folder to work.
Since you have the installers of your applications, use them. The back up copy you have should have all your documents that are important to you. You are better off with fresh install of everything if you think there is a corrupt files somewhere.

 

[jamerican]

Thanks, Cheryl. I went ahead and did that and the system is now up and running and seems to be faster than before. I also did not reinstall OS 9.xx as I have not used it for over 6 months. I'll just rely on Classic if I have to use any OS 9 apps.