Backing up my "Software Updates"?

[generik]

Hi,

I just did a full download of all the "Software Updates" that were available.. woah.. quite a lot.. and I thought Windows was bad

Is it possible to backup those installed packages? Just in case I need to reinstall my entire OS, at least I won't have to download them

Thanks!

 

[grapes911]

Instead of using software update, you can download the updates from Apple's website. That way you can save the files. But I don't reinstall OS X. I just make full backups of my drive every month or so. Never had to use them though.

 

[generik]

How do you backup your drive? A Mac equivalent of Norton Ghost?

 

[grapes911]

How do you backup your drive? A Mac equivalent of Norton Ghost?

I use SuperDuper to make a complete bootable backup to an external firewire drive.

 

[generik]

Any chance that it'd work with USB drives?

Or even *gasp* an iPod connected via FW?

 

[grapes911]

Any chance that it'd work with USB drives?

I'm pretty sure you can back up to USB. I know you cannot boot from USB though.

Or even *gasp* an iPod connected via FW?

Yes, you can. But a full bootable backup is a bit for bit transfer. Meaning if you are using 20 GB of space on your computer, you will use 20 GB of space on you iPod.

I actually have two externals. One is 250 GB and for storage. The other is 100 GB (the same size as my system hard drive) and firewire. I use it for backups and only backups. I never had to recover from it, but I think it was a good investment any way.

 

[MikeGA]

What you can do is tell Software Update to retain the packages afters it's downloaded and installed them. This way, you can backup the folder:

/Library/Packages

(I think that's right!)