The command takes the form of

sudo rsync -rlptv –delete /Volumes/(internal hard drive)/Users/ /Volumes/(external hard drive)/Users/

I just save that command as a .term file and add it to my login items.

I’m using it once a week to backup my data. It’s nice to have a 1:1 copy of your OS at hand. Restoring after a HD crash takes maybe 30mins - 1hr, not more. Every settings you made will be present again. Nice, ain’t it?

Also, instead of using cron, an daily backup command can simply be added to /etc/daily.local. This will include “custom” commands in the pre-existing scheduled process. Results will be written to /var/log/daily.out.


#!/bin/sh

echo “#########################”
echo “### Server backup”
echo “### `date`”
echo ” ”

if [ -d “/Volumes/Mac OS X 1″ ] ; then
echo “!!! Error : Something went wrong the last time”
echo “### ”
echo “### `date`”
echo “### Backup failed”
echo “#########################”
echo ” ”
exit 1
fi

if [ -d “/Volumes/Sauvegarde” ] ; then
echo “### destination volume /Volumes/Sauvegarde found”
else
echo “!!! Error : Destination volume absent”
echo “### ”
echo “### `date`”
echo “### Backup failed”
echo “#########################”
echo ” ”
exit 1
fi

/usr/sbin/asr -erase -noprompt -source /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X -target /Volumes/Sauvegarde

/usr/sbin/diskutil rename /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ 1 Sauvegarde

echo “### `date`”
echo “### End of backup”
echo “#########################”
echo ” ”
You have to rename the disk at the end, because asr does a plain clone, including the volume name.

The check for Mac OS X 1 is because one day something went wrong in the middle of the backup, and the machine rebooted. As there were two Volumes named Mac OS X , one of them was labelled Mac OS X 1 internally. AND IT WAS THE BOOT VOLUME !!! I could get it fixed before my script would have renamed the internal disk to “Sauvegarde” and backed up the bacup to the internal disk at the next run.
This problem is mainly because my backup-disk is firewire, and I have two of them (even and odd days) and therefore I can’t use /dev/diskxx sthle addressing, because it’s never the same address when I swap disks.

Hope this helps.

Rainer

Rainer

You will get a working functional copy of the drive, but not a 100% mirror image.

To the top poster (B-Bone):
Use Automator and iCal to create a script that will do these things for you. Once you create the script in automator simply save it as an application then use the alarm in iCal to schedult the process to be run nightly.

yes, windows is bad, blah blah blah. Interesting article but this sort of statement is just lame. I work with four OSes both professionally and for fun and all have their strengths and weaknesses. In the case of Apple the main weakness probably are the religious nuts.

Or add that to cron/crontab.

Chris
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com

I did this a few months ago on my Mac at home, and it has worked flawlessly. I can unplug the external drive, and when I plug it back in my computer automatically starts re-copying the internal drive. Completely transparent.

I wrote about this on my blog: here.

I used ditto for the same purpose as the author above ..

Cheers
Reimer

On the down side, it does take some knowledge of rsync and shell scripting (or perl) to actually do the backups. But what I get in return is the ability to recovery any accidentally deleted document, or a previous version of a document (which I may have overwritten a number of times since an important change was made).

–lar3ry

It’s free and lets you set up scheduled backups.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/automator/

That little robot looks so friendly.

http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

I do not currently have a Mac, but the power of scripting and automatic folders seems like it is a no brainer to me.

LW_Will

We actually use it to clone our servers (incrementaly) every night.

we also use rsync to backup over the net… but have problems with resource forks… so beware!

Once you do this, Backup is now called “Macintosh HD”, so you have two “Macintosh HD”s, right? So do you rename the external copy back to “Backup”? What system do you use to keep it straight in your head?

The external drive shows up as orange and the internal one shows up as silver. So far that has been the easiest way to tell them apart, but you can also rename the external drive.

Couldn’t you make the folder on the computer to automaticly update by using a folder action? Something like, when the file is written here, copy it to the live backup folder there?

I do not currently have a Mac, but the power of scripting and automatic folders seems like it is a no brainer to me.

That would probably be useful for backing up your documents folder, but my goal was to create a bootable HD that I could use in place of my computer and then copy back later. If there is a way to use folder actions and keep the drive bootable, Ii’d be interested to hear about it.

Even better, if you don’t mind taking some time to set it up, is to use the external drive to set up a mirrored RAID set. That way, the external drive is always an exact mirror of the internal drive, and the internal drive can fail completely with no disruption or loss of data (in fact, you might not even notice).

That is an interesting idea. I’m going to definately have to try that because it would be much faster.

“without needing to restart or “boot to dos” like you usually have to in Windows.”

yes, windows is bad, blah blah blah. Interesting article but this sort of statement is just lame. I work with four OSes both professionally and for fun and all have their strengths and weaknesses. In the case of Apple the main weakness probably are the religious nuts.

Ok…. I don’t see anywhere that I said that OS X is better than Windows. I use both regularly along with Linux and a few different t ypes of Unix. You are correct that both have their strengths and weaknesses. I’ve done a lot of work with imaging computers so I thought it was pretty impressive that I could just image my hard drive while I was still actively using the OS and then I could take the drive and boot it up on pretty much any other Apple.

Everyone needs a way to backup their system. I personally think the built in tools in OS X are better than what you can do with any of the built in tools on Windows. If you feel differently then you could post an intelligent comment explaining your view. Otherwise your comments make you appear more like a (to borrow your vocabulary) “religious nut” than anything else.

I used to use Lacie’s Silverkeeper, but after a disk loss when I had to restore from a backup disk I discovered that (as some ex-users have reported) it does not reliably copy updated files to the backup disk, even when it reports success. This is an EXTREMELY dangerous failure, in that the user beleives it has been successful; the simplicity, speed, and clarity of the command-line rsync ultimately proved best for me. It’s built into the OS and is extremely confirgurable.

Yikes. That is good to know. The best thing about LaCie is the way the way their hard drives look. I’ve had several fail on me. It sounds like their software is built the same way.

I use http://www.decimus.net/synk/ - it is free for academic use and cheap for others, it is easy to use and it does incremental backup so it works faster than copying the whole disk.

Thanks for the link. I hadn’t heard about that program before. The biggest advantage of using the cloning method described here is the fact that the disk is bootable. (If my laptop is stolen, I can plug the drive into my Mac Mini and be up and running in a few minutes.)

Do you know if Synk or Silverkeeper creates a bootable disk?

The only thing I would say that is missing in my backup routine is the holy grail of “automated offsite” backup” (ie - backing up to a web server, etc.). Obviously, you can use services like iDisk for small jobs but creating mirrors of large hard drives is an issue because of space and bandwidth. Would love to see someone solve this one with an easy, low-cost solution.

Also, can I back up two different Macs to one big external drive? (Powerbook w/ 80gb HDD and iMac with 250 gb HDD and one 500 gb LaCie)

Thanks.

Then again, I may be thinking this way because I have limited external data storage space, and I don’t claim to be an expert at all on this subject.

What I am using
System Version: Mac OS X 10.3.9
Kernel Version: Darwin 7.9.0

Disk Utility failed to produce identical permissions on target image and rsync failed to produce all files and identical permissions on target.

I felt good about the image produced and maintained by this method and created a few scripts to do this.

Start with clean partition about the same size as your system and uncheck (Ignore ownership on this volume) in (Get Info) for the volume.
As the (root) or (sudo user) create the initial silver image using following method.

1.) /usr/bin/ditto -rsrcFork

Critical System dirs and files are, you may have a few more under / but not needed.

/Developer
/Library
/System
/Users
/cores
/private
/usr
/bin
/sbin
/mach_kernel
/.hidden

Example:
/usr/bin/ditto -rsrcFork /Applications /Volumes/”Backup Image 1″/Applications

2.) After this you create the missing links

cd /Volumes/Backup
ln -s private/etc etc
ln -s private/var var
ln -s private/tmp tmp
mkdir dev Volumes Network

3.) bless the services to make bootable
bless -folder /Volumes/”Backup Image 1″/System/Library/CoreServices -bootinfo /usr/standalone/ppc/bootx.bootinfo

4.) Keep the User Dirs in sync using rsync and use ditto for movies the under user homes.

rsync -avz –delete -excluded –exclude=”Movies/*”
/usr/bin/ditto -rsrcFork

Example: rsync
/usr/bin/rsync -avz –stats –delete –exclude=”Movies/*” /Users /Volumes/”Backup Image 1″

5.) Update the System Dirs and files as needed using ditto. To be safe always delete the dir trees that will be replaced ditto will not set permissions on directories if they are not removed.

Hope this helps out.
sysadmin@de-young.com
Nelson L. DeYoung

/usr/bin/rsync -avz –stats –delete –exclude=”Movies/*” /Users /Volumes/”Backup Image 1″

http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/03/05/the-state-of-backup-and-cloning-tools-under-mac-os-x/

It looks like these guys have made it happen, but once again I have not tested it yet myself.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060301112336384&lsrc=osxh

Good luck

Nelson de Young

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restore failure:

an error (2) occured while copying. (No such file or directory)

Tried from multiple systems, multiple drives, intel, PPC, OSX 10.4.9, 10.4.10, from the internal hd to external firewire, from external firewire to external firewire, no love all around.

Grr.

Any suggestions appreciated.

I bought a new hard drive to put in my Macbook (160GB Seagate). I want to take my old 80GB out and then copy the contents to the new one. I want to do this without installing OS X on my new HD. However that means I will not have access to Disk Utility on the Macbook only through the old HD (which will be converted to external).

I heard a rumour that when a new HD is inserted in a Macbook and you boot it with the external plugged it, the Macbook will ask if you want to restore from this external HD. Is this true? Please provide some guidance.

Thanks.

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