Creating a Bootable Backup in ML

I've been doing a bit a reading here, but I am still unsure of what I need to do. I recetnly upgraded from Snow Leopard to ML, but I want to create a bootable (mirror) backup on an external drive. I have always used SuperDuper to do this. Super Duper claims that it's latest version will create a bootable backup of ML. My backups in the past have been a bootable mirror of my drive and not the OS alone. Am I better off just redownloading ML and creating a bootable thumb drive of ML or would I be ok mirroring my drive with ML on it as a bootable backup. I hope this was clear...
My backup system has been like this:
Two 1tb bootable HDs (mirrored) that I swap out every week - the one not in use goes into a fire safe
One 2tb for TM
Cloud backup for important stuff.
Thank you!!

The Lion Recovery Disk Assistant is an app. When you Open it, you have the opportunity to create a Recovery HD on a thumb drive for whichever OS X you're currently booted into. Just the Recovery HD and not the entire installation of OS X. The Recovery HD is created and hidden when you install OS X. SuperDuper! doesn't clone this. Here is some reading for the Recovery HD in Mountain Lion. It's the same for Lion. If the Recovery HD isn't on your system, you won't have the ability to boot into it for recovery purposes. So the Recovery Disk Assistant gives you this ability via a thumb drive.
The main difference between creating a Mountain Lion Recovery HD and Lion Recovery HD is the Reinstall Mac OS X option in the Utilities menu. The Lion Recovery HD ONLY downloads and installs Lion. The Mountain Lion Recovery HD ONLY downloads and installs Mountain Lion.
For example, if you create the thumb drive while in Mountain Lion, its Recovery HD is put on the thumb drive. And when you boot from that thumb drive, you get the Utilities menu of selections with the ability to download and install Mountain Lion. So, you can't use that thumb drive to download and install Lion. Hope this makes sense.

Similar Messages

Creating a bootable backup for upgrade to Lion

I've read some articles and watched some videos on how to create a disk of my drive from the disk utility. Is that a good way to create a bootable backup of my Mac Mini? I also want to have all my applications transferred over to Lion, though I know how to do that in the installation of the OS. But I want a fresh install over Snow Leopard and reinstall my apps from that bootable disk, again is that possible? If this can work, how can I know for sure if the backup works?

Spinland wrote:
Then what CSound1 said: use CCC to clone your drive to another disk for safekeeping, then install Lion and enjoy. All of your apps will still be there after the upgrade.
Have you checked to make sure your apps are Lion compatible? This guide can help you find out:
http://fairerplatform.com/2011/07/are-your-apps-lion-compatible-how-to-check/
Hi Spinland
That is not what I said exactly ......
1 Clone the SL (internal) to the external.
2 Boot from the external and install Lion on it.
3 Run Lion from the clone until you know it works (and you can identify any incompatible apps).
4 Clone the Lion external back to the internal.
5 You're done.

Creating a bootable backup - instructions?

I am looking to create a bootable back-up of my MBP so I can expirament with going from 10.4.6 to 10.4.10. (I am wary due to the processor whine issue.) I would like to be able to go back to 4.6 if I can't quiet the whine under 4.10.
Can anyone guide me to a step by step guide on how to do this? I plan to get an OWC Firewire drive.
Thanks!
Mitch

When you get the OWC drive - good choice - connect it to your computer and make sure that you use disk utility to partition the drive using GUID - it's in options under the partition tab.
Download SuperDuper. This is free for making a clone of your hard drive, twenty something if you want incremental backups (faster). For your purpose, free is fine.
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
As long as your hd is partitioned using GUID (format Apple OS Extended (journaled) Super Duper will create a bootable clone.
Best of luck.

When I back up to my iomega external drive is this creating a bootable backup?

I recently noticed in disc utility that my HDD was in red and when I click on it I see the text that reads "this drive has a hard ware problem that can't be repaired". This is a replacement hard drive that I had installed just about a year ago. I guess I will be taking it in to get replaced. I am wondering though, are the backups I am doing on my iomega external hdd "bootable" backups? Will I and how will I be able to get this on to my new hard drive?

Your fear was wise! NEVER EVER use the same external HD for redundant backups. It is extremely wise to use both a Bootable Clone and TM backup however they should be on separate EHDs. The reason being is if the HD crashes you have lost all of your backup. EHD's are very cheap these days so just get yourself another and then use both TM and CCC. This is what I (and many many others) do.
Also here are some articles from MacWorld that discuss different backup strategies. One common thread you will see in each article is using redundant backups.
Backup Plan I
Backup Plan II
Backup Plan III

[Solved]How can I create a bootable backup of my arch linux partition?

I'm trying to get my arch linux installation to have a gui, specifically KDE. I downloaded Xorg and the nvidia proprietary driver 340.24. After installing the nvidia driver and rebooting, my screen stays black and I can't see my console. I can still login and reboot but I just can't see my screen. I've also tried booting into the arch linux fallback listed in the grub bootloader but that also had a black screen. At this point, I just reinstalled Arch Linux since I didn't really have anything on it anyway but this time I hope not to run into this problem. I will try installing a different driver but if I do run into the same problem, I want to be able to just copy over a backup of my OS and just boot off of that instead of completely reinstalling the system. Thanks in advance.
Edit: I read up a bit on the dd command and learned that it can effectively copy an entire partition including the master boot record. Could this be the possible solution? I just wanted to post this edit here to make sure.
Last edited by Firephyz (2014-07-19 20:06:00)

Backing up using dd
When you clone your entire disk the MBR will also be copied over. The wiki just states you can back up just the MBR itself if need be.
I strongly do not recommend just reinstalling your system in the future unless it's needed, you learn nothing from it and it can drive away other users from helping you. Especially if its just and issue to do with Xorg.
Last edited by Kartious (2014-07-18 10:20:23)

Creating a bootable G5 backup on external drive

Can anyone help point me to instructions for creating a bootable backup for a G5 quad v.Tiger_10.4.11 using a LaCie d2 Quadra 500GB external with Firewire 800. I'll also be using this external drive to backup my files/apps daily.
Thanks for your help!

Along with BDAqua's excellent suggestions, there's also SuperDuper!. Like Carbon Copy Cloner, the free version of SuperDuper! will make a fully functioning clone of your source disk.
I use FireWire 800 enclosures purchased from OWC (Other World Computing) and they are bootable. This is the enclosure I bought. It's a bit cheaper to buy the enclosure alone and then pretty much any ATA drive you want to put in it elsewhere. Saved me about $40 a drive to assemble it myself. But they do sell the same enclosure with various size drives already installed if you want to one stop shop.

Does Time Machine make bootable backups?

I used a beautiful backup program called Backup Simplicity in Tiger that made a bootable Exact duplicate of my HD into my external drive. That's really I want to do.
This morning I tried Time Machine for the first time. It only put a backup folder on my external drive. That's not what I want to do.
So here's my question, if I totally erase my external drive will Time Machine make a bootable duplicate of my HD on my external drive also?
Also, is there a way to schedule Time Machine for backups manually?

No, TimeMachine doesn't create a bootable backup, nor can it be controlled manually. The purpose of TimeMachine is to work behind the scenes backing up changed files. Later, when you realize something is amiss, you can 'go back in time' and fix the problem. Admittedly, I'm a little shaky on the details of just how flexible the retrieval system is since I've not yet played with that feature yet. But as I understand it, if you installed a new program and your computer suddenly started going nuts, you'll be able to use TimeMachine to restore your computer to the point before you installed that program. Or, if you realize you improperly edited a file, you'll be able to retrieve the file prior to that editing session.
Apple's team realized three things: 1) most of us don't take the time to perform backups even though we know we should be doing it. 2) most of us don't really understand how to develop a good backup strategy. 3) computers today are so powerful that most of the time the CPU isn't working hard at all and those extra cycles might as well be put to use doing something useful. Hence, TimeMachine's design.
As you noticed, TimeMachine makes a folder and does its incremental backups inside. Since I have an external drive that is much larger than my boot/data drive, I'll continue to clone my boot drive to this external once a week, just as I've been doing. If disaster strikes and I need to use the computer right now, I can do so and at worst my data will be one week out of date. (I should then be able to use TimeMachine to retrieve the missing data but the important thing is that I'm up and running again as soon as I've rebooted.) Later (or if I have the time right away) I'll use TimeMachine to restore/replace my boot drive.

Bootable backup tape.

Is there any way in Solaris 10 to create a bootable backup tape like "mksysb" in AIX or "make_recovery" in HP-UX. I looked through the commmands and didn't see anything at first glance.

if you are looking for the bare metal recovery or cloning part of mksysb you can have a look at flarcreate. It can make an image to a streamer while the system is in production. To recover the image you need a Solaris installation CD. This is the best thing I found so far since I looked for something similar like HP's Ignite make recovery...

Bootable backup?

I am trying to create a bootable backup of my mac hard drive. I attached a USB hard drive to my mac mini 2012. Then I GUID partitioned it, cloned my internal drive to the external (using carbon copy cloner), and confirmed all the data made it over. Then I set the external drive as the bootable drive and restarted; but it still booted from the internal drive. I have retried mulitple times with the same result. I have also tried holding down the option key while restarting but the computer does not give me the option of rebooting from the external drive. Is there something I am missing?
I have confirmed the following:
1. The hard drive dock is bootable to the mac (voyager S3 from macsales.com)
2. The hard drive is readable from the mac
3. The hard drive is partitioned to GUID format
4. Selected the external drive as the boot drive from inside mac os.
Can anyone think of anything else?

As a quick test you can try installing OS X to the external drive to try booting to a fresh installation. If this works then try another cloning approach. It is likely you might have an odd setting or two in Carbon Copy Cloner that might be the problem here. While not the best option, you can use Disk Utility's "restore" feature to clone the boot drive to an external drive.

Bootable backup and time machine/capsule

Is it possible to create a bootable backup using time capsule?

No. TM cannot make bootable backups. You can make bootable backups using the Restore option of Disk Utility or any of the following backup utilities (not an all-inclusive list:)
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
9. SilverKeeper 2.0 (Freeware)
10. MimMac (Commercial)
11. Tri-Backup (Commercial)

Should Bootable Backup HD's Have Free Buffer Space?

Question: when creating the bootable backups, can each partition size be equal to the HD size it is going to backup or should there be some amount of free buffer space? If so, what percentage larger would you recommend the backup HD be than the one containing the OS?
Thanks
brae

Brae wrote:
when creating the bootable backups, can each partition size be equal to the HD size it is going to backup or should there be some amount of free buffer space?
The backup partition doesn't have to be any larger than the partition it's backing up.
You posted your question in the Airport/Time Capsule section. Is there a reason you considered that an appropriate place for it?

Installing Mountain Lion Without Bootable Backup

July 2011 I installed Lion over Snow Leopard and got roundly chastised for not first creating a bootable backup. Now having nothing but trouble first with carbon copy cloner then my external Lacie hard drive died.
I know the answer but I'll ask anyway; Lion was a drastic change from Snow Leopard, no more Rosetta, 64 bit from 32 bit etc. Mt Lion doesn't seem to be that drastically different than Lion. So, better chance to just download over Lion and forget about backup???
thanks in advance
keith

Hi Barney. Thanks for reply. I'm not worried about my data. Stock sales, tax returns,papers,spreadsheets,journal articles, in other words, anything involving numbers or words as pertain to my personal or professional life are backed up every day at 3 a.m. by MOZY. Once a week I move such things to drop box and I have 2 16GB memory sticks.
When I installed Lion, my data was protected but apps no longer worked, battery time went from 7 hours to 3 hours, I couldn't find some apps and some folders. Pictures,tv shows,videos and movies I purchased at I Tunes and elsewhere that I really didn't care about but would have been nice to have kept were gone.
By the time 10.7.4 came out,almost all non-I Tunes issues (except the battery) were resolved. Virtually everyone at these boards insisted i should have done a complete backup and clean install which I still want to do but this seemingly simple task is becoming a royal pain in the butt. Until Lion, I had downloaded every new OS just like Apple says to with no problems. I don't want to go through what I went through with Lion and will get another external hard drive and buy Carbon Copy Cloner if that's what I should. Already purchased Disc Warrior per CCC suggestion and will bite the bullett if you say to

Create Full HD Backup to encrypted bootable external drive

I have used SuperDuper to copy my internal HD to a bootable external drive configured with a 300 GB partition. Now I want to go one step further by creating that same backup but this time I want my external data to be encrypted for added security. I do not care if the OS and Applications files are encrypted as long as I can encrypt my home folder.
1) Does SuperDuper have an encryption feature?
If yes, how do you activate it?
2) If not, can I accomplish what I want using a Macbook Pro utility e.g. Disk Utility and perhaps
turn on FileVault?
3) Can I simply just turn on FileVault encryption and use Finder to drag my internal HD to external?
If yes, will my external drive now be bootable still?
Thanks in advance.

Turn on Filevault, then use SuperDuper.

Bootable Backup- created and works BUT....

I've got a full bootable backup on my external lacie firewire drive. My PB G4 15" can boot from it, happily.
(tiger, not leopard)
My question is what other macs could boot off the drive? e.g. MacMini, Macbook, Macbook pro (intel)? or is the bootable backup only good for my specific machine?

I can't speak for the Intel-based Macs because I don't have any of those (though my folks and sister have MacBooks, go figure... they have "more powerful" machines than me... I have lots of PowerPC-based apps that I'm still using as well as OS 9 ones in Classic) but I'm sure they are no different with Intel-based Macs.
I know for a fact that you can boot from any machine that supports Tiger and matches the specs of what's on your LaCie external drive.
So, your PowerBook G4 15-inch that's been backed up onto the LaCie, will function as that PowerBook when you boot up on any G4-based Mac mini, PowerMac, iMac, etc.
Though even G3 machines will work. I mean, G3 machine's drives will work as bootup drives in G4. (I never tried vice versa). I have a drive that is the original drive from a PowerMac G3, and I put it inside an older PowerMac G4 model--older than the Dual FW800 model that I have--and it booted up fine.
I'm sure you know how to choose your boot volume at startup? Hold down the OPTION key at startup and it will let you select your startup drive.
The perfect example is this. In April, I sent my 12-inch PowerBook into the Genius Bar to have the LCD screen replaced under warranty. I created a backup of my 12-incher's drive. I was able to connect that to my PowerMac G4 and startup as if I was using my 12-inch PowerBook all along.
You can even do that via FireWire in Target Disk Mode. I can, essentially, if I wanted to, use my PowerMac G4 on my 12-inch PowerBook.
The only caveat there is that of the processor. Let's say you are able to run Aperture on your PowerBook 15-inch. If you plug that LaCie external drive into a 433 MHz PowerMac G4, you won't be able to run Aperture since it doesn't qualify for the minimum system requirements.
But you can do everything else that does qualify (like iMovie, iPhoto, maybe not GarageBand or Pages, if you have those).
Hope that helps.

Time Machine won't create a bootable full backup

Equipment : Mid 2010 13" Unibody MBP, Late 2010 1Tb Apple Time Capsule, 4Gb RAM, 240Gb HDD, OSX Mavericks
Upgraded to Mavericks a few months ago, Time Machine has been backing up incrementally to my 1Tb Time Capsule no problem for years.
I have just bought a SSD so , feeling very confident, popped out the Seagate Momentus and replaced with PNY 240gb SSD. Booted off my Mavericks recovery CD, selected restore from a previous Time Machine Backup, selected My Time Capsule, MyMac.sparsebundle,Continue
To my horror, the last full backup was June 2012, kind of worked out why - I had some Exclude options in Time Machine preferences that excluded /Caches , Download folder, Trash so wasnt creating any Full backups
In order did the following
Put the Seagate HDD back in and booted up successfully
removed all the excludes in Time Machine ,
renamed MyMac.sparsebundle to MyMacX.sparsebundleX ,
kicked off Back Up Now in the confidence that this would create a brand new backup and do a full backup of the disk
It didnt, what looked like a full backup started taking about 2h though no full backups found in the newly created MyMac.sparsebundle, so something isnt being backed up to make a full bootable backup
Checked to see if there were any other system excludes with
sudo defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine SkipSystemFiles
Answer came back as 0, so obviously not that
Rebooted my Mac and Time Capsule, deleted MyMac.sparsebundle, did step 4 again
Exactly the same result.
So at this time, I cannot create a full backup to enable a HDD swap out with my SSD
Help, Ideas anyone

You need to partition and format the drive first.
Drive Partition and Format
1. Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Quit Disk Utility after formatting is finished. Install Snow Leopard. Upgrade to Mavericks.

Creating a Bootable Backup in ML

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