Disk Image....

[whyrichard]

Hello all good mac people!

i love my macbook. including the hiss....

i am preparing to partition my drive, 12 gigs to xp, the rest to mac...

and i was wondering what the easiest method of "backing up" my mac's present files and settings.... i think it's called a disk image, is that so?


so any advice? what is a disk image? how do i put this image back onto the mac partition after i use the disk utility tool?

i do have an external hd, presently formatted to fat32 so it doubles as a pc backup as well..


thanks,


r.

[yankeefan24]

A disk image SHOULD NOT BE USED. use the external hdd. a disk image saves a file (.dmg) onto the hard drive. You can create one, and then put it on the external, but you cannot use it to back up your data on the mac.

you can .zip your home folder and library on the hdd, put that in a dmg and put that on the external.

[thejadedmonkey]

Or you can use Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) or OS X's Disk Utility to clone the hard drive onto the external one.

[whyrichard]

i'm confused....


i want to be able to backup this computer as it, repartition the drive, and then bring back my computer as it is at present onto the new mac partition....


disk utility, make new disk image onto external hd, image format: read/write, encryption: none....?


and then later how to i get it back?

is this right or wrong?

thanks,

r.


tried it and it said "resource busy"....

my guess: do this off the boot cd?


thanks,
r.

[yankeefan24]

i didn't realise you wanted the disk image on the external. That changes things. What i recomend doing is making a disk image on your desktop, then put everything on it and put that on the external. to get it back, take the dmg file, and put it on your desktop, and open it.

[danny_w]

I believe the easiest thing to do to achieve this is to use SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) to clone your internal hdd to an external fw hdd (and remember to make it bootable and TEST IT first). Then when you are done and want to get back to where you were, hook up the external hdd, boot from it (I'm not sure of the key sequence - somebody else can help there) and then clone from the external hdd back to the internal hdd, make it bootable, and finally, boot from the internal hdd. Note that some external fw drives are not bootable, and cannot be used in this situation.

[mkrishnan]

If you make a disk image and want to move it onto the external drive (that's formatted to fat32), isn't the size of that disk image limited to 4GB? Will that be enough?

If it's possible I think the CCC type of idea is better....

[yankeefan24]

Originally Posted by mkrishnan

If you make a disk image and want to move it onto the external drive (that's formatted to fat32), isn't the size of that disk image limited to 4GB? Will that be enough?

If it's possible I think the CCC type of idea is better....

i forgot about that. He could also make the drive into several 4GB files, but that could be hard.

[whyrichard]

this is a little more complex than i thought it would be....


maybe i should use my old ibook's hd instead of the external one....

reformat the ibook's hd, transfer using carbon copy cloner or something, check it, and then do as i please with the macbook...

question: how do i "make it bootable"?


thanks,
r.




#6
danny_w
macrumors regular

I believe the easiest thing to do to achieve this is to use SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) to clone your internal hdd to an external fw hdd (and remember to make it bootable and TEST IT first). Then when you are done and want to get back to where you were, hook up the external hdd, boot from it (I'm not sure of the key sequence - somebody else can help there) and then clone from the external hdd back to the internal hdd, make it bootable, and finally, boot from the internal hdd. Note that some external fw drives are not bootable, and cannot be used in this situation.

[danny_w]

Actually, using SuperDuper! to make a bootable copy is extremely simple, not nearly as complicated as I probably made it sound. If you have an external firewire drive (especially one with an Oxford chipset - these always seems to work great, but many others do also), just hook it up and run SuperDuper!. It will show selection dropdowns for the source disk (choose your internal disk) and the destination disk (your external disk). Then select Options, and check the Copy ALL, Make Bootable, and Reboot options, and select GO. The destination disk must be formatted as HFS+; if it is not, then use Disk Utility to format the disk (you will lose all data on the disk, but you would anyway when you did the copy). The free version of SuperDuper! is all that you need to do this (get it from www.shirt-pocket.com).

Originally Posted by whyrichard

this is a little more complex than i thought it would be....


maybe i should use my old ibook's hd instead of the external one....

reformat the ibook's hd, transfer using carbon copy cloner or something, check it, and then do as i please with the macbook...

question: how do i "make it bootable"?


thanks,
r.




#6
danny_w
macrumors regular

I believe the easiest thing to do to achieve this is to use SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) to clone your internal hdd to an external fw hdd (and remember to make it bootable and TEST IT first). Then when you are done and want to get back to where you were, hook up the external hdd, boot from it (I'm not sure of the key sequence - somebody else can help there) and then clone from the external hdd back to the internal hdd, make it bootable, and finally, boot from the internal hdd. Note that some external fw drives are not bootable, and cannot be used in this situation.

[whyrichard]

after partitioning the mac's hd, how then do i get the file that superduper made back onto the mac partition?



!

[danny_w]

Originally Posted by whyrichard

after partitioning the mac's hd, how then do i get the file that superduper made back onto the mac partition?!

If you made certain that the SuperDuper! clone was bootable, and the size will fit in your new partition, then all you need to do is clone in reverse. In other words, select the external hdd as the source, and the mac's hdd as the destination. Be sure to check 'erase destination before cloning', 'make bootable' and 'reboot from destination'.