Backing up new Mac

[Burgi]

Hello, first time poster, first time Macbook user here.
I have done some research, but still have couple questions about backing up my mac.

I want to be able to restore my system if something happens, but also an option to get my day0 state of the disk.

TimeMachine sounds perfect, but it does not make bootable images and I don't have any other mac. I know paid version of CCC can help here, but would prefer free option if viable.
I'm planning to use the apple disk utility to make bootable backup on my thumb drive and then turn on the TimeMachine to backup to the external drive. According to this TimeMachine backs up the hidden recovery partition as well.

So If anything happens or simply if I get a new internal drive, can I just plug in thumb drive, start OSX from there and then plug in external drive and let TimeMachanie do its magic? Will the disk have the recovery partition?

 

[kristenp]

You don't need to that for restoring. As long as you have time machine setup and it does it's thing, you can boot a mac into recovery mode and restore from a time machine back up there.


http://www.apple.com/ca/osx/recovery/


I don't know about the day 0 thing using time machine though. I guess you'd need CCC for that.

 

[Bear]

...
So If anything happens or simply if I get a new internal drive, can I just plug in thumb drive, start OSX from there and then plug in external drive and let TimeMachanie do its magic? Will the disk have the recovery partition?

Actually with the Time Machine drive plugged in you could hold down the Option key while starting your Mac and it will allow you to select what disk/partition to boot from. As you noted, the Time Machine drive does have a recovery partition on it and you can boot that using this method.

 

[danny_w]

The free version of SuperDuper! at least used to support cloning bootable drives, but now I have the paid version so I don't know if that is still the case. If that is then that is an alternative to CCC which I never really liked anyway (had too many problems with it early on).

 

[old-wiz]

I'm a big fan of SuperDuper, paid version.

For the way I use my computer, I don't need the hourly backup of modifications - I just do it on a regular basis and rotate between different backup drives. Time Machine is fine for some people, but SD works well for me. I always make a backup before installing any software update or any software at all for that reason. Then if the software turns out to be crap I can get rid of it completely via booting from the backup and copying the backup onto the usual boot drive. The bootable clones are perfect for me.

However if you frequently delete stuff and don't pay close attention to what you do, then TM might be a better idea.

I tried time machine when it first came out and it kept getting messed up - it would hang for hours on "preparing for backup" and finally I said "forget it".

The most important thing is to actually DO backups and do them often.

 

[Burgi]

Actually with the Time Machine drive plugged in you could hold down the Option key while starting your Mac and it will allow you to select what disk/partition to boot from. As you noted, the Time Machine drive does have a recovery partition on it and you can boot that using this method.

When I OPed I actually didn't know that you can boot from the TM. That is totally awesome. Theoretically, the TM is then pretty much all I need. But just to be extra safe, I'll make a recovery thumb drive with this (and if there is enough space, than I'll put a clone there too).

Anyway, thank you all guys for the help.