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Backup Question

chosenwolf

chosenwolf

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 4, 2006
507
0
Los Angeles
Hey,

Is it possible to back up everything on a MAC? WHen I say everything, I mean Safari Bookmarks (in the same order they are up top), Widgets (same order), upper taskbar icons, same dock icons, programs running.

I guess what I'm trying to get at, is can I get a new mac to look EXACTLY like mine?

Let me know
Thanks!
 
When you buy a new Mac it comes with Migration Assistant, which should help with all of that. Ideally, yes you can, assuming the new Mac is compatible with everything that was on your old Mac and has sufficient space.

I haven't actually done this, so I'm operating on theory, but this is how I understand it works. It essentially moves all of your preferences, settings, etc., from one Mac to another, depending on what you ask it to do.

Pretty painless, really.

Apple Knowledgebase Article on Migration Assistant.
 
Yes, it is. I use Retrospect to duplicate (clone) my boot drive on a regular basis, others use SuperDuper.
 
Alternately, you can use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! to clone one Mac to another.

Assuming of course you're up to date on your OS X install (in most cases you cannot install an older version of OS X (say Panther) on a newer Mac (say a MacBook).
 
yellow said:
Alternately, you can use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! to clone one Mac to another.

Assuming of course you're up to date on your OS X install (in most cases you cannot install an older version of OS X (say Panther) on a newer Mac (say a MacBook).
Click to expand...

It's going to be one MBP to another MBP. The problem is, I am going to back everything up to an external hard drive. So I will only have all of my MAC's data on the hard drive.
 
wickedG35 said:
It's going to be one MBP to another MBP. The problem is, I am going to back everything up to an external hard drive. So I will only have all of my MAC's data on the hard drive.
Click to expand...
This should not be a problem. Clone your old Mac to the HD, then either run Migration Assistant from the cloned HD or clone from the HD to your new Mac.

Isn't there another thread on this?

Edit: Yep. It might have some other good information as well.
 
emw said:
This should not be a problem. Clone your old Mac to the HD, then either run Migration Assistant from the cloned HD or clone from the HD to your new Mac.

Isn't there another thread on this?

Edit: Yep. It might have some other good information as well.
Click to expand...

Cool, thanks. I guess it's time to buy an external firewire hard drive today =)

Any recommendations? SATA or other?
 
wickedG35 said:
So I will only have all of my MAC's data on the hard drive.
Click to expand...

Doesn't matter.. as long as you have a firewire cable, you can boot into Target Mode (hold down t) and connect the 2 Macs. The target mode mac should appear like an external firewire hard drive. Then use SuperDuper to clone. I suggest target moding the new MBP.
 
Cool, so I got my drive today... I've created 2 partitions w/ Disk Utility, one of them is the size of my hard drive and the other is whatever was left which will be used for free space.

Now my question: I'm using superduper to backup everything to the drive. Do I still need to run migration assistant after to back up other things like my widgets, menu items, and other things?

Thanks =)
 
1 more question, can I set the 2nd partition (free space) to be both mac and windows hot swappable? Do I use the MS-DOS file system? Thanks!
 
Answer, yes. You need to us FAT 32. Good old UFS, Universal File System is also supported. You can't plug the drive in concurently with two systems, but you can consectuvely.

Carbon Copy Cloner,CCC, is a program I use. It's a free program with the request of a 5buck donation. It makes bootable clones.
 
Eniregnat said:
Answer, yes. You need to us FAT 32. Good old UFS, Universal File System is also supported. You can't plug the drive in concurently with two systems, but you can consectuvely.

Carbon Copy Cloner,CCC, is a program I use. It's a free program with the request of a 5buck donation. It makes bootable clones.
Click to expand...

I formatted with the Mac Disk Utility, and for my second partition of 40 gigs (160 gigs HD, 120 went to the MAC) I used the MS-DOS File System... I was able to hot swap it between my windows machine and the mac via USB w/o any problems. That problem is solved.

I used SuperDuper to clone the HD on the MAC (120gb partition) and it is now bootable, However I DO not know if it backed up all my settings, widgets, menu items. I'm wondering if I further need to back those up with "Migration Assistant."
 
No.. SuperDuper is a cloner, your cloned disk is exactly the same as your boot disk.
Not sure? Try booting from the clone. It'll be exactly the same.
 
yellow said:
No.. SuperDuper is a cloner, your cloned disk is exactly the same as your boot disk.
Not sure? Try booting from the clone. It'll be exactly the same.
Click to expand...

Cool, I'm going to try doing that. The HD icon on the cloned drive was the exact same as my current one. What about my home folder w/ my music, documents, etc.?
 
yellow said:
No.. SuperDuper is a cloner, your cloned disk is exactly the same as your boot disk.
Click to expand...

Wheeooo gotta quote myself.. and maybe add a dash of BOLD. And some color. And some size.

Exactly the same. Everything. All. The whole shbang. The same. Exactly. Cloned.
 
yellow said:
Wheeooo gotta quote myself.. and maybe add a dash of BOLD. And some color. And some size.

Exactly the same. Everything. All. The whole shbang. The same. Exactly. Cloned.
Click to expand...

Yes, but when you open up the backup drive on your computers hard drive, the home folder does not show :)

But fortunately, I just booted up from the backup external drive using firewire and everything seems to be ok. Thanks though :p
 
wickedG35 said:
Yes, but when you open up the backup drive on your computers hard drive, the home folder does not show :)
Click to expand...

Wha? It does.. it's in /Users/username. The hierarchy on the backup looks exactly like the hierarchy on the boot disk from the root of the drive.
 
Alright, guess I'm all backed up now. Do you recommend backing up every week? It took about 45 minutes to back up 18 gigs w/ SuperDuper.
 
Frankly, that seems kind slow. ~7MB/second.

Of course, there is overhead associated with SuperDuper!.

And then there's the speed of the HD in the laptop..most likely 5400RPM?

Still seems slowish to me.
 
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