Keeping a Hot Backup of Your Mac Hard Drive
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You don’t really understand the importance of backups until your hard drive crashes. With most backups, you’ll need to reinstall the operating system and then restore all of your data. OS X comes with a handy tool that will let you create a live copy of your hard drive that can be started up and run just like it is your computer.
My Powerbook had to go in for some repairs a few months ago, but I couldn’t afford to be without my computer for 3 days. By creating a live bootable copy of my entire computer to an external drive, I was able to ship off my laptop, plug my hard drive into an old G3 iMac, and continue working just like I was on my Powerbook. It was slower of course, but I still had access to all of my data, programs and settings. When the Powerbook came back, I simply copied the external hard drive over my laptop hard drive, rebooted and continued working with very little downtime.
This feature is part of the Disk Utility application stored in your Application > Utilities folder. It is simple to use, but you have to pay attention to make sure you are copying your data in the correct direction-you don’t want to accidentally copy an old backup over your working data.
When you launch Disk Utility, it will show you a list of the available drives on your computer. In the example, I have my internal hard drive (a 74.5 GB hitachi) with a single partition called Macintosh HD. My 232 GB LaCie drive has three partitions, Test, Backup, and Storage. The Backup directory is where I want to put my data.
In the right hand side of the application, I’m going to select the Restore tab. I’m going to “restore” my internal drive into the Backup partition on my external drive. This will make the Backup partition into an exact copy of my local drive-even changing its name to Machintosh HD.
With the Restore tab selected I simply drag Machintosh HD into the source and Backup into the destination and tell it to erase the destination. At this point I always double check carefully to make sure my source and destination are correct and that I’m not accidentally going to overwrite important data.
Clicking on the Restore button starts the process. It isn’t particularly fast. Ideally you should make the partition you are restoring to as close in size to the original in order for the transfer to be as efficient as possible.
If you ever need to bootup the drive on another computer simply tell that computer to start using the external drive as the startup drive. This is done from the System Preferences using the Startup Disk icon.
Once you reboot the system, it should boot up using the external hard drive as if it is the system you backed up originally.
To restore from your hard drive, you’ll simply perform the restore process, but this time moving the data from your external drive back to your computer’s internal drive.
If you found this article interesting you might like the article about backing up DVDs to your hard drive: Travelling with Movies on your Mac.
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on February 13th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
Does anyone know a way a automate this process, so that it could happen regularly in the background on a schedule? I’m the kind of person that would start something like this, do it for a few days, then forget about it, until my hard drive crashed.
on February 14th, 2006 at 7:44 am
I’m working on a solution for this because I have the same problem. Once I get it figured out, I’ll post another article detailing how to do it. Basically, it will be a script that is run by cron every night. I’m hoping I can make it check for the presence of the external hard drive and only do the backup if it is online.
on February 17th, 2006 at 6:57 am
Use Carbon Copy Cloner to automate this process. Or SuperDuper or any of the other drive cloning software out there. CCC is free, thats why I recommend it. I run a backup every Wednesday and Sunday on schedule with CCC.
on February 17th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Yeah, Carbon Copy is awesome.
on February 17th, 2006 at 10:18 am
dd on a crontab.
on February 17th, 2006 at 10:21 am
Couldn’t you use OS X Automator somehow?
on February 17th, 2006 at 10:26 am
My method is a terminal job that runs at login, which is a simple saved rsync command. I just back up my user folder, but in principle this could be extended to the whole drive (I assume). Rsync has the advantage that it only moves those files which have changed - usually the script is done in a couple minutes.
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.
on February 17th, 2006 at 10:33 am
I recommend using rsync to keep the firewire-drive update. The benefits of rsync, a Unix command line app: It copies only files changed since last restore. So it speeds up things a lot after the first complete backup.
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?
on February 17th, 2006 at 10:35 am
SuperDuper is by far the best solution… trust me, it’s SOOO worth the $20. It works like a dream, it is dead simple, and the tech support is amazing. And NO, I’m not being paid to say this
www.shirtpocket.com
on February 17th, 2006 at 10:43 am
Another alternative is to use rsync (or rsyncX) to create a clone without copying every file, every time.
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.
on February 17th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Or automate it using rsync. Once you have made the backup once, use rsync to copy over _just the changes_. Do you really want to be duplicating your entire Music/Photo/Video library each time?
on February 17th, 2006 at 10:59 am
Try this :
#!/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
on February 17th, 2006 at 11:01 am
Ah yes, and the major advantage of using asr this way is you can do it using crontab, and you don’t need a user being logged in (as with SuperDuper AFAIK ?)
Rainer
on February 17th, 2006 at 11:09 am
I’ve designed a script for using Rsync to automate backups on our mac xserve systems. I’ve tried all the methods as it is my job to do so and nothing beats this for a live system. The only way you will get a true mirror using these applications (diskutil, superduper, ccc, etc) is to put your drive into target mode.
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.
on February 17th, 2006 at 11:17 am
“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.
on February 17th, 2006 at 11:27 am
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?
on February 17th, 2006 at 11:27 am
Is there a way to get Carbon Copy CLoner to wake the computer from sleep mode to do schedued backups? I have it set for 3AM but the backups never happen cause the comps asleep.
on February 17th, 2006 at 11:29 am
# dd if=/dev/yourdrive of=/mnt/backup/backupoftheweek
Or add that to cron/crontab.
on February 17th, 2006 at 11:33 am
This is a great read, thanks! I’ve been meaning to play with SuperDuper for months now, haven’t gotten around to it yet. You just pushed me to take care of it.
Chris
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com
on February 17th, 2006 at 11:43 am
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).
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.
on February 17th, 2006 at 11:44 am
Ack - make this site readable. Larger font please.
on February 17th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Use ditto and cron to automate this on the cheap
ditto -c $SOURCEDISK_ROOT - | ( cd $DSTDISK_ROOT; ditto -x - )
I used ditto for the same purpose as the author above ..
Cheers
Reimer
on February 17th, 2006 at 11:58 am
open a terminal and type “man asr”. This will show the documentation for the “asr” command. Disk Utility is a GUI for the asr command. You can script the asr command.
on February 17th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Can I Back up my laptop to DVD if i have a burner?
on February 17th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
[…] Maak een “live” backup van je OSX, geen reboot, geen herstart naar dos.Keeping a Hot Backup of Your Mac Hard Drive […]
on February 17th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
I have found rsync to be invaluable for doing backups of my data. It will save off incremental copies (files that change every day, for instance) if you want and is completely automatable. Not only that, but it can also work over a network, allowing you to keep a copy of your backup onto a seaparate system (which doesn’t HAVE to be a Mac). This makes the concept of a “backup server” possible-a system dedicated to storing the backups of many systems at once.
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
on February 17th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
I second using SuperDuper. SuperDuper allows smart updates (only updates the files that have changed) and you can set up complex backup schedules easily (ie. – backup nightly but alternate between two different backup partitions every two weeks giving you a larger window to find and recover corrupted files that may have become seated in the daily backup schedule).
on February 17th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
I use Deja Vu and it creates a perfect clone and it will do incramental backups and you can schedule them for anytime you want.
on February 17th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
I use Silverkeeper from Lacie. (http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper)
It’s free and lets you set up scheduled backups.
on February 17th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Could it be automated with Automator?
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/automator/
That little robot looks so friendly.
on February 17th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
There is a tool called Carbon Copy Cloner that will do the same sort of thing; I prefer it in a lot of cases. It uses the ditto command which is a fail safe copy (if CCC encounteres a file it can’t copy it just skips it and keeps going) It also has the option to set up an automatic backup schedule. One warning I should give: OS updates can sometimes overwrite the schedule requiring that it be set up again.
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
on February 17th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
Why not just make a raid array with the external drive? When the computer is unplugged, the drive works just fine. When you plug it back in, it catches up automatically.
on February 17th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
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.
LW_Will
on February 17th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
rsync works just as well….
you can automate it with cron
on February 17th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
I’ve used Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDooper to back up and they both work very well. I personally like SD better because of its interface and ease of use.
on February 17th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
SuperDuper has one other benefit, besides doing this drop dead easily.
It lets you creat yet another version of your Mac OS on yet another partition, but this one is tiny- about 12 gigs.
You name it “sandbox” and it shares all your apps and files with you main hard drive. All that’s on it is the OS itself. You can boot to it whenever Apple issues a new OS update or you want to try out some new application that you’re concerned might screw up your system and then install the program onto the Sandbox drive. Then see how things run for a couple of days. If everything’s oK, reboot into your main drive and install there too. If it’s a nightmare, no problem, go back to your main drive, which is pristine. GREAT IDEA!!
I love my superduper. Best $20 I’ve ever spent.
on February 17th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
we have been using ChronoSync for a year and it too has been great.
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!
on February 17th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
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.
on February 17th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Does anyone use Maxtor one touch with Retrospect? I use it and it works fine, but is Superduper better?
on February 17th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Anyone using rsync should look at rsnapshot, which is a wrapper around rsync. By using Unix hard-links it is able to keep multiple backups available (hourly, daily, weekly and monthly) without using very much disk space.
on February 17th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
2 questions…
How do you restore the backup, with/without working OS?
Does this work on OSx86 PC installs OK?
thnx
on February 17th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
[…] Here’s one backup technique, using a hard drive (my preferred method).: Click here […]
on February 18th, 2006 at 3:17 am
I posted a complete guide on how I backup my iBook HD to an external bootable HD in my blog:
http://blog.no-panic.at/2006/01/09/my-os-x-backup-strategy/
on February 18th, 2006 at 8:57 am
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.
on February 18th, 2006 at 8:59 am
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.
on February 18th, 2006 at 9:01 am
That is an interesting idea. I’m going to definately have to try that because it would be much faster.
on February 18th, 2006 at 9:11 am
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.
on February 18th, 2006 at 9:23 am
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.
on February 18th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
You could always use rsync, combined with ssh ofcourse.
rsync -a -delete -delete-excluded -exclude=”Movies/*” -e ssh /Users/shortname/ username@host:/home/username/backup
That command rox
on February 19th, 2006 at 10:12 am
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. The Silverkeeper program does incremental as well but it doesn’t work for impremental backup if your disks are the same size and you have one folder that is larger than the remaining free space.
on February 19th, 2006 at 10:40 am
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?
on February 19th, 2006 at 12:53 pm
[…] Keeping a Hot Backup of Your Mac Hard Drive Been doing this for imaging Macs at ETC. It’s a quick guide to cloning your Mac’s startup drive Keywords: howto, mac, productivity, tips […]
on February 20th, 2006 at 12:37 am
I think its funny when people gripe about the font size here. What, typing = in Safari is hard?
on February 20th, 2006 at 11:04 am
One thing to note… there are some programs (eg Final Draft) that have authentication features that don’t copy over properly. If you have Final Draft ‘Authorized’ on your computer and it needs service that is going to require your hard drive to be wiped or whatever… make sure that you Deauthorize your computer before you wipe it. I know for a fact that the FD guys are real pricks about their proprietary copy protection.
on February 20th, 2006 at 10:13 pm
I think SuperDuper strikes a nice balance between power and simplicity, very inline with Mac thinking. Dave the developer of SuperDuper is also very responsive which makes using the app that much more enjoyable.
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.
on February 21st, 2006 at 10:39 am
[…] Interesting enough, did you know OS X comes with a backup feature that allows you to not only backup your entire hard drive but actually use it on another Mac as the primary drive? So, if you have to send out your Mac for repair but have to still work as if you’re on your existing Mac, you can. As long as you have another Mac around and an external hard drive. Sweet, huh? […]
on February 22nd, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Has anyone used Backup 3.1 from Apple? Any opinions vs SuperDuper or CCC ? I’m just looking for an easy and non-Terminal way of doing things for the home user with way to much music and video to lose.
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.
on February 23rd, 2006 at 7:13 pm
maybe I’m the only person in the world who feels this way, but for me part of the magic of Mac OS X is that I don’t need to back up my whole hard drive. I’m using PSyncX to automatically (smart-)backup my user folder, and occasionally I’ll manually make sure that all applications which are difficult to get are also backed up. I just don’t feel like I need to back up all of Mac OSX systemfiles and other such data.
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.
on February 27th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
[…] read more | digg story […]
on March 2nd, 2006 at 4:10 pm
Am I missing something here? To do a complete clone or restore backup of your harddrive, don’t you need to be running from another startup disk or cd to get all the system files that would normally be active and not copy?
on March 4th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
A combination of ditto and rsync works well for me as a home user. I would refine this somewhat if I had to use this process in production.
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.
[email protected]
Nelson L. DeYoung
on March 4th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
opps this is the cmd I use to rsync user dirs
/usr/bin/rsync -avz -stats -delete -exclude=”Movies/*” /Users /Volumes/”Backup Image 1″
on March 11th, 2006 at 2:33 am
Whenever you deploy Mac backup tools such as rsync, ditto, CCC, psync, etc., you should be aware of the different tools’ deficiencies. Especially the older tools have some subtle problems that make a true 1:1 copy impossible. Most problems are related to metadata. I have posted an analysis here:
http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/03/05/the-state-of-backup-and-cloning-tools-under-mac-os-x/
on March 15th, 2006 at 8:55 am
[…] First, my computer is directly tied to my income. If my computer goes down, I lose the ability to make money, so uptime is very important to me. This means I have to be able to be up and running in short order if my laptop is stolen, broken, or sent back to Apple for repairs. Currently the way I protect myself from these types of issues is by imaging my machine to an external hard drive. If my machine becomes unusable, I can simply boot up my Mac Mini or Strawberry G3 and be up and running with all my applications and files just like I had on my 17 inch Powerbook. If I’m traveling and my Mac needs repair (but isn’t completely broken) borrowing or buying an external hard drive lets me back up my machine and use it on any of my friend’s or family’s OS X based PPC machines. […]
on April 12th, 2006 at 1:08 am
just a question, does it work with usb drives? seems it only works with firewire as usb is not bootable on my powerbook g4 1,67
on April 17th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
It is my understanding that Bootable USB is coming, but not it is still not gui startup from options key. It will have to be intergrated into hardware open firmware. You might boot to cd then to usb, but I have not tried it.
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
on May 1st, 2006 at 5:06 am
Sounds useful i can’t count the number of harddrive crashes i have had over the last 5 year. Always useful to have a full backup of your drive
on May 5th, 2006 at 1:00 am
[…] Have you backed up your Mac recently, you should. Here’s an easy way to do it […]
on May 26th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
[…] As my digital life becomes more complicated I’ve run across numerous backup strategies that have been helpful. However, I recently discovered an easy way to keep a digitally secure copy of my most critical documents with me at any point in time. This article is a shortened version of a larger article I am working on regarding comprehensive mac backup strategies. […]
on May 30th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
[…] www.digital501.com » Keeping a Hot Backup of Your Mac Hard Drive You don’t really understand the importance of backups until your hard drive crashes. With most backups, you’ll need to reinstall the operating system and then restore all of your data. OS X comes with a handy tool that will let you create a live copy (tags: bnm backup osx) […]
on June 15th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
[…] As my digital life becomes more complicated I’ve run across numerous backup strategies that have been helpful. However, I recently discovered an easy way to keep a digitally secure copy of my most critical documents with me at any point in time. This article is a shortened version of a larger article I am working on regarding comprehensive mac backup strategies.The Goal […]
on January 30th, 2007 at 1:54 am
I was very pleased when this worked for me, enabling me to put a complete, bootable copy of my internal hard drive onto my LaCie firewire 800 external drive.
First time it did not work. The “restore” to the external drive appeared to work fine, but when I tried to boot from it, it would not. I have an Intel-based Mac, so the partition format is different from PowerPCs etc. The newer partition format is known as GUID partition table. The prior format was Apple Partition Map.
The LaCie external drive was preformatted for Macs, but with the Apple Partition Map. I repartitioned it to GUID Partition Table, repeated the “restore” to it, and when I tried to boot from it, it worked fine, with my complete system apparently in place.
Just wanted to pass on the tip to anyone else who may experience a “non-boot” problem.
on February 18th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Call me stupd but im a little confused.
If i use disk utility to copy m harddrive to an external hard drive why do i need CCC or SuperDuper to backup my disk???
I simply want to be able to back my docs/movies/music to my external hard drive. Should i use disk utility or download CCC? Thanks
on February 25th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
tramadol…
news…
on May 24th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
[…] » Keeping a Hot Backup of Your Mac Hard Drive | You don’t really understand the importance of backups until your hard drive crashes. With most backups, you’ll need to reinstall the operating system and then restore all of your data. OS X comes with a handy tool that will let you create a live copy of your hard drive that can be started up and run just like it is your computer. […]
on May 25th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
[…] to get another external hard drive for me and Hanna where we can keep hot backups of our systems. Here’s a guide on how to do just […]
on June 1st, 2007 at 2:20 pm
camper tab…
ka-ka-sh-ka 3326201 Modern view of camper tab….
on June 14th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Has anyone had problems trying to get this to work? I am using an intel based mac, Mac OS x version 10.4.9 and a LaCie firewire external drive. I have a lab of these and would like to get a backup of one before they are used. The problem that I am having is it gets halfway through the copying process and then i get an error that says Restore Failure An error (2) occurred while copying. (no such file or directory). Any idea’s on what i am doing wrong?
on June 18th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Same thing is happening to me. I get the same error code as Jeremy. The only difference is that I am using a Maxtor external drive on my powerbook G4 running OS X version 10.3.9. That and mine doesnt even get half way though the copying process. The error comes up the second the copying begins. Someone care to help us out?
on June 23rd, 2007 at 4:51 am
Same as Jeremy and Alex. I’ve tried many times and I get the “no such file or directory” error either immediately or after half the operation is complete.
on July 15th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
I have the same problem with the error 2 - what is this?
on July 19th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Same problem with the error (2), the exact text of which is:
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.
on August 2nd, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Hey,
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.
on August 16th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Google SuperDuper! great backup tool ….
on August 26th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Same as Jeremy, Alex, Conor, lucas, and Mark
on September 6th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
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on October 9th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
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on October 22nd, 2007 at 2:25 am
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Gary…
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