Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

nagromme

macrumors G5
Original poster
May 2, 2002
12,546
1,196
I use Time Machine, but I exclude some big files that change a lot or can be re-downloaded.

Now I want a non-bootable FULL backup of ALL files for convenience "just in case." Can I use Disk Utility to Restore my internal HD to a disk image that I'll create on an external HD? I can't seem to find any record of people doing that.

I don't want to restore to the external HD itself--just to an image--for two reasons:

1) That drive has other stuff on it I want. Plenty of space left, but I don't want to erase the volume.

2) I don't need the backup to be bootable.

Basically if I ever need to do a Time Machine restore, and then I want some file that was excluded, this external image will be a "master copy" I always know has everything. I doubt I'd ever Restore from it (it will be out of date compared to the Time Machine) but I will manually copy certain files missing from Time Machine.

I'm doing this on Lion... before I take the Mavericks plunge!

TIA
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.