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Carbon Copy Cloner, am I using it right?

gauchogolfer

gauchogolfer

macrumors 603
Original poster
Jan 28, 2005
5,551
6
American Riviera
Hi all,
So, I'm about to send off my Powerbook to Apple for some logic-board repair lovin'. As a result, I decided to clone my HD in the event they wipe it off during repair. I'm using the free version of Carbon Copy Cloner. Here's what I did:
1. Format new external drive HFS+ (Extended Journaled)
2. Partition to create one 75GB section and one 160GB section.
3. Pointed CCC at 75GB partition and told it to clone entire Macintosh HD to new partition.
4. Waited...waited...waited...
5. Once finished, I have an image titled 'MacintoshHD.sparseimage'. Sounds good. If I mount this image, I can see all of my files and applications.

So, here's the question: when I get my machine back from Apple and I need to copy everything back over, how do I do it? Is it OK to just drag that over? Does CCC have a 'replace hard drive contents' option?

Also, is it possible to boot from my sparse image, or did I need to do something different when making the clone? I tried rebooting while holding down option to try booting from the external, but no drive was recognized.

Thanks for the help.
 
What I do to back up my drive with CCC is to do a full clone. That makes the cloned image a full bootable copy of my hard drive so when I need to restore, I boot to that external image and use Carbon Copy Cloner in reverse.
 
Yeah, I get the feeling that I did something wrong the first time through...
I'll likely be giving it another try tonight before sending my machine back. I think I missed a checkbox somewhere to not have it clone to an image.
 
WildCowboy said:
Sounds like you missed the "Make bootable" check box.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I figured.
Say I do it right next time (who knows? :rolleyes: ), what is the restoration procedure? I've got this nice bootable image of my hard drive, how do I replace the contents of my laptop's internal drive?
 
gauchogolfer said:
Yeah, that's what I figured.
Say I do it right next time (who knows? :rolleyes: ), what is the restoration procedure? I've got this nice bootable image of my hard drive, how do I replace the contents of my laptop's internal drive?
Click to expand...

Boot from the external, launch CCC and repeat the procedure in reverse. You'll probably want to wipe the hard drive before you clone it back over though.
 
Eidorian said:
Did you make a bootable external copy or a disk image of your current drive? It's rather confusing.
Click to expand...

At the moment I have a disk image of my current drive. But, I'm planning on repeating the process and making a bootable copy. It looks like the procedure will be then to boot from the external, and run CCC from there to clone the external back over to the internal on my laptop.

Sound good?
 
Which version of CCC are you using?
As you said, when pressing the "option" key at boot-up you should see your external drive in addition to your internal drive as icons on your screens. When I backup I always check.
 
gauchogolfer said:
At the moment I have a disk image of my current drive. But, I'm planning on repeating the process and making a bootable copy. It looks like the procedure will be then to boot from the external, and run CCC from there to clone the external back over to the internal on my laptop.

Sound good?
Click to expand...
1. Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable copy
2. NetRestore Helper to make an image that is also Apple System Restore Compatible.
 
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