Manually backup Fusion Drive

[JasunX]

Hi again folks,

I've gone and done it again. Basically I let my Mac Mini Late 2014 download until the HDD was 100% full, and did a restart before realizing that this was the case.

Long story short, my HDD is corrupted and I get the crossed out circle when trying to boot.

Anyhow, I tried to do a backup by creating a disk image using disk utility after booting into recovery, but at some point it failed with something about a bad sector or something.

Went out and got myself a Thunderbolt cable. I was able to connect my Mac Mini to my MacBook Air in Target Disk mode, and I've moved over about 800GB worth of my Mac Mini's stuff onto the external hard drive connected to my Air.

So far I've copied the following folders:

OS/Applications
OS/Users

I figure this pretty much backs up everything. Combined the above two folders come to just under 900GB.

Am I missing anything crucial? I'm guessing I'm gonna backup OS/Library as well, because that's where my the fonts folder is as well....

Any recommendations? Thanks

P.S. I don't intend to just copy/paste everything back once I've re-installed MacOS onto my Mac Mini. I just wana make sure that I have access to all user-related files should I need to restore certain things. So Applications are gona be installed from Fresh, but like Karabiner for example stores the .json file I need in Users/Me/.config/Karabiner...So I'll move over that file...just an example of why I'm backing everything up.

 

[Fishrrman]

If you just "copied" the Applications folder, be aware that some apps may not work properly (or work at all) if you later "copy them back" to the internal drive.

How I would do it:
1. Get an external drive.
2. Boot into target mode and "clean off" most of the DOWNLOADS from the Mini's drive (NOT apps and user folders).
3. When you get enough space cleared up so that it's bootable again, boot from it.
4. If it still boots easily and runs ok at that point, KEEP REMOVING UN-NEEDED STUFF until you get the drive manageable again.

Off-load it to an external drive.

There may be nothing wrong with the OS on the internal drive -- other than the fact that the drive was full and the OS had "no space to breathe".

 

[bigfatipod]

I'd grab the 30 day trial of Carbon Copy Cloner to a) make sure you grab everything and b) make it a bootable copy

 

[JasunX]

If you just "copied" the Applications folder, be aware that some apps may not work properly (or work at all) if you later "copy them back" to the internal drive.

How I would do it:
1. Get an external drive.
2. Boot into target mode and "clean off" most of the DOWNLOADS from the Mini's drive (NOT apps and user folders).
3. When you get enough space cleared up so that it's bootable again, boot from it.
4. If it still boots easily and runs ok at that point, KEEP REMOVING UN-NEEDED STUFF until you get the drive manageable again.

Off-load it to an external drive.

There may be nothing wrong with the OS on the internal drive -- other than the fact that the drive was full and the OS had "no space to breathe".

I actually thought of this at first...but it doesn't allow me to delete files in Target Disk mode...

 

[Fishrrman]

"I actually thought of this at first...but it doesn't allow me to delete files in Target Disk mode..."

Try this and let us know if things change:
1. Mount the drive in target disk mode. Its icon should be on the desktop
2. Click on the icon ONE TIME to select it
3. Type "command-i" (eye) to bring up the get info box
4. At the bottom of get info, click the lock icon and enter your password
5. Also towards the bottom, in "Sharing and Permissions", put a checkmark into "ignore ownership on this volume"
6. Close the "get info" box.

NOW try to delete a file.
Any difference?