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Backing up iMac

A

AppleFan360

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jan 26, 2008
2,217
735
Currently I have a Time Capsule doing backups of my iMac and Macbook.

How do I run a one time backup of my iMac to a different external hard drive without messing up the time machine backups going to the Time Capsule?

I would like to have a separate backup to store away somewhere in case the house should burn down. :)

Thanks for the help.
 
Don't do it with Time Machine.

Get "SuperDuper!" and run a full backup once a week on your external drive. Probably, better than Time Machine anyways
 
I second the recommendation for SuperDuper! It can make an exact image of your internal disk on an external disk that is fully bootable. I update my SuperDuper! image before any major change to my machine, particularly OS updates, then unplug everything external except for my kbd/mouse/monitor. If anything goes wrong, I can easily boot from the external image and then image from the external back to the internal and I'm right back where I started from. I only wish that Windows and Linux were this easy to backup!
 
A third for SuperDuper! I actually have a dual-drive enclosure...one is my Time Machine backup, the other is my SuperDuper! clone. The two server very different purposes and are both worthwhile.
 
Time Machine is great for those "Oh @#$%, I just remembered I deleted that Pages document last week!"

SuperDuper! is great for those "OH @#Q#, MY FREAKIN LAPTOP JUST EXPLODED AND I HAVE TO PRINT THIS PAPER, WHICH IS DUE IN AN HOUR!!!!"

In this case, you just hook up the external drive to another mac, or to the HD impaired laptop.
 
I do a clone about once a month, or before major system changes in addition to my weekly backups.

I haven't used SuperDuper (although I have heard good things about it), I use the free CarbonCopyCloner, and haven't had any issues with it.
 
Excellent info! Thanks guys. I guess I will be getting SuperDuper.

I thought you can do a full restore with Time Machine? Say the internal drive on my iMac goes wacko and I need to restore the drive. Isn't Time Machine designed to restore the entire hard drive or do you need to install Leopard first and then restore from a Time Machine backup?
 
Chris Blount said:
Excellent info! Thanks guys. I guess I will be getting SuperDuper.

I thought you can do a full restore with Time Machine? Say the internal drive on my iMac goes wacko and I need to restore the drive. Isn't Time Machine designed to restore the entire hard drive or do you need to install Leopard first and then restore from a Time Machine backup?
Click to expand...

You have to restore from the Leopard DVD

SuperDuper! can boot from an external drive ASAP
 
One other question. With SuperDuper, do I need a dedicated clone drive or can I store the image as a file on an external hard drive?
 
Chris Blount said:
One other question. With SuperDuper, do I need a dedicated clone drive or can I store the image as a file on an external hard drive?
Click to expand...

I think you mentioned wanting to take it off-site, but you can also use SuperDuper! on a Time Machine partition. SD will create the bootable backup, but it will leave the Time Machine folder alone, so the two can live on the same drive.
 
Dimwhit said:
I think you mentioned wanting to take it off-site, but you can also use SuperDuper! on a Time Machine partition. SD will create the bootable backup, but it will leave the Time Machine folder alone, so the two can live on the same drive.
Click to expand...

Right, right, I totally forgot the newest version of SuperDuper! added this functionality
 
Dimwhit said:
I think you mentioned wanting to take it off-site, but you can also use SuperDuper! on a Time Machine partition. SD will create the bootable backup, but it will leave the Time Machine folder alone, so the two can live on the same drive.
Click to expand...
I remember they added this feature, but I don't fully understand it. What happens when you go to clone back to the internal drive? Does the clone skip the Time Machine backup directory?
 
danny_w said:
I remember they added this feature, but I don't fully understand it. What happens when you go to clone back to the internal drive? Does the clone skip the Time Machine backup directory?
Click to expand...

That's the idea I guess, never done it myself. If I'm gonna bother using the same amount of HD space, I might as well give SuperDuper! its own partition.
 
Well,

I had the same question and I used the Mac OS CD and loaded the Disk Utility and made an image of the hard drive and then restored it.

Downside is if its a huge image it will take forever to verify/do the check before you can load it back on.

Just a method that nobody had said.
 
thecrackerjack said:
Well,

I had the same question and I used the Mac OS CD and loaded the Disk Utility and made an image of the hard drive and then restored it.

Downside is if its a huge image it will take forever to verify/do the check before you can load it back on.

Just a method that nobody had said.
Click to expand...

And you can't schedule a backup, and you have to wait 21314124 hours for the stupid OS X disk to boot up. And there are no incremental backup options.

This is a good way to do it if you just want a starting point or a spare bootable drive, but not really as a regular backup method.
 
I am paranoid about backups, so although I started with a CCC cloned partition and used iBackup for incremental weekly backups on a separate partition, I now use two separate drives for that.

My theory is, if disaster strikes and my internal goes out, I wouldn't have a nasty surprise to find out that my backup was hosed too. But then again, I am paranoid about backups. :D
 
Thanks for the help everyone. I ended up downloading SuperDuper and simply creating an image on one of my external firewire drives. That will do me for now until the people at Carbonite get off their butts and create something for the Mac. :)
 
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