Another question please about copying a hard drive

Your great advise seems to have at least See my post on page two "Ready to throw my Mac out the window."

I now see both my drives and have done away with the firewire hub and I updated to OSX 10.3.7. It still takes a long time to run yp if I reboot with the process getting stuck at the "waiting for local disks" segment.
After waiting 4 minutes I got up and let it try to boot which it did but don't know how long beyond the 4 minutes it did take. Anything I can do about this?

Here is my more immediate question. I have two external drives. I am running out of room on my internal drive so I need to make one of the external the start up drive and back it up on the other. I believe I need to make a complete copy of my internal drive to my external so it will have start up ability.

I think the operative word here is "complete". How can I do this? What software should I use?

You good people are a lifesavewr to me. Thanks

I've been told you can accomplish this by creating a Disk Image of your entire system, then put the image on one of your external drives. Then restart from a CD, do the low-level format and reload the disk image.

I went so far as making and saving the disk image. But I didn't take the next step and wipe my drive. That part scared me. The problems I was trying to resolve got better without doing a low-level reformat. So I haven't really tested this. Does anybody know FOR SURE that the Disk Image will replace everything you need to reestablish the system?

In any case, the Disk Image makes a quick and easy backup, which could be done weekly or daily or whatever fits your needs. Just for insurance.

n/t

Apple also has one that is very good. Look for "Backup" on your drive, or go to the Apple site to download it.

Carbon Copy Cloner is the best. Just have it create an entire backup on an external drive, then restart while holding down option. Choose the external drive... You are now booted off the external drive!

I would then do a clean install of OS X... then copy back the files/apps/preferences you want. This has helped for me, but it usually takes a few days to get everything back in order. It is well worth it though.

Thanks.