How do I clone my primary disk to my new external disk?

[p0intblank]

I just got a new external USB hard drive (Western Digital, 160 GB) and would like to clone the drive I am using now over to my new external. I literally only have about 4 gigs of free space right now, so this drive will come in very handy. If I do clone it, is it possibe to boot from it rather than the drive in my PowerBook? I read it's possible on FireWire, but what about USB? If I can't boot from it, that's okay. As long as I can back-up my files and free up some space, that's really all I need.

But if I can clone my drive and boot from it, then how would I go about doing this? I already installed SuperDuper! and see the option to copy all my files, but the external drive has to be formatted for the Mac. I am in the process of doing that now. I am writing over all zeros with Disk Utility in the Mac Extended format. Is this okay?

Please get back to me. Thanks and happy holidays!

 

[Blue Velvet]

With Carbon Copy Cloner or... SuperDuper!

Both free. Google is your friend. And no, USB is not bootable.
Mac Extended (HFS+) is fine...

 

[MacAficionado]

I did this just yesterday. Not on a USB but rather Firewire drive I've had for 3 years.

I partitioned my 120GB HD into three, one 10GB for the boot volume and two other partitions with the remaining space, one was 50GB the other one like 51.6GB. So I installed OS X on the 10GB, no problem. Then I booted from it and made an image with Disk Utility of my internal HD into one of the other partitions. Pretty simple. I tried CCC but did not like it.

By the way, I don't think you can boot with USB Drive.

 

[p0intblank]

Ah, I can't boot from it? Oh well. At least I have the extra space now. By the way, it's still writing the zeros. Is this normal to take this long? I was doing it so I could clone it, but now I know I can't boot from it. Is it still okay to just use as a back-up drive, rather than the primary? I'm guessing writing over zeros is just like formatting a drive, so am I okay?

Oh and by the way, I am doing this in the format of Mac OS Extended, not HFS+ like you are saying, BlueVelvet. Is this still okay?

Sorry for all the questions. I just want to make sure this all goes through fine. Thanks again!

 

[OutThere]

Zeroing a disk is pretty much a waste of time unless you have data you want to hide.

You cannot boot from USB disks, only firewire.

 

[p0intblank]

Zeroing a disk is pretty much a waste of time unless you have data you want to hide.

You cannot boot from USB disks, only firewire.

You know, I was kind of thinking that... Ah, oh well. It doesn't hurt anything, correct? It basically formats the drive back to stage one?