Free bootable clone on portable drive

I Currently have a potable drive that has time machine backups on it. After installing my new SSD, I now have my old HDD that I woul like to use as a bootable clone for obvious reasons. I know CCC shirt pocket etc. And the better ones that well known. My question is; is there a good one that is 100% Free. I will onmy have this worst case total failure so don't want to spend anything right now. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated

GeoA wrote:
Thanks for everyones input. I do appreciate it. I will give it a try.
Following are two con links I found - although they are not real current:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/stdadp.php?pfaqid=1059
http://forums.bombich.com/viewtopic.php?t=11152
I certainly understand it. The spindown occurs after five minutes of inactivity and can be a pain if you come back to your machine and it take a while to restart.
If you're just using it as a backup, there should be no problem. The problem is that it's not going to be very good if you intend on regularly using the bootable external volume.
I've created a bootable clone from WD MyBook drives. They haven't created a problem and are solid clones. However - I don't regularly use the bootable clones. I only check them briefly to make sure they work, then shut them down.

Similar Messages

[Multiple] Bootable Clone Advice?

Hi All.
I would like to use the fourth slot in my machine to create a bootable clone of my 1 TB Snow Leopard with Windows 7 via Parallels drive (and if possible the 1 TB drive that contains Windows 7 via Boot Camp and a hack).
Q1. Can I also add a bootable clone of my 150 GB MacBookPro to the drive that this resides upon (the 2 TB)?
Q2. Can I also add a bootable clone of my 1 TB Windows 7 Boot Camp drive? I mean can I have two or three bootable clones on one drive? There is nothing on this drive by way of files and getting Windows 7 on it involved a technical hack that I had to hire someone to execute.
Q3. The third drive contains just a Windows XP install via Boot Camp (which is easy to replicate). Could I run a bootable clone of the other two drives to it and not buy the 2 TB drive for the fourth slot?
I am thinking of buying a 2 TB drive for this bay and if I can get some advice as to whether this will work I can move forward with my other backup routines.
Will this work and does it make sense?
Thanks.

The only reason to have a system from a MacBook is to copy/recover some files.
Not to be kept internal.
Best place for backups is off line, rotate backup sets.
Only reason for internal is because using TimeMachine hourly and which has a high tendency to drop loose, sleep the connection to external devices on USB.
Sparse Disk Images even of 300GB are fine for storing an image for later restore to (another) hard drive.
Paragon is great for Windows only disk to disk OS clones that can be booted, but otherwise, type of thing people buy extra drive sleds for weekly clone. Or run the "Clone OS" feature to an external drive and then keep it disconnected.
I think you want to make it harder and more complex than needed.
Windows XP runs well enough under Mac as a guest OS (Fusion or Parallels or even VirtualBox), or run VM in Windows (with Windows running native).
VM only, no native Windows, can be placed on any drive of your choosing.
Keep the system and data on separate drives.

How do I move my movies from iTunes to a portable drive in oder to free up disk space?

I have less than 10% of disk space free and often receive a message that my strat up disk is nearly full. I therefore want to free up space by moving my movies to a portable drive. How? I want to keep the movies on my iPad, though.

Patti23 wrote:
How do I move purchased movies from itunes to the icloud?
Delete them from the local computer. Nothing gets moved. If the content was purchased from iTunes it should be available for download again in the future.
Patti23 wrote:
I want to keep them on the ipad they have been moved to.
If the device is synced with iTunes on the computer and the content is deleted from iTunes it will also be removed from the device.
Realistically, if you want to keep the content, keep it stored locally. Purchase an external drive to store the content on. Keep in mind that iOS devices are NOT backup devices, they merely mirror the content in the iTunes library on the computer.

Using Disk Utility to make a bootable clone on external firewire hard drive

I was just experimenting with making a bootable clone of my Mac HD (OS X 10.5.2) on an external firewire drive. The external drive booted up and all programs worked. However, there were 3 extra folders on the clone: Dev, Net, Home. The folders were empty so I deleted Dev and Net, just to see what would happen. When I restarted the computer, it simply shut down upon reboot. So, I held the option key and rebooted back into my Mac HD.
My (5) questions are:
What are those folders?
Why were they put there?
Can I get rid of them, or hide them?
Once the bootable clone works as a boot drive, can I delete the data from my internal Mac HD or,
Does the bootable clone somehow rely on the internal drive for additional startup information?
Thank you so much for any information.
Dave

These are system folders that the OS needs to operate. DO NOT delete them.
They are normally invisible which is why you don't see them.
You should simply leave them alone. If they bother you visually and you want to hide them, open terminal and run the following command
*sudo chflags hidden /Volumes/"Nameoftheexternaldrive"/dev /Volumes/"Nameoftheexternaldrive"/home /Volumes/"Nameoftheexternaldrive"/net*
Put the name of your external in the above.
You'll be prompted for your admin password which you won't see. That's normal.
To answer your last question, a bootable clone does not rely on the internal drive in any way. You can boot from the clone and do whatever you like to the internal. However, it's not recommended to run your computer from an external for everyday use. Bootable clones should be mainly used for backups. If you hose your system on an internal, boot from the clone and clone it back to the HD.

Bootable clones for both iMac (Intel) and G5 (PPC) on same external drive??

Is it possible to format and partition one external firewire drive to accept a bootable clone of my iMac (Intel) on one partition and my G5 (PPC) on the other? I seem to remember that in order to be able to boot, the Intel and the PPC require something different in formatting on the drive.
If this is not possible, could I as a second choice format/partition an external firewire drive to place a bootable clone of the G5 on one partition and a Time Machine backup of the iMac on the other? I am looking for a way to store just one rather than two drives in my safety deposit box. Thanks

I put up instructions and a picture showing how to select the partition scheme:
http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/Leopard/leobugs.html
Scroll down to about the middle of the page.
Frankly I was surprised to find out you can boot an Intel machine from a drive that is APM rather than GUID. I'm not sure that what you want to do is going to be as easy as one would hope. Anyway, the instructions I found for dual booting off a firewire drive sounded a bit complex!
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

I have removed all movies to Seagate portable drive to free up space on the startup disc and can confirm all can not be found on my computer, however it still shows as being there when i check storage ???

I have removed all movies to Seagate portable drive to free up space on the startup disc and can confirm they are no longer on my computer after doing a search, i trashed them and then emptied the trash, however they still show as being there when i check storage on the startup disc???????, can anyone advise what is happening here?

Try reindexing spotlight on the Startup drive.
Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes - Apple Support

Software to create a bootable clone of win7 BC drive, running Lion

I'm running Lion on one internal drive and BC win7 on another internal drive. For a number of years I used OS X 10.6 and WinClone and never had a problem creating any of my bootable clones of the BC drive (knock on wood).
My current Lion install will not run WinClone. One solution is to create a new partition dedicated to 10.6, install WinClone and create bootable win7 BC clones from the 10.6 partition. I can do that but it seems a bit cumbersome if I'm only going to use the new 10.6 partition in order to use WinClone again.
Any software out there similar to WinClone that I can run under Lion?

How are your web searching skills?
I'd say this falls into the "not daily, but multiple times a week" category of questions.

Trying to free up space on hard drive, with an external hard drive, but don't want to lose the files!

So I am really stressed out right now.
I have a macbook pro, with a 750 gb hard drive in it. My internal hard drive filled up a while back so I bought a 3TB external hard drive. I backed up my files onto my external a while ago, but I don't really remember how... There is a folder on my hard drive that is called " wd smartware.swstor" , and inside that folder is about 1.7 TB of files (when I click 'get info')... So I'm guessing that is where all my stuff is being backed up. But I also moved files from my computer onto that hard drive, like pictures and videos, that I wanted to delete off my internal... So I may have duplicates?
But my 3TB hard drive is almost full, it has 400GB free on it. And my 750gb internal hard drive on my macbook pro, has filled up again so it only has 10gb free space. So basically I have almost 3TB of files on my external hard drive, and 740gb on my internal.. This can't be right. There is no way I have this many files. I am guessing I have some of the same files on my internal that I do on my external.. Most of my files are high quality HD video files that I imported through final cut pro x....
So I bought another 3TB external hard drive that I haven't used yet. Basically, I just want to move all my files that are on my internal hard drive (roughly 750gb) onto my NEW external 3TB hard drive- and then delete the files off my internal so I have more free space. I just don't know if these files are already being backed up on my OLD external 3TB hard drive.
Can someone please help? Thank you!

craigbuckley wrote:
If I get rid of my TIme Machine, will I lose all my files from the past?
Yes it will unless you back it up first out of TM.
TimeMachine is a self rotating image of your boot drive with saved states, it manages itself based upon the available space on the drive. As new states are created, old ones are deleted along with older versions of your files.
Also if you incur a drastic large change to your boot drive, TimeMachine will DELETE older versions of your files.
TimeMachine is not a archival solution!
To rescue yourself from TimeMachine, you will first need to save the recent copy of file(s) to the new 3TB, then restore the older version of the file from TimeMachine to the boot drive and then rename it/date it and save that older copy to the new 3TB drive.
This way you have both the new copy and the old copy of the file pernamently archived on the new 3TB drive.
Once you have exhausted all of TimeMachines older files, you can free yourself from it, erase the drive.
For your needs, I suggest this.
Internal drive and bootable clone
1: Your internal 750GB boot drive contains active working files.
2: You have another external drive that's either 750GB or 1TB, you use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable clone of your boot drive, update it when you know you have a stable OS X system on your boot drive and before updates or changes, this way if the update goes bad and the machine will not boot. You can connect the clone, hold the option key down and boot the comptuer from the clone. You then can get online to get help, or simply reverse clone your software problems away.
CCC has the ability like TimeMachine to save states between clones, it's on be default but you can turn this off as to maintain a pure clone, this is what I advise you do as to avoid confusion. You clone is a perfect copy since the last update of the clone, which you can setup to do nightly if you wish or every few days or every few weeks, whatever.
Your bootable clone is your lifesaver if your boot hard drive dies or refuses to boot up, you can boot from the clone in seconds and only be slightly off since the last update of the clone. TM won't run the computer like a clone will.
I highly adise keeping your clone in a very safe place, away from theft, fire, electrical, etc.
http://www.bombich.com/
External Storage Drives
3: Your first external 3TB drive (sans TimeMachine) will be your storage drive, this will contain any files that you don't wish to have on the internal drive and as a result also not on the clone.
You maintain folders that are dated, with older copies of files in those folders if you wish. This way you can control the space on the drive and not make multiple duplicates of all the large files like TM does.
For instance if you work on a 100GB project for three days, instead of having three copies taking up 300GB like what TM does, you can rather choose to have just one older copy at 100GB. You can decide you don't need a particular older version of a file and remove it, thus managing your drive space yourself.
4: Your other external 3TB is a Carbon Copy Cloner backup of the first 3TB, maintain a perfect clone of that as well and update it periodically as your needs change. Since CCC can be schedualed and works in the background, you can have it update your clones overnight or another time your not using the machine. This free's up performance as TM isn't running in the background while your trying to work.
Also with no TM local cache file, that also will free up space on the boot drive.
The general rule is you need both hardware AND software protection for your data, thus with too much data to fit on the boot drive, you need a external storage drive and then a backup of that as to maintain TWO hardware copies of your data at all times.
This method is also scaleable, if you need more room than 3TB externally, you then get another 2 3TB drives, one for the new data and one for backup.
The bootable clone of your bootdrive is kept in a very safe place, it's designed to protect your OS X investment in software etc. and espectially, to get your Mac booting in as short as a time as possible while you plan on a replacement boot hard drive/repair.
Read more about the advanced options bootable clones give here.
Most commonly used backup methods
With your large storage needs, you basically have outgrown TimeMachine by hitting the hardware limit of drives.
If there were 10-20TB drives, you likely could keep on going with TimeMachine, but you can't.
Your clearly in the more "professional" catagory with your storage management needs, not in the TM "newbie to computers" where it's managed for you.
If your finding your needs are going to exceed 6TB, you might want to consider a external hardware RAID 5 box with 5+ drives, they will self redundancy so if a drive dies you just switch it with a new one and the missing data is copied from the other drives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
http://www.macgurus.com/
Good Luck

New to Leopard : Does TM make a bootable clone?

Hi, I'm a long time tiger user, but new to leopard. I've been using super duper as a backup program for my iMac, but have recently purchased a macbook (Leopard) and new portable HD.
I haven't been able to find too much info on specifics for TM, so this may be a dumb question, but will
TM make a fail safe bootable backup on my external or should I just be using super duper and forget TM?
Thanks in advance for any help.

Time Machine backups are not bootable clones, but it is possible to create a clone of you Leopard install DVD on an empty external drive and then use that drive as a Time Machine backup. If you need to do a restore you can boot from the External Time Machine drive and restore.
If your interested this link gives more details:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2008011623365026

Is a bootable clone necessary before upgrading to Lion (also Parallels 6)?

I'm thinking about upgrading to Lion on the MBP and the MacPro where I am running Parallels 6 with Windows 7.
Two questions:
1. How bad of an idea is it to do this without running a backup that includes a full bootable clone? I have a full backup of the machines but I think (?) someone advised doing a bootable clone before doing this upgrade. Not sure but wondering if anyone has any good advice on this. I guess the need for the bootable clone (assuming I am moving to Lion) would be in case I need to reload all the settings and everything from the year and a half I spent getting everything to my liking (no small amount of work)? I mean, I wouldn't re-load the bootable clone and then only work off of Snow Leopard so I guess (?) I am asking if there is other info in the bootable clone that makes it different from a normal backup in such an instance.
2. Does anyone know of any definitive documentation that tells me whether to upgrade to Parallels 7 first or if I go to Lion first for the upgrade? Does one need to go before the other?
Thanks.
Jon

hotwheels 22 wrote:
1. How bad of an idea is it to do this without running a backup that includes a full bootable clone?
If your Lion upgrade hoses, like it usually does for those upgrading over a complicated Snow Leopard, a hold the option key bootable clone of Snow Leopard on a external drive will get you using the computer in the time it takes to boot off of it.
It will also allow you to completely erase the internal drive and reverse clone Snow Leopard right back on.
If you do have to erase Lion, make sure you do it via the Partiton tab, so the entire drive is erased, not just the Lion OS X Partition.
2. Does anyone know of any definitive documentation that tells me whether to upgrade to Parallels 7 first or if I go to Lion first for the upgrade? Does one need to go before the other?
You'll have to talk to Parallels, but if the software works with 10.6 and 10.7 then it's best to upgrade to the 10.6/10.7 version on 10.6 (make a clone first before doing anything) then checking it out well before updating the clone.
Take your time, investigate all your software before making a leap, a clone or two will most certainly be of valuable assistance.
Move slowly and carefully, don't do too much at once or you won't know what is causing your issues.
Remember software like Parallels and others install kext files that can break on OS X upgrades, if you get a gray screen, simply hold Shift key and reboot to get into the machine.
Ideally it's best to install Snow Leopard fresh, then upgrade to Lion, then install all programs then user files last, hopefully you won't have to do all that but it is the most reliable method of insuring a pristine system and upgrade free of the unknowns.
Learn how to do clone here, formatting and other instructions too.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16276201#16276201

Trying to clone a bootcamp drive

My Bootcamp partition woks well enough on my Early 2008 MacPro Tower....Windows XP pro runs whatever I try, running big programs is the only slow part, loading takes awhile...so I want to clone this partition to a new SSD drive...I've replaced all my other SATA drives with SSDs, and loading times drop precipitously......so, how to do it? Disk Utility wont format my new SSD to NTFS, only FAT...and when I run carbonCopyCloner, it says this wont be bootable. Bootcamp will do it, but it wants me to create a USB drive with all the bootcamp software installed first, and a windows install disk I may not be able to find anymore. I suppose I can create a USB drive with Bootcamp software, stop it just after it reformats to NTFS, then run CarbonCopyCloner, but this seems a pretty cumbersome solution. Anyone know a better way? just a good free program to reformat a drive to NTFS would work, I just havent found one...
I will raise a Toast to the writer of the best solution.....
(Actually, I thought of the program "Toast" but it only formats DVDs....)
Jim
ps, running the must recent Mountain Lion.

Go Organic XP,
Lifted from a 2009 article on lifehacker lifehacker.com/5195783/format-a-usb-drive-as-ntfs-in-windows-xp
"Windows XP does have the ability to format drives with the NTFS file system, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the format dialog—normally the option is disabled.
To enable it, open up Device Manager and find your USB drive, go to the Properties -> Policies tab and then choose "Optimize for performance". Once you've done this, you'll see the NTFS option in the format dialog.
Readers should be warned, however, that once you've enabled write caching you will need to use the Safely Remove Hardware dialog to avoid losing data—though once you format the drive as NTFS you can switch the write caching back off."
Remember to use the Then try the carbon copy cloner method
If carboncopy cloner gives you the same message, follow this link to the Microsoft resolution section on running sys to move the core boot files to the new drive
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314057
The article has some good relevant reminders on the XP command specifics.
XP was fun, but (I bet you heard this before) Remember to keep the XP machine away from the internet, away from email, away from documents, image content, audio codec's, you only have about 50,000,000 threats your totally vulnerable to and for which no way exists to not be impacted.
If you partake in un-trustable user space content in XP and don’t isolate yourself, your safe behaviors won’t save your machine from exploit. If it connects to XP thumb drives, CD's, well, everything is exploitable
Not a judgment call on windows XP, just a fact based reflection of the territory in which you indicate the machine will have to live in.
If you get it working, you may be able to run "Microsoft EMET", system requirements are only that you be able to run the dot net 4.0 framework. If you get it to run, please report back. It should offer substantial mitigation against a plethora of threats for which no patch is available. to find it, use duckduckgo.com to search for "Microsoft EMET"
The latest EMET even does certificate pinning mitigation realtime for apps system wide. Impressive.
Not being a fan boy, noting that the DNS hijack vulnerability is 26 years old and OS/X, iOS and Android fail to implement in the OS certificate pinning of user installed apps. In iOS & Android the app developer coders should do this, but it would be nice if the OS/X got on board with a supported friendly user method.

ADVICE for running a "toaster clone" to internal drive in QNAP

i need to run a (presumably CCC) clone to a new QNAP drive with the two 1TB internal drives that I got in the mail from DMS today (thanks hatter).
can i please ask the list if there is anything special here in terms of running this which I am promptly going to mail off site to my brother? i'd like to make sure I am doing this right and so far (other than sitting down to re-read the QNAP documentation closer tomorrow) I am thinking that I format the drive as Mac OS Extended Journaled and that I somehow "ground" myself on concrete or keep the drives on a rubber mat or something and basically make sure I am not shuffling about on carpet or have my finger in a socket somewhere?
I'd like to give these a comfy home as well so I suppose I should wrap them in bubble wrap, buy a static free bag from my local camera shop (?) put them in starch peanuts and then ship them off to be kept in this manner in the cardboard box in his garage?
thought to get some sea-faring advice before shipping them off from shore over here.
Thanks in advance for any consideration on this one.
- Jon

So clone them as bootable clones with CCC and try to boot from them to see if they are ok.
You really don't have to get overly paranoid handling the drives so long as you stay away from their pins.
As for shipping, yes, maybe there you can be a little paranoid. You probably don't have to buy anti static bags if you don't have any handy. Use some food baggies.

Advice for FW 800 portable drive

I would like a drive where I can use one partition as a bootable clone and the other for my HD camcorder footage for use with iMovie. Does anybody have experience with a fast (7200 RPM preferred) portable FW 800 capable drive that is also bootable via FW 800? I've looked at the FreeAgent Go Pro and the WD Passport Elite, but it looks like neither of those are bootable via FW 800.

I don't know why the FreeAgent Go Pro wouldn't be bootable; my USB-only FreeAgent Go (a 250GB 5400 RPM unit) boots without any problem and serves as my primary bootable-clone backup drive. I recommend it highly at every opportunity. Why Seagate would make a FreeAgent Go that isn't bootable, I can't imagine. Where does your information about it come from?
Under no circumstances would I buy a Western Digital external drive. There have been more major difficulties reported with WD external drives in these forums than all other brands of external drives combined, thanks to inferior bridge chipsets and obnoxiously obstructive firmware. A bare WD hard drive is as good as any, and in a good enclosure not cursed with WD's proprietary firmware it can be a great value. But put it into a junk WD enclosure, and many Mac owners will be unable to use it at all.

How to Clone my Hard Drive

I just bought a new internal hard drive for my macbook (2006)
I have an enclosure and am ready to install the new one.
I've read through the discussions on cloning my old drive, but I'm still nervous about this process. (one of the most helpful so far was this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp47AQinUM8)
I just downloaded the free Super Duper software.
But some suggest just using Disc utility?
Do I need to format my new drive?
I don't think I want to go through the trouble of re-installing OS X.
(maybe next time).
I've backed up almost all I can on another external drive.
Scary stuff.

Jack, not scary stuff at all ...really. Super Duper will do a fine job of the clone. Yes you will need to format your new drive and you should do that with disk utility. Here are the steps I would follow.
1. Install your new drive in the external enclosure and format it with DU.
2. Use Super Duper to clone your existing drive onto the new drive. Be sure to check the make bootable option in SD.
3. Remove the new drive from the enclosure and install it into your MacBook.
4. Install the old drive into the enclosure. DO NOT ERASE YET!!!
5. Start your MacBook with the new drive and use it for awhile before you erase the old drive. That way IF anything goes wrong, and I suspect that nothing will, you've always got your existing drive with all of your data and programs intact. Once your sure that everything is fine then you can erase the old drive and use it for whatever you'd like.
Post back and let us know how it goes.

Can a 10.5.8 bootable clone be used as a startup disk in 10.6.8

For the very experienced users and experts.
We have a mbp bootable clone with 10.5.8 and want to use this as a backup startup disk on a mba with 10.6.8. We understand that it is generally not possible to startup a bootable clone that has a different os than what you are currently running.
In the reverse, if we tried to use a mba bootable clone with 10.6.8 as a startup disk on a mbp with 10.5.8 would this work or also crash? Would this be possible or would be expect kernel panics due to missing sandy bridge drivers? We understand that we would get 3 beeps and the grey screen if we tried.
In system preferences it temptingly shows that the different os bootable clone as being useable as a startup disk so it gives the impression this is an option that works. However we understand that if we do indeed try to boot, we will freeze due to a bunch of permissions problems and such. We're hoping to avoid our computer from freezing mid-stream in a startup disk switch and create a whole bunch of other problems.
We have no real desire to upgrade the 10.5.8 mbp to 10.6.8. We did notice that an old iphoto library had to be upgraded for 10.6.8 when the 10.5.8 library was first opened in 10.6.8 and we understand this will now be unopenable in 10.5.8.
Many thanks for any responses to our questions. Cheers.

E27 wrote:
We have a mbp bootable clone with 10.5.8 and want to use this as a backup startup disk on a mba with 10.6.8. We understand that it is generally not possible to startup a bootable clone that has a different os than what you are currently running.
You should as long as the MP had booted off the 10.5.8 clone previously.
However I, and others also, found out that we can no longer boot off the 10.5 disks in a later 10.6+ Software Update, it might be the firmware was changed to disallow 10.5 from booting once on 10.6.+ sometime.
Apple might have done this because they don't want people using the 10.5 disk to repair their 10.6 altered drive.
Got the written kp hard boot screen and had to unplug the clone while frozen but there appears to be no permanent damage to any of the drives. We suspected this may happen.
There is your answer and no, no pernament damage was done, it's all a read operation and the machine/firmware couldn't use the 10.5.8 drivers.
You'll have to find a Mac that is of the same model and runs 10.5 to boot off that 10.5.8 clone.

Free bootable clone on portable drive

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