Making a boot disk w/ partition

So, I've made a boot disk. (Basically, a mirror of my SSD HD) But, over time, I've realized it's a waste of space. I'm only using a fraction of the 1TB drive.
My question is: Can someone give me a step-by-step on how to create a bootable disk, but with a sizeable partition on the side?

Open the Disk Utility program in the Applications > Utilities folder, and then select your external hard drive device (it will be called something like "1TB Lacie..."). When you do this, a "Partition" tab will appear, so click this and then click the graphical schematic of the partitions that appear (it will have the name "Boot BACKUP" in the middle of it).
Next click the plus button to add a new partition. You can drag the separator between these partitions to resize them according to your needs, and then click Apply to save the changes. You should now have a secondary usable partition on the external drive, along with the current bootable one.

Similar Messages

According to the Genius Bar, my HD is dying. I need help with such things as making a boot disk, making sure back up is complete, etc. I have a White early 2008 MacBook running 10.7.3. It is backed up regularly with Time Machine to an external drive.

I am not a real tech type person. MAcBook white early 2008 running 10.7.3. I know I will need a boot disk to restart the computer after I have installed the new drive. I have purchased a Hitachi 500 G, 7200 RPM to install. The computer is backed up regularly using Time Machine to an external hard drive. I nned to know all the steps I need to do before physically changing the hardware.

Do you have your original drive backed up? Is it still working? If so I'd buy an external enclosure and boot from that. Then format your new drive and use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your old drive to the new one.
If you don't have a backup, I'd buy an external drive, use carbon copy cloner to do a backup, then install the new drive and clone back to it.

Do I need to change boot disk partition types - if so how?

I set my boot disk up with several partitions, one of which is the Apple_UFS partition type. I now want to be able to use if for Mac data files - pdfs, word docs, etc. (I'm running 10.4.11 on a powerpc - when I can afford an Intel macbook, I'll upgrade to Leopard).
I have some questions:
1) Will puttting Mac files on a Apple_UFS volume cause problems (rsource & data forks in files)? (If its OK, then skip to Q6 &Q7 which I'd like to know for future reference).
2) Should I change the partition type (to Apple_HFSX)? There's no data on it now, so that's not a problem.
3) Disk Utility won't let me change partition type, only change the name. Diskutil has the command " eraseVolume format name device", but I suspect that format is the current format, not a new format - please correct me if I'm wrong.
4) pdisk interactive mode has the "t" command which looks like what I want.
5) after the partition type is changed, I presume I then need to use newfs_hfs -
6) I am confused about the device/partition name - "diskutil -l" shows "/dev/disk0" with the partition I want to change as "disk0s11". "pdisk - l" shows "/dev/rdisk0" and the partition number as 11. The "newfs_hfs -h" gives an example of "newfs_hfs -v Untitled /dev/rdisk0s7". So in my case, is my device "/dev/rdisk0s11"??
7) I have an external firewire drive that also is partitioned. "pdisk -l" and "diskutil list" give different outputs - partitions 1-9 are the same on both (Apple stuff), but pdisk show several "Apple_Free" partitions that diskutil ignores - pdisk has 23 total partitions, hdutil has 18. So which number do you use for the disk-identifier?
Thanks for any help on this confusing matter.

The regular versions of PSE 10 have the same kind of automatic updating (just go to Help>Updates and let the updater do its thing) that full Photoshop has. You can update the raw converter in the app store version, but since apple requires that everything in app store programs has to live within the app package itself, the file paths are different, so unless adobe updates the whole program so you can update through the app store, the adobe updater doesn't know what to do. You can do it manually, but it's kind of complicated to dig everything out of the adobe update, not as simple as it was in older versions of PSE.
This thread over at the adobe forum gives you the general process for updating the app store version:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4106312#4106312

Is there any way to make a snow leopard partition on an early 2011 MacBook Pro that was upgraded to Lion, without the original boot disk?

So I have an early 2011 MacBook pro, I believe it shipped with snow leopard originally, as I purchased and upgraded to Lion fairly early on. I am trying to make a partition right now and have it run snow leopard so I can use programs that have PowerPC.
I should note, I replaced both the RAM and the harddrive in my Macbook pro. I changed from 4 GB of ram (that came shipped) to 8 GB of ram from a 3rd party, that I installed on my own months ago, have registered in the computer and have been working fine for quite some time now.
Also I should note I replaced my harddrive. I went from what ever the standard 500 GB harddrive that shipped with 15 inch early 2011 MB pro's. I now have a 3rd party SSD that's 240GB's that I also installed on my own, (at the same time as the RAM---Black friday items) The harddrive has been working just fine since then.
In installing the harddrive I borrowed a friends external harddrive and used a program called carbon copy cloner to get everything over to the SSD.
Now here is my issue. I have ordered the Snow Leopard (10.6.3) install disks from apple, I have created a partition on my SSD for snow leopard, but when I try to select the install disc for snow leopard at boot I get three beeps.
I know this issue has been posted elsewere but it said answered and the answer is no longer available. I also am unsure if any of the RAM or Harddrive swapping could have been causing the issue. I have the old harddrive and RAM still, but unfortunatley have no external harddrive anymore or money to afford one.
Is there any way I can install a partition that runs snow leopard on my early 2011 MB pro with what I have (new SSD, New RAM, Current version Lion running, no external drive, lack of original snow leopard disks [I lost them ] and the general 10.6.3 snow leopard boot disks).
Let me know If there is anything I can do. I'm a now broke college student so i'd like to spend as little $$$$ as possible
*PS I should also note the DVD drive is working fine, it reads the disk, the disk is brand new, it plays DVD's fine and has never had any issues in the years i've used it for similar tasks*
sorry for the long drawn out post, I just wanted to include as much as possible from what I've seen other people have issues with

BrettGoudy wrote:
...Is there any way I can install a partition that runs snow leopard on my early 2011 MB pro with what I have (new SSD, New RAM, Current version Lion running, no external drive, lack of original snow leopard disks [I lost them ] and the general 10.6.3 snow leopard boot disks)...
As the last post suggests, call Apple and order a replacement original disc for about $17. They will ask you the model and serial numbers.
Your retail version of Snow Leopard OS 10.6.3 will not work on that Mac as it requires a minimum of OS X 10.6.7 to boot and operate.
Another alternative is to again borrow another Mac to install your retail Snow Leopard into an external HD or partition, upgrade it to 10.6.8 and then clone it back to a partition on your MBP.

Boot Disk Failed to load even though I've delted Windows Partition?!

Hi All,
I had a few problems installing Windows (mainly not being able to eject the CD during installation...) and decided to wait a while until I purchase Vista. I've deleted the partition through Disk Utility, and it now shows that it's not there.
However, when I start up my Mac, I'm faced with a screen saying "Boot Disk failed to load, press any key to restart."
I can get into my Mac by holding down the Alt Key, but don't really wanna do that every time I turn it on!
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Happy New Year!
Simon.

Check System Preferences > Startup Disk and make sure it is set to Mac OS. See http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/8240.html

Mirror boot disk with soft partitions

We've been investigating Solaris Volume Manager with Solaris 9 and have some questions. We currently use DiskSuite 4.2.1 to mirror our boot disks on Solaris 8. The fact that SVM is integrated into the kernel on Solaris 9 got us thinking. Here are some questions I would greatly appreciate answers to:
1. Is it possible to have your boot disk partitions (/root, /var, swap) be soft partitions and then mirror the soft partitions (so disk 1 you'd have 3 soft p's and on disk 2 you'd have 3 soft p's and create the mirror from them)?
2. What would the problems be with this? The major one we could foresee is not being able to see your /root, /var and swap partitions in the case of having to boot from the CD, but if SVM is in the Solaris 9 kernel, wouldn't that solve that issue. Is this a problem? Are there other issues/problems we're not thinking of?
3. Finally, is having your boot partitions be mirrored soft partitons a supported configuration from Sun?
Thanks,
Bob Jones
[email protected]

Hi,
micmac95 wrote:
The reason the HDD is split into two partitions is so if there is an error with the OS, they can reinstall it without affecting the user files.
Makes sense in a way. But does this 'they can reinstall...' imply that you don't have the OSX Install DVD for your Mac ?
Cause you need that DVD for installing the BootCamp Drivers of it !
I do have admin, and I can re-partition my HDD, but I cannot touch the OS partition.
If I set it up like this: http://micmac95.fileave.com/HDD%20setup.png , by shrinking the USER partition, will I be able to install windows on the BOOTCAMP partition?
Personally I never tried this 'Shrinking one partition to make another partition' approach with BootCamp.
But, if you don't have one now is the time to make a complete backup of all the things on your Mac !
Before 'fumbling' with partitions I always make sure to have a backup.
Stefan

What do I do? Please help me. (Mountian Lion, Disk Utility, Partition, Boot Camp)

I was trying to upgrade my snow leopard to mountian lion on my macbook pro 13". I didn't fully understand how to do it so I googled and found out i had to make a partition with a specific format. Prior, I did a bootcamp so I can install window 7. I partitioned my macbook with window 7 and osx. When i went to disk utility i didn't have enough space so i deleted my window 7 partition. ( i think i did it unproperly hence i have the problem). When i deleted it, it gave a random partition disk, my apple partition and the empty space i deleted for my window 7. I basically gave up on my mountian lion installation and restarted my computer. When my computer boots up it comes up with "Non-System disk" "Press any key to reboot".
What i tried was to stick in the mac ox cd in, and the application cd. Both doesn't work. Im trying to find where my window 7 cd is to see if i can restore the partition i deleted. I thats not the solution please help me
UPDATE: Also i was thinking about buying the Macbook Pro 15". With the current condition i have on my macbook pro 13" am i able to recycle it and get some store credit for it?

Once you back into OS X, reboot holding the command option r keys down, or command r keys and use that Disk Utility to repair your drive or MacintoshHD partition.
Then reboot normally and use that Disk Utiltiy to grab the little corner resizer of your MacintoshHD partition and drag it over the gray space at the bottom to reclaim the deleted Windows BootCamp partition.
If you want to try Mountain Lion, I suggest you do so on a extenral powered drive.
1: Format a external powered drive in Disk Utility Partition 1, Option: GUID Format OS X Extended Journaled and give it name like Mountain Lion (formatting a drive erases all data on it)
2: Download to Snow Leopard, Carbon Copy Cloner and use it's default settings to clone your MacintoshHD partition to the external drive.
3: Reboot the machine holding the option/alt key held down, boot from the clone.
4: Use that clone of Snow Leopard to upgrade to Mountain Lion via AppStore.
5: If and when your ready, you can boot from the 10.8 clone and reverse clone or clone Snow Leopard to another drive or whatever you need.
Most commonly used backup methods

Making Bootcamp Volume Default Boot Disk

I have just created a Bootcamp Partition on one of my Volumes. When I use it, I want to make this partition my default boot volume so that if I am doing Windows Installs that require Windows to do an automatic reboot, it will boot back into Windows not my normal MacOS X system. This means that an Option Boot will not be adequate since that just overrides the Boot Volume for THIS boot but not for the next boot (or reboot). To make it permanent, I must use the Startup Disk preference to select the volume. This is where I am running in problems. I have 4 separate boot partitions and used a barebones 10.6.1 partition to do the creation of the Bootcamp Partition. When I boot into that partition (or do an Option Boot) I see the Bootcamp volume for selection. If I boot into any other MacOS X partition (including a 2nd MacOS 10.6.1 one) or my normal 10.5.8 Partition (which I plan to clone copy into the barebones partition after erasing it and upgrade to 10.6.1) I do not see the Windows volume in the Startup Disk menu (although the disk is on my Desktops so it is being seen as a normal disk).
How, if possible do I make the Bootcamp Volume available to ALL my Boot Partitions for selection via their Startup Disk Preference. I am holding off on doing the Clone and Upgrade due to my fear that once I do it there will be no way to select the Bootcamp volume via Startup Disk and thus I will need to hold Option every time I boot or Windows reboots. I know that I could Option Boot to get to Windows and then use the Bootcamp Menu to select the bootcamp partition as default and then reboot to make it permanent) but I would rather not have to go through this hassle.
Thank you.

Yes I did the Bootcamp install under Windows (by using the MacOS X DVD).
As I stated, the ability to set Windows as the default Boot Volume works with the MacOS X Partition that I used to do the Boot Camp Assistant execution and the Windows Partition itself (ie: When running Windows). I can also do an Option Boot to boot into Windows (but that does not make it the default volume).
My problem is that aside from the partition that I was booted into when I ran Boot Camp Assistant, I have OTHER MacOS System Partitions that I boot and none of them see the Bootcamp Partition in their Startup Disk Menu (only the one that created the Bootcamp Partition). While I know that I can Option Boot into Windows, set the partition as default, and the reboot to make it take, I would like to avoid the need to do that useless 2nd boot just to set the default boot volume.

How can I partition, clone the boot disk, no cd?

How am I going to partition my boot disk? I only have the OS that came on the hard drive, no cd.
Tried start up c key on tiger 10.4 but it did not start from that cd where I thought perhaps I could administer this partitioning.
And further, how can I clone once done, no cd.

Let me see if I have this straight:
You want to partition your boot disk. That's it right?
All you need to do is clone your boot drive to another partition, disk, external, etc. You can use either superduper! (recommended), carbon copy cloner, or even just use osx disk utility.
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/7032/carbon-copy-cloner
Once you clone your boot drive, make sure it boots up first. Then if everything is good, re-partition the boot disk (erase) into however many partitions you need in Disk utility.
Then boot up from your clone you just made, open for example superduper, and clone back to your new partitioned drive. Bootup from the new partition drive, and you are set.
You don't need the CD to partition or even clone using DU.

Changing partition size of boot disk

Hi, i have an imac 5.1, i use an external drive to boot from which has 2 partitions, the one i boot from and the other part has files and stuff. i want to make the boot disk space bigger and the other smaller, how would i do this? thanks.

The idea of seperating the data from the system is a poor reason to partition the system drive.
Backup the data.
Reformat to a single partition and restore the data.
This will allow OS X to handle disk space for you instead of you having to do it.
Allan

Hallo, ich wollte auf eine eigene Partition von meinem mac noch windows installieren, doch jetzt komt beim starten immer nur: no bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key. Was soll ich tun??? Oder woher bekomme ich so eine Boot disk?

Hi,
ich wollte auf meinen Imac noch zusätzlich Windows 7 installieren.
jetzt kommt aber wenn ich starte nur noch: No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key.
was soll ich jetzt tun?
Woher bekomme ich so eine Boot disk?
Gruß steini

Starte deinen iMac neu und halte dabei die Alt/Option-taste gedrückt bis der Start-Manager erscheint.
Wähle deine OSX-partition aus und dann Enter.
Nachdem OSX gestartet ist, gehe zu Systemeinstellungen dann Startvolume and setze dein OSX als Standard.
Wenn nötig öffne danach den BootCamp-Assistenten und lösche die Windows-partition.
Stefan

Boot Camp "back up your disk before partitioning"

what does it mean when it says "Back up your disk before partitioning it or instaling windows."? what does it have to back up?

Everything you did on your Mac is what it means, email you received, pictures you took, letters you wrote, OSX itself.
Back Up your Mac (if you don't back up you are on the way to losing your stuff anyway)
But if your stuff does not matter to you, don't back up.

White Screen at Boot When Attempting to Access Recovery or Select a Boot Disk

Introduction
I want to share a solution for a problem I encountered that Apple technical support was unaware of (they said they would create a new kdoc when I called them to share my problem and its solution) and for which I could find no documentation online.
First, this is really a tip rather than a question, but I did leave it marked as a question in case anyone wants to earn some points by responding with a different solution to the problem I am about to describe. Additionally, I do not have a enough points to post a "Tip" so I am just starting a discussion instead.
Next, when I encountered the problem I am about to describe, I had not yet enabled a firmware password.
Finally, a massive "Thank you!" to the Great Pondini (James Pond - http://pondini.org) for helping me learn so much more interesting stuff about various OS X features and functionality (all for no charge) over the years.
Now on to why I have started this discussion...
The Problem
I recently purchased a new MacBook Pro (Core i7, SSD, etc.). After working with Setup Assistant to transfer everything from the most recent Time Machine backup of the older MBP I was replacing, applying all OS updates, and then enabling FileVault 2 and letting the requisite disk encryption process complete, I decided to I would go ahead and just proactively repair any permissions and ACLs for my user directory just in case any repair was necessary.
However, after shutting down my MBP, waiting, and then starting it up with Cmd-R being pressed while turning the MBP on, nothing would happen - I would just have a white screen with no Apple logo, no EFI login, no Recovery Console, nothing (and I waited for a very long time for something to show up). My only option was to do what I really do not like doing and that was to just power my new MBP down.
So, I tried again, this time holding down Opt while turning my computer on so as to select a disk at boot. The same problem returned.
Just to check, I once again started up while holding down the Shift key to attempt a Safe Boot. No dice.
Prior to trying all of this I made sure that I did have the Apple Recovery Partition in addition to my user partion and the EFI partition, so I did not understand why this would be happening. Why could I not boot into Recovery? Why could I not select a boot disk? And, why could I not go into Safe Boot?
To be safe, I started up and logged into my MBP as I normally would, then set my startup disk to be my Recovery USB for OS X 10.8, restarted, and verified all three partitions (and, since I had my Time Machine disk connected all three times I forced the computer to power off, I verified it as well). I then set my startup disk back to my SSD, and logged in and got online to see if anyone else had experienced this issue. After making sure I was not being crazy and using key combinations that were somehow made irrelevant, I shut my MBP down and walked away for a few minutes.
The Solution
So what solved my problem? A good 'ol reset of the NVRAM (aka/fka PRAM). If you are not familiar with how to reset the NVRAM:
Power off your Mac and go do something else for 30 seconds to a minute.
Press and hold down the Opt, Cmd, P and R buttons, and then press the power button. I have big hands and this is a one person operation for me. If you are not so "lucky", find someone to press the power button as you hold those four buttons down.
Continue holding those four buttons down through the first startup chime and then release all four of them only after the second startup chime is sounded.
So, for some reason, I had to reset the NVRAM on a brand new MBP that had been started up only once and restarted only once when I enabled FV2. Maybe something cached needed to be cleared out following the FV2 process, or maybe something funky was carried over after it was setup in the factory and shipped direct to me from China.
The moral of the story is: If you have strage issues during the startup of your Mac, just reset the NVRAM and try again. This has worked for a number of strange issues on various Macs for me in the past and proved to be useful once again on a brand new MBP that I never would have thought needed its NVRAM reset so soon into its lifecycle.
Special Note
There are two processes I always complete and recommend to others following a major software update (e.g. upgrading to a new version of OS X) and when I restore or otherwise transfer the most recent Time Machine backup to my current Mac or to a new one.
First, following a major or massive software update, go into Disk Utility, select your system and data drive(s), and then just click on "Repair Permissions" (Choosing "Verify Pemissions" will result in having to then click "Repair Permissions" if any permissions need to be repaired, so remove one click from the process).
Second, after transferring from a Time Machine backup, I like to make sure that my user directory permissions are good to go before any time is allowed for problems with those permissions to set in. If you are not familiar with the user directory permissions and ACL repair process (this process is not the same as the "Repair Permission" functionality in Disk Utility), here is how to do it:
Shutdown your Mac and wait about 30 seconds.
Press and hold down Cmd-R and then power on your Mac. Once the Apple logo with the spinning wheel shows up, release those two keys.
From within the Recovery Console, open a new Terminal session via the "Utilities" menu.
Invoke the following command (all one word, lowercase): resetpassword
In the "Reset Password" application that opens, select the disk that your user home directory is on, and then click the "Reset" button at the bottom underneath the "Reset Home Folder Permissions and ACLs" heading and wait for the process to finish. Any messages displayed can typically be safely ignored. If you want to be sure, search for information regarding any messages that you do not like.
Restart your MBP and enjoy using it.
(Note that if you have FV2 enabled, you will need your FV2 Recovery Key to actually reset your password. This is one of many reasons that I enable FV2 - anyone can startup a Mac and go into the Recovery Partition if it exists and reset a password, but having to also enter the FV2 Recovery Key adds a nice extra layer of protection. In addition to that, setting a Firmware Password makes it nearly impossible to start up from any disk other that that which is currrenlty installed in your Mac without knowing the Firmware Password - another security bonus. If someone gets ahold of your Mac, and you have FV2 enabled and an appropriately complex Firmware Password set, then them using your Mac as their own becomes a decently difficult process. It's by no means perfect computer security, but it makes it more challenging for someone to steal and use your Mac.)
If anyone has any other tips to share or additional solutions to problem I described, please discuss and share.

Which OS X is installed on your Mac ?
Troubleshooting advice can depend on that information.

No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key, over and over again...

I've seen a lot of discussions about "no bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key" but the answers in them don't seem to help me at all.
from the begining...
i was tryin to instal windows 7 on my 2014 iMac and after bootcamp prepared the iso on a flash drive, the computer restarted in the windows instalation screen and i chose the "BOOTCAMP" partition.
After thi i got an error with a mesage that the partition wans not in ntfs, and a question if i wanted to format it. As i am recent to OSX but i was a windows user for quite a while i thought, ok there should be no problem about letting windows format this BOOTCAMP partition so i went ahead and did it. after this i stopped the process because at the moment i seem to recal that in the mac osx bootcamp help there was something about making sure to installing windows to the BOOTCAMP partition. So i canceled the process and restarted the iMac.
Now i get the "no bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key" message over and over.
I've tryed restarting with alt, alt+cmd+p+r, alt+r, etc and allways get the same message.
Just before tryin to install windows on a secondary partition had the iMac backup to an external drive on my airport express via time machine.
Questions.
are there any other ways to boot into OSX again, or after letting windows format the BOOTCAMP partition all is lost?
If everything is lost, how do i boot to restore my time machine backup from the external drive?
all help is apreciated.
Thanks in advance

Sorry about that I just realized that Boot Camp may have decompressed your ISO, We can't really do much because Boot Camp may have told the mac to boot from the flash drive, but now your mac is most likely not being told to boot from it. (You where able to boot from the drive before so I would keep it all intact) Is your keyboard wireless (because it can cause your mac to not to register keys being pushed at the Macs start) which this may be preventing you from getting into recovery mode (Command-R) or the OS choosing screen (Option).

How to back up a ZFS boot disk ?

Hello all,
I have just installed Solaris 10 update 6 (10/08) on a Sparc machine (an Ultra 45 workstation) using ZFS for the boot disk.
Now I want to port a custom UFS boot disk backup script to ZFS.
Basically, this script copies the boot disk to a secondary disk and makes the secondary disk bootable.
With UFS, I had to play with the vfstab a bit to allow booting off the secondary disk, but this is not necessary with ZFS.
How can I perform such a backup of my ZFS boot disk ?
I tried the following (source disk: c1t0d0, target disk: c1t1d0):
# zfs list
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
rpool 110G 118G 94K /rpool
rpool/ROOT 4.58G 118G 18K legacy
rpool/ROOT/root 4.58G 25.4G 4.50G /
rpool/ROOT/root/var 79.2M 4.92G 79.2M /var
rpool/dump 16.0G 118G 16.0G -
rpool/export 73.3G 63.7G 73.3G /export
rpool/homelocal 21.9M 20.0G 21.9M /homelocal
rpool/swap 16G 134G 16K -
# zfs snapshot -r rpool@today
# zpool create -f -R /mnt rbackup c1t1d0
# zfs send -R rpool@today | zfs receive -F -d rbackup               <- This one fails (see below)
# installboot /usr/platform/`uname -i`/lib/fs/zfs/bootblk /dev/rdsk/c1t1d0s0
The send/receive command fails after transfering the "/" filesystem (4.5 GB) with the following error message:
cannot mount '/mnt': directory is not empty
There may be some kind of unwanted recursion here (trying to back up the backup or something) but I cannot figure it out.
I tried a workaround: creating the mount point outside the snapshot:
zfs snapshot -r rpool@today
mkdir /var/tmp/mnt
zpool create -f -R /var/tmp/mnt rbackup c1t1d0
zfs send -R rpool@today | zfs receive -F -d rbackup
But it still fails, this time with mounting "/var/tmp/mnt".
So how does one back up the ZFS boot disk to a secondary disk in a live environment ?

OK, this post requires some clarification.
First, thanks to robert.cohen and rogerfujii for giving some elements.
The objective is to make a backup of the boot disk on another disk of the same machine. The backup must be bootable just like the original disk.
The reason for doing this instead of (or, even better, in addition to) mirroring the boot disk is to be able to quickly recover a stable operating system in case anything gets corrupted on the boot disk. Corruption includes hardware failures, but also any software corruption which could be caused by a virus, an attacker or an operator mistake (rm -rf ...).
After doing lots of experiments, I found two potential solutions to this need.
Solution 1 looks like what rogerfujii suggested, albeit with a few practical additions.
It consists in using ZFS mirroring and breaking up the mirror after resilvering:
     - Configure the backup disk as a mirror of the boot disk :
     zpool attach -f rpool <boot disk>s0 <backup disk>s0
     - Copy the boot block to the backup disk:
     installboot -F zfs /usr/platform/`uname -i`/lib/fs/zfs/bootblk /dev/rdsk/<backup disk>s0
     - Monitor the mirror resilvering:
     zpool status rpool
     - Wait until the "action" field disappears (this can be scripted).
     - Prevent any further resilvering:
     zpool offline rpool <backup disk>s0
     Note: this step is mandatory because detaching the disk without offlining it first results in a non bootable backup disk.
     - Detach the backup disk from the mirror:
     zpool detach rpool <backup disk>s0
     POST-OPERATIONS:
     After booting on the backup disk, assuming the main boot disk is unreachable:
     - Log in as super-user.
     - Detach the main boot disk from the mirror
     zpool detach rpool <boot disk>s0
This solution has many advantages, including simplicity and using no dirty tricks. However, it has two major drawbacks:
- When booting on the backup disk, if the main boot disk is online, it will be resilvered with the old data.
- There is no easy way to access the backup disk data without rebooting.
So if you accidentally lose one file on the boot disk, you cannot easily recover it from the backup.
This is because the pool name is the same on both disks, therefore effectively preventing any pool import.
Here is now solution 2, which I favor.
It is more complex and dependent on the disk layout and ZFS implementation changes, but overall offers more flexibility.
It may need some additions if there are other disks than the boot disk with ZFS pools (I have not tested that case yet).
***** HOW TO BACKUP A ZFS BOOT DISK TO ANOTHER DISK *****
1. Backup disk partitioning
- Clean up ZFS information from the backup disk:
The first and last megabyte of the backup disk, which hold ZFS information (plus other stuff) are erased:
dd if=/dev/zero seek=<backup disk #blocks minus 2048> count=2048 of=/dev/rdsk/<backup disk>s2
dd if=/dev/zero count=2048 of=/dev/rdsk/<backup disk>s2
- Label and partition the backup disk in SMI :
format -e <backup disk>
     label
     0          -> SMI label
     y
     (If more questions asked: press Enter 3 times.)
     partition
     (Create a single parition, number 0, filling the whole disk)
     label
     0
     y
     quit
     quit
2. Data copy
- Create the target ZFS pool:
zpool create -f -o failmode=continue -R /mnt -m legacy rbackup <backup disk>s0
Note: the chosen pool name is here "rbackup".
- Create a snapshot of the source pool :
zfs snapshot -r rpool@today
- Copy the data :
zfs send -R rpool@today | zfs receive -F -d rbackup
- Remove the snapshot, plus its copy on the backup disk :
zfs destroy -r rbackup@today
zfs destroy -r rpool@today
3. Backup pool reconfiguration
- Edit the following files:
/mnt/etc/vfstab
/mnt/etc/power.conf
/mnt/etc/dumpadm.conf
In these files, replace the source pool name "rpool" with the backup pool name "rbackup".
- Remove the ZFS mount list:
rm /mnt/etc/zfs/zpool.cache
4. Making the backup disk bootable
- Note the name of the current boot filesystem:
df -k /
E.g.:
# df -k /
Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
rpool/ROOT/root 31457280 4726390 26646966 16% /
- Configure the boot filesystem on the backup pool:
zpool set bootfs=rbackup/ROOT/root rbackup
Note: "rbackup/ROOT/root" is derived from the main boot filesystem name "rpool/ROOT/root".
- Copy the ZFS boot block to the backup disk:
installboot -F zfs /usr/platform/`uname -i`/lib/fs/zfs/bootblk /dev/rdsk/<backup disk>s0
5. Cleaning up
- Detach the target pool:
zpool export rbackup
I hope this howto will be useful to those like me who need to change all their habits while migrating to ZFS.
Regards.
HL

Making a boot disk w/ partition

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