Disk Image Software for Mac?

[tolive]

Just wondering, is there any good disk image software for Mac? like the Norton Ghost or Acronis in Windows.

 

[mkrishnan]

I think I understand what you want ... e.g. to make clone images of a disk, possibly ones that can be booted? The two most popular applications in the Mac world, at least here at MR, are called SuperDuper and CarbonCopyCloner. They're both shareware.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Mac OS X comes with one. It's called Disk Utility. It can make an image of just about any disk (the one exception being the volume Mac OS X is currently booted from). It's found in /Applications/Utilities, and has the ability to make 3 different types of images:

1. Read-only
2. Read/Write
3. Compressed read-only

Additionally, any of these can be optionally encrypted with a password of your choosing.

If you want a disk cloning application, like the poster before me said, Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! are good choices.

 

[tolive]

Thanks, yes you're right, what I want is to create FULL disk image (along with a bootable CD likely), in case the hard drive is damaged or I need to replace with a larger capacity new hard drive, I can simply boot using the bootable CD and restore the whole system to the new disk.
In Windows, I use the Acronis, it really saves me time.

I think I understand what you want ... e.g. to make clone images of a disk, possibly ones that can be booted? The two most popular applications in the Mac world, at least here at MR, are called SuperDuper and CarbonCopyCloner. They're both shareware.

 

[mkrishnan]

I'm not sure about making bootable cd's... it's not so so easy, as far as I know. However, it should be unnecessary. If you have an external hard disk, you can just plug it in and boot off of it (if you have trouble booting, I think you hold "option" down during startup to select the boot volume). So the image is sufficient to be able to boot, unless you're using a network (in which case, you can use an OS X system DVD, I guess).

 

[tolive]

Thx guys for your fast responses.

I just looked at the Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper!, it seems they ARE what I'm looking for. Now my additional questions:

1. Which one is more reliable? I need to make sure the reliability because save much critical financial information on my MacBook.
2. Do the two softwares care about what I installed on the hard drive? I mean, if I have Mac OS and Windows installed through either Boot Camp or Parallels Desktop, will the clone image work for my Windows partition?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Thx guys for your fast responses.

I just looked at the Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper!, it seems they ARE what I'm looking for. Now my additional questions:

1. Which one is more reliable? I need to make sure the reliability because save much critical financial information on my MacBook.
2. Do the two softwares care about what I installed on the hard drive? I mean, if I have Mac OS and Windows installed through either Boot Camp or Parallels Desktop, will the clone image work for my Windows partition?

I recommend SuperDuper! over Carbon Copy Cloner, and have found it to be highly reliable as well as easy to use.
As far as cloning a Windows partition, SuperDuper! will clone a Parallels virtual hard disk just fine, but will NOT (as far as I know) clone a Boot Camp partition. You'll need a separate utility on the Windows side to handle that.

 

[Doctor Q]

I recommend SuperDuper! over Carbon Copy Cloner...

Here is another reason to favor SuperDuper, assuming the facts in this article are still correct for the latest versions of the programs involved:

Carbon Copy Cloner, which relies the ditto command, does not back up all of the file metadata that SuperDuper does. Even if you don't wade through all of the details, see the Results Table section in that article.

 

[tolive]

Appreciated for the article link! I'll try the SuperDuper.
Well, like what wrldwzrd89 said, it might be a problem for me that the disk image softwares don't clone the BootCamp Windows partition, I doubt it would work if I boot into Windows through BootCamp and make disk image using Windows disk image softwares like Acronis, but I may give it a try later.

Here is another reason to favor SuperDuper, assuming the facts in this article are still correct for the latest versions of the programs involved:

Carbon Copy Cloner, which relies the ditto command, does not back up all of the file metadata that SuperDuper does. Even if you don't wade through all of the details, see the Results Table section in that article.