Backup that can operate as a startup disk

[aicul]

I'm moving two iMacs to Mavericks and would want to be able to do a backup that I could run as a bootable disk.

The first part of this is easy; buy an external drive.

However copying and making a bootable disk seems to daunt me. Checked various threads and have not really found something I can get to work.

Has anyone done this ?

TO avoid having to backup a copy of commercial software (i.e. carbon cloner and similar) I would prefer to use disk utility

 

[simsaladimbamba]

CarbonCopyCloner (version 3.4.7 is still free and available for download here and works with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion) can help, either the trial or the still free 3.4.7 version.

 

[Weaselboy]

TO avoid having to backup a copy of commercial software (i.e. carbon cloner and similar) I would prefer to use disk utility

Here is a video that shows you how to clone your disk with Disk Utility. In the video your source would be Macintosh HD (like in the video) and the destination would be your external drive.

 

[aicul]

The Disk Utility with restore does not work.

The option with Carbon cloner was actually not what I was looking for (see thread question), but thank you for proposing.

Is there no way of doing a backup using native OSX commands ? All I want is a full backup of the disk, if it can be a mountable solution all the better, otherwise I just want to copy the HD file per file as is.

I tried unix cp -ax "from" "to" without success. After starting the mac with a installation disk and selecting terminal.

Is there really no way to do a backup basic basic way (i.e. file copy) ??

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Just out of curiosity, why is CCC out of the question, when 3.4.7 is still free and fully functional?

Anyway, have a look at the RSYNC command, as that is what CCC uses.

 

[Weaselboy]

The Disk Utility with restore does not work.

It does work. I have done it many times. Try a command-r boot to the recovery partition and use Disk Util from there to clone. Here is another walktrhu that may be more clear.

The key is Macintosh HD is your source and the external disk (already formatted to Mac OS Extended) is your destination.

 

[1934hotrod]

Another here the Mac Utility works, easy, no brainer and perfectly use it every month.

*************From the window on the left:
Drag the drive Macintosh HD0, source
Drag the Back_up drive to the destination

See Restore click that, it will make a clone of the computers boot drive. It just does not get any easier, plus it is a Utility written by Apple for your Apple

 

[aicul]

It does work. ..

Not if you do not have a DVD drive, and use of Disk sharing does not work either, also some DVD drives tend to "fall asleep" and do not startup-again when Disk utility finished, not to mention that if your iMac only has 1 usb plug connecting the DVD AND the ext hard drive becomes a dilemma...

Hence the "restore" technique may work in principle but it has many possible pitfalls that only appear after a long and time consuming image build.

This said, I agree that this approach is probably the most basic manner.