Can I create a bootable time machine basically? I have a laptop that I use primarily, but occasionally my wife needs to borrow it. I'd love to be able to keep a bootable time machine copy up to date on an SSD that I could plug into her imac when she uses mine and then work from that, and then have that update my macbook when I get it back. Possible?
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Bootable backup that updates
- Thread starter brsboarder
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Yes. I think it even works with just Time Machine, but otherwise Super Duper or CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner) are the usual suspects for recommendations for this. If you're a Unix aficionado there's also dd or asr
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Time Machine makes a disk copy that can be booted to a recovery utility, then from there you can restore, but you cannot boot a Time Machine disk and actually run the OS to use the computer normally.
Take a look at either Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper. Both those will make a bootable clone you can run from.
Take a look at either Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper. Both those will make a bootable clone you can run from.
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You don't want tm for this.
Instead, use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. Either will create BOOTABLE backups that are AN EXACT COPY of your source (internal) drive. Both can "incrementally" update the clones so they are always a copy of the source.
BE AWARE:
With Catalina, only CCC is (so far as I know) able to create a bootable cloned copy.
BE AWARE:
With Big Sur, even CCC can't create a bootable clone right now. I believe it CAN create a copy (but that won't boot on it's own, not yet).
Instead, use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. Either will create BOOTABLE backups that are AN EXACT COPY of your source (internal) drive. Both can "incrementally" update the clones so they are always a copy of the source.
BE AWARE:
With Catalina, only CCC is (so far as I know) able to create a bootable cloned copy.
BE AWARE:
With Big Sur, even CCC can't create a bootable clone right now. I believe it CAN create a copy (but that won't boot on it's own, not yet).
As far as I am aware, a Time Machine backup is not bootable as a functioning OS, if that is what you are implying.
Thanks for correcting me. I had never tried booting a TM directly, only picking individual files out of it. My bootable backup is currently made with CCC. I assumed TM was probably bootable, without knowing for sure
But that's why I said "I think" in that original post, and recommended Super Duper, CCC or other command line tools instead.
I will correct original post
Cheers.
Thanks for correcting me. I had never tried booting a TM directly, only picking individual files out of it. My bootable backup is currently made with CCC. I assumed TM was probably bootable, without knowing for sure
But that's why I said "I think" in that original post, and recommended Super Duper, CCC or other command line tools instead.
I will correct original post
Cheers.
No problem. Until you mentioned it, I had not thought about using the dd command to do any sort of backup operations.
Works alright for single restore points, best for smaller disks. It's not clever in reacting to being interrupted and it can't do incremental to my knowledge, it's just make the output identical to the input
Thanks all for the advice, would you trust ccc to do things perfectly? Will it allow me to go both ways if that makes sense (after working on external drive for 3-4 days restoring back to macbook)
I not just would trust. I do trust CCC. I wiped my internal MacBook drive with Big Sur's first beta. My "main" drive with Mojave and all my data, is now a CCC made bootable external SSD. Though in addition to it, I also have a Time Machine backup just in case, but the CCC one is the quick bootable back in action drive.
I am curious if there will be some sort of issues created by booting from Big Sur to an older version of MacOS related to when the firmware is update by Big Sur. I have read about this sort of thing happening with Catalina. I don’t boot to multiple OSes so I would not have this issue.
I've been running multi-boot for almost a decade. With several versions of macOS, Linux and Windows often co-existing. Yes issues like that can occur, but 95% of the time, things are problem-free. Windows is the one that makes the most problems, mostly due to it living in a hybrid MBR container