Backing Up a drive so it boots.

Hi All,
8 months ago I purchased a Intel SSD 320 for my Mini. I cloned it from the existing 2.5" 5400 HD that wasin Mini. The OS Lion on it is also tip top but doesnt have the update from earlier this year.
My new SSD has been fantastic but although I have TM set up on my server (Ubuntu) and that is also all fine I would like to update / synchronise my installed SSD with the older HD which is now installed in a SATA case via USB to my Mini so that I have a fall back drive to install should things go tittsup.
Now although I could delete the original HD and clone the the current Lion on SSD it seems pointless as I am sure there is a way of just telling the Mini to look for changes and simply update the USB connected drive so that it is a mirror image.
As the spare drive is available I am looking to do this in case the SSD fails for some reason and all I need do is swap the drives, albeit going back to a slower drive. (This is no issue but at least all data is safe).
What I don't want to happen is the the old drive changes items on the SSD. For example I spent some time clearing out stuff that was no longer relevant and really don't need a copy of it. Of course the old drive will have this on it.
What the best way of achieving the duplicate that will allow me to boot from the original drive as at present if I removed the the SSD and put in old HD it would start as normal as if nothing had changed.
Your thoughts much appreciated,
Michael
NB. Familiar with CCC and Super D

I may be missing something, but SuperDuper! smart update mode does that. that is, making the traget exactly like the source, but copying only changed/new files from the source, and deleting "orphaned" files from the target to make them indentical. that is it will synchonize the disks copying only what is necessary to do so. I beleive that this is available in the paid mode.
CCC also has the same mode available.

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title Arch unRAID
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slytux wrote:Try rebuilding the initramfs image without 'scsi' and 'sata' in the HOOKS array. I had a similar problem when I had to remove 'pata' because I had an IDE drive that I was using for a secondary disk.
Ok I tried this and still got a kernel panic. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by removing pata as well. Isn't that required to detect the ide drives? I guess I could try removing it as well and see what happens.

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Hi,
I am selling my MacPro and need to clone its system drive for the new lap top I will buy soon. So I bought a new external 2TB HDD from OWC. I have found that this external HDD will not boot up, even though it says it is bootable, and appears in the Start Up prefs when I select it. It sppears on the desktop, doesn't make any weird clicking noises as well.
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Not sure if you managed to get this issue resolved yet Marcus, but I too have a similar problem:
Currently I'm upgrading from Leopard to Lion (via Snow Leopard) on both an iMac and MacBook Pro (both Intel), but before I proceed with the OSX upgrade I wanted to back everything up. Thus far I have partitioned an external firewire drive (G Drive - one that is bootable), and cloned each machine using Carbon Copy Cloner to it's own partition (both GUID). There is plenty of space left over on each partition.
The issue - I can boot the OS X from the external drive on the MacBook Pro but not on the iMac.
When I restart and hold down Option on the iMac the only drive that appears is the HDD, not the other two selectable drives that are visible if I boot up on the MacBook Pro. On the iMac in System Prefs > Startup Disc I can see all 3 drives but when I select it and restart, the machine freezes on the grey loading screen and goes no further.
Not that it should make a difference, but there is a 3rd partition on the external drive that is currently empty (for extra storage).
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Superduper freeware version only let me make backups but no clones.
Eh! The standard "backup - all files" produced by the freeware version should be a bootable clone! The "safety clones" are more restricted subsets of the necessary files , and are only available in the shareware version.
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Free "Clone Only" Version
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You might want to check out the FAQ at http://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=7
If you tried the SuperDuper "back up all files" and it wasn't bootable, then perhaps it indicates that there really is a problem using this particular external drive as a boot drive. Maybe it is a bridge issue? I seem to remember we were talking about that in another thread for some reason a while back.
Cheers
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Greetings all,
I have 3 internal Hard Drives in my G4.
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Manufacturer: ATA
Model: HDT722525DLAT80
Revision:
Removable Media: Yes
BSD Name: disk3
OS9 Drivers: No
SCSI Target Identifier: 2
SCSI Logical Unit Identifier: 0
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
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When you depress/hold the Option key at startup to
initiate the Startup Manager, does the problem drive
appear in the window?
Does the problem drive appear in the System
Profiler?
If you don't have DiskWarrior, startup from one of
the other drives & run Disk Utility. However, it may
take DiskWarrior to fix the problem.
 Cheers, Tom
Thanks to both above...
So far Disk Warrior didn't fix the prob.
Yes, I do see the drive in my prefs and I can select it as a Start Up drive, but it keeps deciding to start up from the original drive.
So far, I ran Disk Utilities and Disk Warrior... apparently there were issues, but they were resolved as far as I can tell in both Utility progs. Still, I can't restart from this drive. I can start up from it's back-up FW drive, but I don't really want to do that.
Thanks for any help you can give
PPC G4 Dual 450 Gigabit Ethernet upgraded to Dual 1.3 Mac OS X (10.4.9) 9200 Radion, Controller Card to hold Hard Drives,HP LaserJe Networked G3 Desktop
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I use Time Machine in conjunction with SuperDuper for my backups. I tend to use the simplistic of >the restores in Time Machine for restoring files whereas I like the speed of SuperDuper if a clone is >required. I also like the redundancy of multiple backups by different techniques.
Yes I think its a good strategy. Time machine is great for "undeleteing" if you see what I mean but a clone gets things working again very quickly after a disaster and even if you don't have time to restore you can still boot your computer. I have CCC do an incremental backup every evening at 3am.

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If I have a duplicated ( via SuperDuper) external drive attached, the OS will boot from that drive, even if I have my main drive selected in prefs as the startup drive.
If I disconnect the external drive, my mac will boot from DiskWarrior DVD, in the Superdrive.
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tia
peter

good job on having firewire ports, you can run tiger.
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Cd drive ejects on boot

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paul

plas1, welcome to Apple Discussions.
The problem could be due to some add-on device plugged into the computer. In particular, a malfunctioning mouse or keyboard could be sending a signal to the system to eject the disk.
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External Firewire Drive Will Not Boot with 10.5.1

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Went through the motions on that. No positive results. I'm starting to suspect either the enclosure or one of the latest updates.
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The Drive Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320 GB IDE Drive
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Any thoughts on this ......
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Hi,
I recently installed Lion and when I did so I backed up my OS drive to two internal drives both of which were partioned--each back up drive has 2 partitions (one of each was for my back up OS).
Yesterday I wanted to restore my original OS drive to it's orignal state and did a restore from one of the back ups. I have done this several times with no problem. Yesterday, however, something went wrong and I cannot boot into either of my backups--I tried restoring to my original OS drive and I can't boot to it either. I know that all the files are still there because upon boot up if I use the option-command-shift-delete to get alternate boot device i can choose my back up and/or my main boot up drive to boot up. This is, however, the only way I can boot up. I fear that I corrupted some kind of boot file while creating the back ups when copying.
I erased my main OS drive and reinstalled Lion to it and it boots up--however, I have none of my files.
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Is there a straightforward way to do this?

Disk Utility : Restore - look in Help, there really are good tips and How to tips and steps
Sometimes DU Restore has been a problem where SuperDuper would work.
Have more than one backup set and type.
Clones are bootable, and first thing to do after making one (and repair permissions and the drive even) is test and insure it is bootable. GUID partition table for one thing.
MA should work if it sees the volume as a system.
TriBackup is great for synching folders and files, even a system.
Maybe the change to Lion is why this time failed. You did try the Lion Recovery Mode (command-r) and read up Apple Support Lion.

My mac air died, after i reinstall from dvd drive, when i boot up again, i saw a prohibit sign showing up on the screen, then get to my logon screen. After logon, it takes very long time to load any application. pls help

my mac air died, after i reinstall from dvd drive, when i boot up again, i saw a prohibit sign showing up on the screen, then get to my logon screen. After logon, it takes very long time to load any application. pls help

OK. If you believe that.
When the disk is starting to die it can be bad for a moment and then be good for a while. If there was no problem while you were checking it of course it shows up good.
I tell you those are the signs of a disk that is about to die.
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Nothing surprises me with Mountain Lion ...!!

How do I access my encrypted User Account files from my Back Up hard drive? Time Machine was used to create the back up disk; File Vault was used to encrypt the files.

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Carbon Copy Cloner.

Recovering erased data from a back-up hard drive

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Try using an application such as Data Rescue or FileSalvage.
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Backing Up a drive so it boots.

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