Bootable Backup Possible??

I just bought a mini. I have a Lacie firewire ext HD. I have an iMac acct and downloaded Backup for schedueled automatic backups to the LAcie.
I was wondering if it was possible to set the Lacie drive up as a bootable back-up.
If the internal HD on the mini goes bad (and let's face it....every HD goes bad eventually), I want to still get work done until I can get the internal drive replaced. Having files backed up to the LAcie won't do me any good if I can't boot!
Sooo...With the latest version of Tiger, the Intel-based Mini, and the firewire ext drive, can I create a bootable back-up??

Hello Thomas, first connect your firewire based hard drive to your computer, then boot your computer from the system CD/DVD 10.4 then run the utilities program then select one of the hard disk displayed to the left hand side of the utilities window then select (restore) at the top displayed inside the window, now you simply drag the blank hard drive icon you want to be bootable over to the entry blank labeled for destination: disk then drag the internal hard drive icon (with the system folder) over to the entry blank labeled source: then click the restore button
now when the above is completed, check it by selecting startup disk simply select the external hard drive icon, then select restart!
Hope this helps
James

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.

Bootable Backup First Timer

I want to make a bootable backup of my computer on a external drive. How do I do it with the disk utilities that come with my imac? I've read about Super Duper but I thought I read somewhere that I can do this with my disk utilities. I already have data on the external drive and I didn't partition it when I got it, so is there a way to do a backup without erasing what's on the external drive already?
Also what about Carbon Copy Cloner? Has anybody had good results? I'm trying to do this as cheap as possible. ( I know $27.99 is cheaper than a hard drive migraine, but I'd like to try my options first.)
Thanks

*Hi tedzig, Welcome* to Apple's Users Help Users Forums.
If there is room on the internal HD, you could copy to it from the external and then be free to reformat. You have excellent helpers already.
To help you along the way, here are the SD and CCC sources.
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
Purchase at $27.95 will allow smart backups that look at the bu files and only move over new ones. It's quick at ~7 mins to change ~1 gig out of 20.
Be sure to test that the clone boots and apps behave properly.
Here are other popular cloners.
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
http://www.prosoftengineering.com/products/drivegeniusinfo.php?PHPSESSID=909c070fb2e13b35097fa9cc1340bfc0
Good Luck, JP

Help--Bootable Backup?

Just have a question about bootable backups as I've been hearing a lot about them lately. First off, what exactly is a bootable backup? I'm not 100% clear on what it is. Secondly, I have an external USB 2.0 HD. Is it possible to make a bootable backup with a USB drive or does it have to be firewire? If I can make a bootable backup with my USB 2 HD, how do I go about doing it? Do I have to create a partition? How do I do that? Thanks for helping out a (semi)clueless mac fan. By the way, loving the upgrade to Leopard. Everything is running great for me. Thanks for any help!!

Superjudge2,
Ian has already answered your question, and thoroughly. However, bootable backups are somewhat less of a "big deal" now that you are running Leopard.
With Leopard and Time Machine, you can restore everything from your Time Machine backup at any time by booting to the Leopard install disk. Instead of installing a fresh copy of Leopard, the installer will use any of the Time Machine "snapshots" of your system.
Bootable backups still have their uses, though. For example, if your hard drive fails entirely, and simply will not work, you could still boot your Mac to that external containing a bootable OS. This would allow you to continue to use your computer until you could procure and install a working hard drive.
Scott

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)

Can I boot a Mavericks desktop computer with a bootable backup made with OS X 10.4.6?

I used to create bootable backups with SuperDuper and still have one created in 2010 from a white Intel mac (2006-era) running OS X 10.4.6. Would it be possible to boot a brand new 27" desktop running Mavericks 10.9.4 using the old bootable backup? I've never had to boot any of my computers from the bootable backups and I'd have to go searching thru my notes to find out how to do it, but I have no idea if attempting to do so could cause any harm to the new computer. If it could, I won't make the attempt.
The reason I'm considering it: I lost three computers to a lightning strike a couple weeks ago. The white Intel mac was the one I used to create GarageBand projects. I discovered that the new version of GarageBand (10.0.2) lacks many of the instruments I frequently used in my projects. Thus, I figured, if I could easily boot using the bootable backup, I could continue my GarageBand work using the version of GarageBand on the bootable backup. Good idea or totally unworkable?
Secondary follow-up question: any way to install the old version of GarageBand on the new computer using either the bootable backup or the old install disks? Although I'd like to get access to the old version, I won't do it if there's a large risk of creating problems with the new computer.
Any advice?

Bedruthan wrote:
Would it be possible to boot a brand new 27" desktop running Mavericks 10.9.4 using the old bootable backup?
No. Newer machines cannot boot with OSs that precede the one it shipped with.
Secondary follow-up question: any way to install the old version of GarageBand on the new computer using either the bootable backup or the old install disks?
Again, no. Newer machines cannot run PPC apps since they're based on Intel chips and not Motorola ones.
iMac refurb (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), SL & ML, G4 450 MP w/Leopard, 9.2.2

What is on a bootable backup disc?

While I'm pretty sure what a bootable disc is...( I think) It allows one to startup their computer in cases where for whatever reason their computer is not responding. I've read in the discussion pages that I should have a bootable backup for when I update software . So my question is what is on a bootable backup disc? and for that matter what is generally on any backup disc and what kind of disc is used? Sorry to seem so dense but I'm not very techno-savvy as you can obviously tell by my questions.
Thanks in advance for your help

Hi jopaglke,
Your first and most safely reliable boot disc is your Mac's original install DVD. It has Disk Utility on it, and Terminal, and the Hardware Test!
Personally I also keep a duplicate of my Mac's original install DVD, just in case.
- With Disk Utility, create an image of it while it's inserted. Choose "CD/DVD Master" kind of image, the one that ends with .cdr (not .dmg), and burn it on a blank DVD.
This works for those whose original DVD is small enough in size.
Another safe and handy solution:
- partition your external hard drive
(you DO have an external for backup purposes, right?),
and assign 10 GB to one of the partitions where you'll install (Custom-Install)a light version of your original OS.
You can perform the Software Update updates, and install your favorite utilities on it
(TechTool Pro, DiskWarrior etc)
so this bootable partition will be always ready for an option-boot (alt-boot) in case of a problem.
For those who own an original DVD that exceeds usual blank DVD sizes, the partition solution is the other simple and genuine one still possible.
Then there are bootable discs solutions by third-party softwares that you can buy (some of them are really good utilities).
Axel

I'm wondering about bootable backup strategies

I'm wondering what people use and recommend for backup strategies, and especially the utility of "bootable" backups.
I have an early-2011 15" MBPro, running fully updated Yosemite. My computer is apparently one of the "victims" of the recently publicized graphics system problems that has resulted in Apple's recent out-of-warranty repair offer for machines in this category. Over the past 10 months my machine has been in for repair 4 times, resulting in the replacement of my display, main logic board (x 3!!) and hard drive. These 4 repairs were the result of incidents that started with the screen graphics going crazy and ending, eventually, in an un-bootable state. Two of the 4 times I was returned a working machine with a clean new-install of OS 10. (all "free" I might add, thanks to still being on Apple Care when the whole process started!) Hopefully, my last repair will "do the trick" as it was AFTER Apple's announced repair offer for these machines. My Apple Store "genius" opined that this time my main logic board was probably an "improved" item, since the first two replacements didn't solve the problem.
So twice in the recent past I have had to completely restore my machine from my Time Machine (to Time Capsule) back-up. Both successful, thankfully! But this experience has focused my attention very sharply on my backup strategy, and made me wonder how "exposed" one still might be with "just" a Time Machine backup.
Talking informally with several more knowledgeable and experienced "Mac" people that I know, I discovered that many people don't rely on Time Machine, at least not solely. I was persuaded that the really most secure situation is to have a second back-up, preferably a bootable "disc image," stored on a separate device (and maybe preferably off site).
So, I've been looking into the options, services, etc.. There are MANY! I love the ease, automaticity and utility of having a Time Machine back-up. But I'm wondering, for those (probably few) out there that do something MORE than that: what back-up strategies do you use? Is is POSSIBLE to have a "bootable" backup on an online/cloud device (maybe not)? What systems work well and are complementary/supplementary to Time Machine?
I know, from my own experience, that HAVING a backup is fairly easy. But I've also learned that RESTORING a backup (mine's around 400 GB) is NOT "easy", at least very time consuming, and probably fraught with potential problems which won't appear until it's too late to do something else! So I'm particularly looking at the restoration features of backup software and services. Frankly, those are often largely ignored in the promotions, which mainly focus on how easy it is to DO the backup but never talk much about doing the restore!!
Any and all opinions are welcomed. I am definitely considering some redundancy in my backups after "dodging the bullet" twice in the last 3 months!

... how "exposed" one still might be with "just" a Time Machine backup.
Just one backup isn't enough. Two or more are preferable. Time Machine can back up to as many external devices as you wish. Purchase two or more inexpensive USB hard disk drives and store one of them offsite at all times. Time Machine will back up to each one "in rotation" when they're available. If the backup device it's expecting isn't available, it looks for the next one, etc.
If you want to augment Time Machine with another backup strategy, consider "clone" software such as Carbon Copy Cloner. It will create bootable copies of your existing installation if you consider that a valuable option.
"Bootable" is fine but not really necessary. Consider the possibility in which it's impossible to boot your Mac for whatever reason, or if should happen to be lost, stolen, or irreparably damaged. Consider the circumstances applicable to the way you use your Macs that might cause that event. If your disaster recovery plan addresses that contingency, it's a good plan. Recovering 400 GB is going to be time consuming no matter what method you use. An external HDD with a Thunderbolt interface would be fastest, followed by USB3, followed by USB2, followed by a directly connected (Ethernet cable) Time Capsule, followed by a wireless Time Capsule — for which a TM restoration might take an unacceptable amount of time (days).
Obviously I don't know the circumstances of the repairs you required, but I question the necessity to replace the hard disk. It's possible the same one could have been re-used, saving you the inconvenience of having to perform a restoration.

Bootable backups - disk utility and which external drives

hi all
(maybe) a simple question
i have been using time machine for my back ups but i am now planning to have a second backup program. i'm looking at using a bootable clone in this regard.
i started looking at super duper and ccc however a few stumbling blokes have just popped up (well at least warning signs that may be of no issue at all - hence this question)
* can ALL external drives be used for bootable backup purposes?
I have a couple of western digital ones - my book essential and my passport.
On the western digital website, it does not have my model numbers listed - does it matter?
Is it a case of any usb connected external drive can be used for intel macs? - i am getting conflicting views on various postings i have seen re this question
second part/question is:
i also understand disk utility can be used for cloning (no updates, just full clones) and as a bootable back up.
if, just for the purposes for having a back up bootable drive, can i set up a clone without too much regard for recloning it (say every 2 months) and if i need to use it, then boot the mac back up with it and then do a full restore using my up to date time machine backups? am i missing something with that method? is that too simple?
feedback much appreciated on these 2 areas
cheers
peter t

Crows2012 wrote:
1) there is no way to make a BOOTABLE clone using disk utility or time machine whatsoever, right? DU will only allow me to make clones and Recovery HD essentially allows me to restore the system (ie software) AFTER booting up?
Correct with respect to TM; all you get is a copy of the Recovery HD.
Disk Utility will make a bootable clone, but there are downsides. First, it can only do a whole copy; unlike a specialized cloning app, it won't copy just what's new or changed, so takes a long time. Second, as I understand it, it won't copy to a smaller volume, even if there's plenty of free space on the internal. For example, if you have a 1 TB internal with only 400 GB on it, DU won't copy it to a 500 GB drive. I may be wrong, but I've seen that posted here by folks who seem to know.
does file b here mean aliases of file b in each backup?
It acts sorta like that, but no.
There's one copy of the actual file, but two hard links to it, one in each folder. The file actually "belongs" to both folders at the same time! The good part of that is, if you delete either backup folder, the other one remains intact. The downside is, how the heck do you count the size of each folder accurately?
that was a great read to understand TM workings and attain some level of piece of mind re my question of incremental v differential backups
It is a bit hard to get your head around! I've been revising and editing that for several years trying to make it clear.
And remember, this only applies to TM as far as I know, at least for consumer-level backup apps.
While it may be possible to boot your computer to an external hard drive, Western Digital does not provide technical support for booting your computer using an external hard drive. If you intend to make a copy of your boot drive, or install your operating system, please use a second internal drive (EIDE or Serial ATA), rather than an external drive.
Yup. WD doesn't exactly have a good reputation for support.
i guess i'll trial CCC or SD and see what happens with the drives that i have re BOOTABILITY
I use CCC myself -- it's a great product with great support.
I downloaded SD a couple of times, but never got around to experimenting with it. Lots of folks swear by it, and say it also has excellent support. To a large degree, it just seems to be a matter of which approach and GUI you prefer, but CCC does allow "archiving" of changed and deleted stuff (differently from TM), and can copy Recovery HDs. I don't think SD does either, but it may have other advantages.
4) and, i think one final question, and a simple/naive one at that.....if my internal hard drive physically collapses then what are the benefits of that bootable clone v not having one?
You can start up from the clone and run normally (but likely a bit more slowly), although you probably won't be as up-to-date as you would after restoring to a new or repaired internal, or an external, from TM. The reason is, running a clone backup, even an incremental one, takes much longer and far more CPU than one of TM's quick incrementals, which it will do hourly if you let it. Few folks using a clone for an OSX drive do it more than once per day, many only once a week.
The downside is, if you run from the clone, you no longer have a backup -- the clone has the only copy of your stuff. That's one reason many folks who use only a cloning app have two (or more) externals with them.
Apart from (obviously) being able to start up immediately to do whatever i wanted to do at the time, after i replace the hard drive (if that was to be the case) are there further expenses or much inconvenience suffered due to not having a bootable drive in getting things all sorted internally on the mac? what is the process in that regard, generally speaking
Just clone the external to the new internal, and you're back in business.
thanks heaps for your time to answer these and previous questions and to build up my understanding of these topics
You're quite welcome.

Do I need to partition my external hard drive for a bootable backup

Hi - First, I apologize for asking a question that's already been discussed so much. I did try to read everything I could, but I remain confused. Here is my precise situation:
I have an iMac, and I purchased a year's worth of Carbonite's online backup and breathed a sigh of relief. Then I read some people have problems with Carbonite, and the best advice was to buy an external hard drive, which I did. It just arrived, I plugged it in, and Time Machine backed up my computer on it...so I breathed another sigh of relief.
Then I read that my wonderful new 2T external hard drive isn't good enough, that I should partition it so as to have one backup, and one "bootable backup." Is this really necessary? And what is the difference between a backup, and a bootable backup? If it is necessary, how do I do it? Is it a problem that I've already used it to create a backup on Time Machine?
I use my computer for things like email, Facebook, pictures, eBay, stuff like that. I have no unusual needs. My computer is an iMac OS X 10.6.8.
Thank you in advance for any help you can offer!

I prefer a clone/bootable backup ovver Time Machine myself.
For TM you need a running OS, then time to restore, with a clone you can boot from that & keep working while doing the other when time is better. And you can test a clone before you need it.
Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
You would need to Partition your drive though.
How to format your disks...
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html
(To Install OSX on an IntelMac the Drive it needs the GUID Partitioning scheme mentioned at the bottom.)
Thanks to Pondini, Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks...
http://Pondini.org/OSX/DU.html

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.

Can't reboot to my bootable backup.

Two days ago I received my new Mac Mini, which is replacing my five-year-old iMac. So far I'm very pleased, with two minor issues just barely dampening my enthusiasm:
1- The video has "blinked out" a few times. I'm running video via HDMI->HDMI, and I understand this is a fairly common problem generating a lot of user reports here in the forums. I've only seen it three or four times in the two days I've had my Mini, and the "out" time is very brief, about a second, so I can live with this until Apple issues the expected fix.
2- More serious issue: When I attempt to boot from the bootable backup I created on an external drive, I get the following:
"You can't change the startup disk to the selected disk. Building boot caches on boot helper partition failed."
I can't restart to my external drive using the preference pane. I can reboot while holding the option key and then choose the external drive, but the Mini never fully boots after that; it just keeps spinning away on the grey Apple screen forever until I shut it down.
Any help here would be appreciated, as I don't feel fully comfortable with my data hostage to a single physical device. I'm sure all my personal data is there, but I'd like to be able to get at it by booting from that external drive should the drive* inside my Mini fail.
Do I need to install Mountain Lion directly onto the external drive to create the "boot helper partition" and then use rsync to complete my bootable backup? Because all I did was format the drive and then use rsync, which is what I've been doing for years now to create bootable backups.
* = Technically it's two drives, as I have the Apple-installed Fusion Drive. But it is one volume.

D'oh!
The external I'm using is a new virgin drive. I had never installed any version of OS X on it before. So yes, it was missing the behind-the-scenes/under-the-carpet magic. I suppose I could have installed Mountain Lion over its contents, but I just did a Carbon Copy Cloner clone operation instead, which has done the trick. I should be able to rsync for my backups to it from here on out.
Thanks, BD and Linc. Sorry to have wasted your time. I should have known better than to have just partitioned, formatted, and started the rsync backups without first either doing a proper volume clone or an OS X install.
Best wishes,
John H

No backup possible, even after a clean re-install

I - NEED - HELP!!!
This is what happens before I encountered my problems with backing up my hard drive:
I'm using a MacBook Pro 17" Unibody. The hard drive was partitioned into two partitions. The first one was the bootcamp partition, 50 GBytes in size, running Windows 7 Ultimate. The second partition was the Mac OS X partition, 450 GBytes in size and running Mac OS X 10.6.4.
I had to change the size of the bootcamp partition due to a Windows game installation. For this I bought an used "CampTune 8.0" from Paragon Software. The repartitioning using "CampTune" didn't report any errors so I assumed everything was fine. But then I saw the slow dying of a Mac:
Trying to boot into Windows lead to the error message the the installation was damaged and I should repair it using the repair option of the Windows install DVD. I did as I told but was always caught in the startup loop:
"1. Insert install DVD
2. Restart your computer
3. Choose the repair option"
Trying to boot into Mac OS X shows a strange behaviour ranging from getting stuck in file system checking up to not being able to log in as normal user. Instead I was only able to log in as administrator. And when I was able to log in, there where more and more kernel panics during access to all kinds of volumes (internal hard drive, external USB hard drives, USB sticks...)
Fortunately I was able to save (NOT backup) my users home folder by hand.
And now the strange things started...
I decided to do a clean install of my Mac OS X 10.6.4 and all of my applications. For that I repartitioned the internal hard drive to one partition, chose the GUID-patition table, then formatted the drive using the option "overwrite with zeros".
Then I installed my Mac OS X and the applications and tried to do a bootable backup to an external USB hard drive. This drive I had partitioned with one partition, GUID-partition table and formatted it also using the option "overwrite with zeros".
I used the software "Data Backup 3" from ProSoft Engineering. But during backup there was a kernel panic and after that the B-tree of my internal drive was corrupted. I couldn't be repaired by Mac OS X. But the internal drive was still readable.
I tried again and again with "Data Backup 3", always ending in a kernel panic. But the active thread always was different (sometimes it was launchd, CleanApp deamon, Kasperskys kav deamon) without a repeating pattern.
I was able to make a backup using "Carbon Copy Clone 3.3", fortunately, and started from the backup. After that I used "TechToolPro 5.0.7" to find out if there were surface errors or problems in the directory structure. But even "TechToolPro" caused a kernel panic when accessing the hard drive...
To restore the contents of my external drive to the internal one I used "SmartBackup 3" from Solesignal Ltd. because I thought "Data Backup 3" caused the kernal panics. But it was the same with "SmartBackup 3": accessing the hard drives during backup causes kernel panics...
My last idea then was to use the restore function of Apples disk utility. And it worked. But when I copied the contents of my saved user home folder, I caused a kernel panic when the size of data copied exceeds more then approximately 80 GBytes. And after that the B-tree of my backup drive was corrupted.
This all is strange to me, because I installed a fresh system.
Does anyone encountered similar problems using backup software? And is there a solution for this?
Regards
Ansgar

whatever I tried I couldn't get the camera to work. So took it into local apple store and they swapped immediately with a new iphone 5.
loads of chatter on the internet about it.
This discussion has had 19000+ views
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5327076?start=90&tstart=0

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

Can't erase anything on an external hard disk partition of bootable backup ____error message -50 "Error in user parameter"

I am using MACOSX 10.6
The data on the disk partition on my Iomega 2Tb external hard disk drive (labeled "Bootable Backup") was written by Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC ver. 3.37)
I have had problems with overwriting this using CCC, and I have also had troubles changeing the data on my "Versioned Backup" partition, using either CrashPlan or CCC
A third partition that was virgin ("Half-Tb Volume") on the same external disk drive, however, DID accept the latest CCC bootable backup of my Macintosh HD...which is the reason I want to recover rthe space on the first bootable backup partition.
I have not found any links to this error using Google search, apart from the definition.
Anyone

Do a backup using Time Machine or a clone. Then boot into the Recovery Volume (command - R) on a restart. Run Disk Utility Repair disk. If it can't repair the disk, then select the erase tab and reformat using Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Also click the Option button and select GUID. When complete, reboot normally and restore your data.
Please update your profile to reflect the OS you are running.

Bootable Backup Possible??

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