Clone to 64 GB flash drive as a boot/rescue drive?

[andyd409]

When I travel I would generally take a small travel drive that is clone of my white MacBook as a rescue drive.

Now that I have the MBA I am wondering if I could just clone my 11.6 MBA to a 64 GB flash drive and then if the worst happened I could reverse clone from the flash drive to the MBA.

Has anyone here tried that?

How well did it work for you?

Thanks,

Andy

 

[Corax]

Why not use TimeMachine?

 

[kdoug]

When I travel I would generally take a small travel drive that is clone of my white MacBook as a rescue drive.

Now that I have the MBA I am wondering if I could just clone my 11.6 MBA to a 64 GB flash drive and then if the worst happened I could reverse clone from the flash drive to the MBA.

Has anyone here tried that?

How well did it work for you?

Thanks,

Andy

I cloned my 13" MBA right after I purchased it. From the factory they have about 14GB on the SSD. I purchased a 16GB flash drive and used Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact backup. I have a couple of small utility programs on it as well so it works great as an emergency drive. The only downside is USB 2.0 is not very fast.

 

[bcaslis]

I've used both carbon copy cloner and SuperDuper, they both work fine. If you just want a recovery disk (rather than a copy) you could also use the restore USB stick to install a new copy of the OS to another USB stick (two USB ports sure come in handy).

 

[gloryunited]

I cloned my 13" MBA right after I purchased it. From the factory they have about 14GB on the SSD. I purchased a 16GB flash drive and used Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact backup. I have a couple of small utility programs on it as well so it works great as an emergency drive. The only downside is USB 2.0 is not very fast.

But it is still much faster to "restore" than a fresh install right? because you need to use the USB stick to install in MBA anyway

 

[andyd409]

I cloned my 13" MBA right after I purchased it. From the factory they have about 14GB on the SSD. I purchased a 16GB flash drive and used Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact backup. I have a couple of small utility programs on it as well so it works great as an emergency drive. The only downside is USB 2.0 is not very fast.

Did you do any different formatting on the flash drive?

I'm thinking that I have a clone of my MBA I can just boot up from the flash drive, do a reverse clone then be back where I was. I have always done this with a travel drive that I take with me, never had to use it yet (Knock wood) but I just like the secure feeling that I can be back up ASAP after a failure.

Thanks,

Andy

 

[bcaslis]

Did you do any different formatting on the flash drive?

I'm thinking that I have a clone of my MBA I can just boot up from the flash drive, do a reverse clone then be back where I was. I have always done this with a travel drive that I take with me, never had to use it yet (Knock wood) but I just like the secure feeling that I can be back up ASAP after a failure.

Thanks,

Andy

The flash drive will probably come formatted for Windows. Use disk utility to partition it as MacOS Extended (journaled) with the GUID option (in the options button). If you do that it will work fine and be bootable once you clone to it or install the OS on it.

 

[kdoug]

But it is still much faster to "restore" than a fresh install right? because you need to use the USB stick to install in MBA anyway

Yes, much faster to restore. And you can restore your main SSD drive by booting from the USB flash drive and using Carbon Copy Cloner to restore it.

 

[Corax]

And installing from the stick is way faster than installing from a DVD...
So using sticks, external HDD's, SD-Cards, etc... is always pretty fast, for restoring or installing. CD's and DVD's are soooo obsolete in that area.

But on topic, I do think it's a very good idea to use a 64GB flash card(SDHC), but I would use TimeMachine to backup the whole system once.
I've used an external HDD with a TimeMachine backup, from my older MacBook the Air replaced, to make the Air exactly the way everything was. The whole process was very, very easy, painless and very fast.
My wife was very happy with it, personally I don't mind starting over afresh once in a while.