can this be used to create a saftey image of my hard disk? say i get it all confiured the way i want, take a snap shot with this.
can i use that to restore the drive to the condition of the snapshot at any time in the future?
Carbon Copy Cloner or CCC, will allow you to make a bootable clone of your internal HD to another HD.
For example, is you have a MB, then you could use CCC to make a clone to an external USB HD.
CCC is also useful when upgrading your HD. What many will do is clone their existing HD to the new HD via an external enclosure. Once the clone has been completed, and tested, then swap the HDs. Works well. Just did this a few months ago with a 500GB hard drive for my MPB.
If you do decide to clone for backup purposes, which is what I do, you will need two external HDs of equal or greater capacity than the HD that you want to clone. Yes, you could use 1 external HD that has twice the capacity of the internal HD and make two partitions. However, if the external HD dies, you've lost both of your clones at the same time. That is why it is better to have two external HDs that you clone to alternating between the two on a weekly basis.
Another very nice thing about having a clone, is that if your internal HD goes bad, you can immediately boot from your clone and trouble shoot your internal HD and hopefully repairing the internal HD or at least recovering your files since the last clone.
