A clone is slightly different to a Time Machine backup because it can be used to boot from, so you could plug it in to another Mac and boot up from it without recovering your Mac, which could be. When Disk Utility is done, you can shut down your Mac and hold down Option when booting it back up. This brings up the boot switcher and lets you boot from the external hard drive. You can use your Mac as normal, but keep in mind that it's separate from the installation on your main internal hard drive. A bootable backup is what it sounds like: a backup that you can use to boot and run your computer. If your computer's hard drive is damaged, the bootable backup is a second copy you can use to keep working. It also makes it possible to run your own computer off other Macs, if necessary. You can also pull individual files from a bootable backup. Nov 15, 2016 There are two main Mac options for creating bootable backups: Super Duper and Carbon Copy Cloner. Both offer free limited versions, and full versions for $30 and $40, respectively. The full versions allow you to schedule updates on a regular basis and update backups with new changes only.
| Click here to return to the '10.5: Make a bootable Time Machine backup drive' hint |
I, maybe wrong, thought that TM used the whole disk to perform backups. If so, once selected as the TM volume it would overwrite the restored DVD image. Am I correct?
You can have other things on the same drive as TM, sure. I have my Aperture vault on it for example.
Time Machine will use all available space but it won't overwrite other non-Time Machine files on the same drive/partition.
No, TM won't overwrite any data already on the disk. It only uses all available space on the drive. Actually, in my experience so far, even that isn't quite accurate. I've been running it since about a week or so after 10.5 came out, and the space used by time machine appears to be holding fairly steady at about 10 GB more than the space used on the drive it is backing up, far less than the available space on the TM drive. Course, my files are relative static- if you change a lot of files, especially big ones, it would doubtless use more space, but probably still not gobs more.
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Aluminum iMac 20' 2.4 GHz/3GB/300GB HD
Ok, thank you all for the replies. I've an iMac 20' with a 250Gb disk, and another 500Gb USB disk (half of it filled with music & stuff) that was afraid to use 'cause of what I thought TM did.
Anyway, I'll have to free some more Gb off of the USB disk.
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Fefo
Time Machine creates a folder on the TM drive called 'Backups.backupdb',
this is where all TM related stuff resides.
Even if or when TM does fill the drive it does so by filling all the 'unused' disk space, never overwriting other existing data.
Can I somehow restore the install DVD to a firewire drive without formatting it first? I have files on it that I don't want to lose.
no. a restore will erase the partition.
As others have commented, Time Machine won't overwrite your OS info. And it may not fill the entire hard drive. But if it does nearly fill the hard drive, OS X will have a difficult, if not impossible time booting.
You always need some free space on your boot volume that the os can use for swap.
I don't think this hint is about booting an actual Mac OS X system, bur rather just the installer, which comes on a DVD that is read-only anyway so there shouldn't be a problem with swap.
You are spot on, I probably could have made this clearer in my original post.
I thinks thats the (almost) only way Time Machine is really usefull. The main reason for data loss (and the need for a backup) in my case until now was hard drive failure.
So I need a harddrive from which I can boot and continue working. Actually ... I use super duper, which safes you from the hassle of reinstalling everything.
>>Actually ... I use super duper, which safes you from the hassle of reinstalling everything.
I doubt that since SuperDuper is not (yet) compatible with Leopard. If you are able to make a bootable backup with SuperDuper and OS 10.5.1, please pass your method on to the developer, Dave Nanian. He's been feverishly working on a compatible SuperDuper since the Leopard release date.
Hi, sorry, that wasn't clear:
I am still on Tiger, and one of the reasons is that SuperDuper doesn't work on Leopard + I am a bit paranoid about backups after some bad experience.
For this reason the Hint about making the TM drive bootable was a very good one.
However, I might stay on Tiger, because I like the fuzzlessness and ease of use of SuperDuper. Its good to know, that a lot can happen, and you just have to plug in (or screw in) your external harddrive
I've been using SuperDuper! for about a year now, doing a nightly, bootable clone of my main internal drive to another internal drive. I also have my machine wake up every morning at 3am, let the UNIX routines do their thing, then via an Applescript, backup my critical files to one of a series of 14 DVDs (2 week rotation) so that I've got a 2 week span to go back to, if needed.
Works for me.
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'When you're finished learning, you're finished.'
You can use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the install DVD to your Time Machine drive if you don't want to reformat. Just make sure nothing at the root level of your Time Machine drive is named the same as any of the root level of the install DVD. You can see what these are once you launch Carbon Copy Cloner. I tried it and it worked without a hitch. I avoided having to shuffle 200GB of data already stored on the Time Machine drive.
You can use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the install DVD to your Time Machine drive if you don't want to reformat. Just make sure nothing at the root level of your Time Machine drive is named the same as any of the root level of the install DVD. You can see what these are once you launch Carbon Copy Cloner. I tried it and it worked without a hitch. I avoided having to shuffle 200GB of data already stored on the Time Machine drive.That's an excellent hint all on its own. Well done.
Bootable Backup For Machinery
Didn't think about that when I read the earlier question about Disk Utility.
As others have commented, Time Machine won't overwrite your OS info. And it may not fill the entire hard drive. But if it does nearly fill the hard drive, OS X will have a difficult, if not impossible time booting.
You always need some free space on your boot volume that the os can use for swap.
I don't think this hint is about booting an actual Mac OS X system, bur rather just the installer, which comes on a DVD that is read-only anyway so there shouldn't be a problem with swap.
You are spot on, I probably could have made this clearer in my original post.
I thinks thats the (almost) only way Time Machine is really usefull. The main reason for data loss (and the need for a backup) in my case until now was hard drive failure.
So I need a harddrive from which I can boot and continue working. Actually ... I use super duper, which safes you from the hassle of reinstalling everything.
>>Actually ... I use super duper, which safes you from the hassle of reinstalling everything.
I doubt that since SuperDuper is not (yet) compatible with Leopard. If you are able to make a bootable backup with SuperDuper and OS 10.5.1, please pass your method on to the developer, Dave Nanian. He's been feverishly working on a compatible SuperDuper since the Leopard release date.
Hi, sorry, that wasn't clear:
I am still on Tiger, and one of the reasons is that SuperDuper doesn't work on Leopard + I am a bit paranoid about backups after some bad experience.
For this reason the Hint about making the TM drive bootable was a very good one.
However, I might stay on Tiger, because I like the fuzzlessness and ease of use of SuperDuper. Its good to know, that a lot can happen, and you just have to plug in (or screw in) your external harddrive
I've been using SuperDuper! for about a year now, doing a nightly, bootable clone of my main internal drive to another internal drive. I also have my machine wake up every morning at 3am, let the UNIX routines do their thing, then via an Applescript, backup my critical files to one of a series of 14 DVDs (2 week rotation) so that I've got a 2 week span to go back to, if needed.
Works for me.
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'When you're finished learning, you're finished.'
You can use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the install DVD to your Time Machine drive if you don't want to reformat. Just make sure nothing at the root level of your Time Machine drive is named the same as any of the root level of the install DVD. You can see what these are once you launch Carbon Copy Cloner. I tried it and it worked without a hitch. I avoided having to shuffle 200GB of data already stored on the Time Machine drive.
You can use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the install DVD to your Time Machine drive if you don't want to reformat. Just make sure nothing at the root level of your Time Machine drive is named the same as any of the root level of the install DVD. You can see what these are once you launch Carbon Copy Cloner. I tried it and it worked without a hitch. I avoided having to shuffle 200GB of data already stored on the Time Machine drive.That's an excellent hint all on its own. Well done.
Bootable Backup For Machinery
Didn't think about that when I read the earlier question about Disk Utility.Well done.
RetroSpaceman --
This seems like a great idea, so I gave it a while, using CCC to copy my Tiger Install DVD onto an existing volume that contains both my current TM backups folder and some other folders that I use for backing up things like my Parallels disk image that I don't want TM to deal with.
BUT... when I re-booted with the option key held down I was offered my TM drive as a start-up option. I got to the point where I had a grey screen with the spinning 'clock' thingy, but it spun and spun and never got to the installer's welcome screen.
Any ideas? Did I miss a step that should be completed after running CCC?
Thanks,
-Barry
Wonder if the HD isn't initialized properly (old vs. GUID)?
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Two things in this world aren't overrated: Macintosh and Lemon Meringue Pie.
I've had exactly the same failure after copying the DVD to a Lacie Firewire disk with CCC. Grey spin stays for as long as I can be bothered to wait until I power down.
Drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Apple_HFS with GUID.
No idea why this won't work. I have another drive like this with a dedicated partition that I use with SuperDuper (I'm still running Tiger).
GadgetDoctor
Backup Utility For Mac
Interesting tip. I tried this on my time machine volume and was able to successfully boot from the volume into the installer without losing my time machine backups (2 machines). The problem is when I select Restore from Time Machine the time machine backups do not appear on the list; it just keeps searching and searching...
any ideas on a work around? Would love for this solution to work without a hitch.
I've read over the comments here and the referenced hint, yet both seem to assume one Install disk, not two. If it were one, I could see it simply easy to restore/copy the Install disk to the new drive. My assumption is that restoring the 2nd Install disk would destroy the contents of the 1st disk on the new drive. Am I wrong here? I confess I haven't checked the 2nd DVD to see if the contents are in separate directories. I would prefer to use the Disk Utility, though I have SuperDuper, also.
A follow-up question would be whether I need to manually create a boot block (make bootable) on the new drive after I've restored the Install disks to it?
Thanks.
One user posted a very interesting question. Two install discs are provided with the new system. How is the installation done in this case?
I think the O.P. was talking about a retail version of OS 10.5 (which comes on one DVD-DL).
If you try to do this with the CDs/DVDs provided with your computer (Restore Softwares DVD, etc.) you will probably have to 'trim' down the DVD to get only the System Install (extract the System Installer and not the iApps and cie).
I,m trying this technique. I have been using a Time Capsule Time machine for regular MacAir Time Machine backups and using it as a place to store files for transfer (overflow from my old large Tiger Macbook). I am willing to scape all this ( I have an extra backup.)
1) why doesn't disk utility see the time machine time capsule disk.
2) how does one go back and make Time Capsule a virgin time machine disk?
maybe this hint is too old, and apple has since changed the way Disk Utility works, but I tried restoring the installation DVD to a not empty partition, and it worked perfectly without erasing a thing.
Am I missing anything?
I have had no problems with a 2 disk install. My Time Machine drive now contains the following: various invisible Unix items; the 'Install Mac OS X and Bundled Software' app; an alias to 'Install Bundled Software Only'; and folders named 'Instructions', Xcode Tools', 'Optional Installs' & 'Backups.backupdb' - the last-named being, of course, my Time Machine backup folder.
I can boot from it, restore from it, whatever - nothing overwritten or broken.
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Steve Rogers, The Difference Engine
http://www.difference-engine.co.uk
this works great in 10.6 as well
the instructions weren't very clear
1. launch disk utility
2. choose your hard disk you want to use as time machine
3. click the restore tab
4. drag the mac os x install dvd icon to the source from the finder desktop
5. drag the hard disk icon to the destination from the finder desktop
6. click the restore button
7. get a coffee
Neo Code Software, Design - Develop - Deploy mission critical web apps for SMEs to Fortune 500s, http://www.neocodesoftware.com
FileMaker, AppleScript, PHP /
Bootable Backup For Macbook
I have to wonder: Can this method be used to put the Install DVDs on a 32GB SDHD card as an emergency disk for the new MacBooks with SD drive slots? Has anyone tried this?
Doc
As soon as I bought my SL DVD, I put it in an SD card (simply because it takes 5 mins to boot off the DVD - at least on my iMac) and I believe this is the method I used.
Cool beans. I am in the midst of using this method to put both of my Macbook Pro install DVDs onto a 32 GB SD card. First restore predicted a run time over 24 hours.
I will report back when the process has finished. If fully successful, my SD card should be able to a) Boot Mac OS X, b) install Mac OS X to new hard drive, c) run diagnostic Apps to troubleshoot or recover problem drives, d) run hardware tests, e) install individual applications.
Wish me luck.
Doc
Update: I was able to put both Original Install Disks for my MacBook Pro onto a single SD card. With that card I can boot, install Mac OS X, Run Disk Utility, and perform the Apple Hardware tests. I still need to install more utilities on the card.
Doc
Quick silly question, I just wanted to clarification on step 5. Which hard drive are you dragging to the destination and what is this doing? Thanks
I tried to copy the installer dvd onto a partition using a ccc or a disk utility but then i had some errors and notification about some files missing, is about copy protection of the dvd? should i use the time machine instead? it's kinda urgent 'coz my dvd is barely dead and i want to have it back, i ain't goin' to polish it :D
