5. Creating the main partition
Now boot back into the Leopard partition and create again a backup of the Recovery partition as described in instruction no. 3. Then boot back in the Recovery partition. Start Disk Utility and select the Leopard partition. Select 'Restore' on the right side of the Disk Utility. Now drag the just created Disk Image to the 'Source' field. Alternative you can use the 'Select' button, then you'll get a file requester. Then drag the 'Leopard' drive from the left side of the Disk Utility to the 'Destination' filed. At least set the marker 'Erase destination'. It should look like this now:
If you now click on 'Restore' the image will be written blockwise to the Leopard partition. This will work because the Leopard partition is bigger than the Recovery partition. After it's finished successfully, you have two volumes with the name 'Recovery'. Rename your main partition back to Leopard and reboot into it. Wait until it's completely finished booting, it is also possible that the Spotlight process starts, so it can take a while. After it's finished, use Onyx (if installed) and reboot. You now have two identical systems. To see the difference, use a custom background pic on your main partition.
Now we have to make the Leopard partition bootable. Reboot the computer and boot from the installation DVD in single user mode (option -s). If the prompt is there, enter these commands:
fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
update
f 1
w
q
and reboot. Now the computer should reboot in the Leopard partition without using the Darwin boot selector. If this works, boot into the Recovery partition and create an image from the Leopard partition.
Now you have backups from your Leopard and your Recovery partitions. You can use both partitions to defrag, repair, backup and restore each other. A new installation is so nearly unneccessary. And the backups are quick available on the Shared partition. If both partitions are smashed, you can boot with the installation DVD, use disk Utility and restore a backup from the installation DVD. This method should be safe enough for the most users.
2 Opteron systems: OSx86 10.5.8, Andy's 9.8.0 kernel, Asus A8N-SLI Premium, Opteron 185 o'clocked @ 2 x 2,95 GHz (2nd system 2.6 GHz), ATI Radeon HD2600XT 256MB Dual-Monitor 2x HP L2035, 4 GB RAM, Griffin FireWave as main audio device, Marvell + nForce LAN, Asus U3S6 USB3/SATA6 card, 5,5 TB harddisk, Firewire 800 card, Apple Remote + eHome IR receiver, 2x Wacom serial graphics tablet, Canon Pixma iP4700, Logitech Internet Navigator wireless keyboard/mouse combination.
My Audio stuff: M-Audio Transit USB (default audio), M-Audio ProFire 610, M-Audio ProFire Lightbridge (34 channels) using Creamware A16 ADAT converter • MIDI: M-Audio Midiman 4x MIDI interface • Behringer Audio Mixers: Xenyx 1002, Xenyx 1002FX, Xenyx 1202FX, Eurorack UB1002FX, Eurorack MX1804FX, Eurorack MX262A • FX devices: Lexicon MPX100 DSP, Behringer DSP-1000 Virtualizer, Behringer MiniFEX 800 DSP, Behringer Multicom Pro MDX4400 compressor • RETRO: MSSIAH midi/sequencer/synthesizer cardridge for the C64 (Dual-SID), Steinberg M.S.I. MIDI Interface for C64
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