Is there a way to clone TWO hard drives at once?

Um.... I'm not sure I understand. Are you trying to merge the contents of both drives?

Time machine essentially does just that every hour. You can restore everything from a time machine backup.

eroxx said:

But timemachine won't boot on its own, correct?

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No. But, at least with 10.6, you just boot from the install DVD and restore everything to exactly the way it was. You can even pick which day you want to restore from.

You can, with lion

Freyqq said:

No. But, at least with 10.6, you just boot from the install DVD and restore everything to exactly the way it was. You can even pick which day you want to restore from.

Click to expand...

I've only done a restore from Time Machine after installing the OS. Are you saying you can skip the install the OS step? This is what an Apple tech told me but I didn't believe him because I've always installed the OS and then "migrated" from a TM backup.

I don't own lion, but in SL I have restored from a time machine backup more than once with no issues. It's an option on the bar across the top when you boot from an SL DVD. I assume lion is similar.

You don't need to clone them together necessarily. I run 2 backups 1 just for my Home account and 1 for my OS (SSD). Is that how apple sets up the SSD/HDD combos? I don't like Time Machine at all. Unless you are technically challenged or lazy it takes way too long to do what it does. Ever hit permissions issues on TM recoveries? Thats the kind of fun I'm talking about. "Your Copy failed for an unknown reason" Apple does not give you any feedback as to which file etc... No, Disk Images have never failed me, they are portable, bootable and can be managed by a ton of software.

I agree, TM isn't perfect. But, its a great system and should be used by most people. If you need something more robust I'd recommend TM + something else.

r0k said:

I've only done a restore from Time Machine after installing the OS. Are you saying you can skip the install the OS step? This is what an Apple tech told me but I didn't believe him because I've always installed the OS and then "migrated" from a TM backup.

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You have done one step too many ie. install OS first.

To restore from Time Machine on a fresh hard disk(s), you just need to boot up from install disk.

With Leopard / Snow Leopard, on the screen AFTER you confirm installation language, you can choose from the Menu and restore from backup. This is NOT a brilliant way for Apple to present it.

With Lion, this option smacks right in your face after booting up from installation media.

Yes, you can restore to both drives.

derbothaus said:

You don't need to clone them together necessarily. I run 2 backups 1 just for my Home account and 1 for my OS (SSD). Is that how apple sets up the SSD/HDD combos? I don't like Time Machine at all. Unless you are technically challenged or lazy it takes way too long to do what it does. Ever hit permissions issues on TM recoveries? Thats the kind of fun I'm talking about. "Your Copy failed for an unknown reason" Apple does not give you any feedback as to which file etc... No, Disk Images have never failed me, they are portable, bootable and can be managed by a ton of software.

Click to expand...

Interestingly, I had done at least 8 restores to date from TM on multiple Macs and haven't came across permission issues. Been smooth sailing and relied upon.

I do use iBackup and Carbon Copy Cloner for other reasons.

If I wanted to do fresh installation ie. wipe clean, and reinstall each apps, I will use iBackup to help backing up settings, mail, iTunes and all data that's hidden away by application. It saves me time to dig in every folder and restore them. Just one click from iBackup and all those including, say, Mail settings, are back to where it is. Time Machine can't do this.

CCC is good during times I have to send my Mac away (e.g. repair) and have my cloned Mac with me. I can run it off another Mac just like my own. Then just CCC it back to my Mac when I get it back.

r0k said:

I've only done a restore from Time Machine after installing the OS. Are you saying you can skip the install the OS step? This is what an Apple tech told me but I didn't believe him because I've always installed the OS and then "migrated" from a TM backup.

Click to expand...

Boot from DVD (10.6 or 10.7 etc.) select restore from time machine.

It works.

For Lion OS I have noticed (a Lion caveat?), depending on your scenario, you may loose your recovery partition.

E.g. if you have to replace the harddisk, restoring from DVD (source time machine) will not restore the recovery partition. So yes, you do have to install vanilla Lion first and restore from Time machine to get the recovery partition created.

So far I have found that you cannot enable FileVault on the restored partition (error was format not recognized, recommendation was to reinstall Lion).

I think what you're looking for is a RAID array! But I don't know more.