How to cloning my MBP

[paeza]

I have installed a lot of softwares on my MBP. So i want to back up all this softwares and settings. My friend told me that i need some program to clone the current system into external drive and then when i format my MBP next time, i can clone back all the things.

Anyone knows how to do this pls help me

 

[WildCowboy]

I use Carbon Copy Cloner to back up my PPC machines. It's not Universal, but apparently it works fine in Rosetta.

 

[jsw]

I use Carbon Copy Cloner to back up my PPC machines. It's not Universal, but apparently it works fine in Rosetta.

I can vouch for this. Just used it to back up and then, once it got back from Apple, restore my MBP. Free and functional.

 

[n8236]

I wouldn't use Carbon Copy, there was a great write up about OSX backup programs of how some are not "true" clones because it misses certain areas. You will have to dig it up, but the article basically summed up that Super Duper and a couple other programs were the only ones able to do this.

I personally use Super Duper and it has saved my balls quite a few times. I have an external drive w/ a HFS+ sector that I backup to every week and you can boot off that like a regular hd.

I HIGHLY recommend Super Duper. I suggest you Google and review the different backup solutions to OSX.

 

[paeza]

Thx every replies

 

[Arne]

I used the program dd for such things in Linux. OS X has it too (terminal software) but I think you would need to mount your MBP-HDD on another Mac (using Firewire maybe?) in order to restore it becuase I don't think there is a way to access the terminal without Mac OS X installed on the harddrive you want to write your data to. (You can also use a Linux Live-CD instead of mounting your disk on another Mac if there are drivers for everything you need (HDD, External HDD, Filesystem on the External HDD, etc)).

Thats what you have to do in the terminal:

Make an "image" oder "snapshot" of your disk:

sudo dd if=/dev/disk0 of=/Volumes/YOUREXTERNALDISK/disk.img

On the Live-CD you would need to figure out how everything is going to be mounted in the Linux System. It would be best to ask someone with Linux-knowledge to do it for you. It is basically this command:

dd if=/mountpoint/disk.img of=/dev/YOURDISK/