make sense to use time machine and carboncopycloner? whats best external?

[bob2131]

hi, i use time machine on an OLD usb external for backing up my macbook.

I want to buy a new external for backing up now.
Does time machine only work with USB external??

ALot of people say to use carbon copy cloner which only works on firewire external.

So shall i jsut buy a 1TB external which has USB and Firewire connections?

(my mac drive is 250gb....but i will buy a new bigger internal soon 300to500gb probably)

thanks.

 

[BobZune]

Time machine can use either USB or Firewire external drive (Partition scheme should be GUID for Intel machines, ApplePartitionMap for PowerPC machines, TM partition format should be HFS+ - can all be done with disk Utility - click OPTIONS button to select partition scheme).

Carbon copy cloner will also work with both type of drives -- but if you want a BOOTABLE backup, remember PowerPC Macs can only boot from firewire drives (Intel machines can boot with USB or firewire drives).

A 1TB external drive with USB and Firewire interfaces would be good and give you flexibility, but if your machine is Intel based, a USB only interface would be sufficient, even if you want to make a bootable clone of the system drive.

 

[bob2131]

Time machine can use either USB or Firewire external drive (Partition scheme should be GUID for Intel machines, ApplePartitionMap for PowerPC machines, TM partition format should be HFS+ - can all be done with disk Utility - click OPTIONS button to select partition scheme).

Carbon copy cloner will also work with both type of drives -- but if you want a BOOTABLE backup, remember PowerPC Macs can only boot from firewire drives (Intel machines can boot with USB or firewire drives).

A 1TB external drive with USB and Firewire interfaces would be good and give you flexibility, but if your machine is Intel based, a USB only interface would be sufficient, even if you want to make a bootable clone of the system drive.

i wouldnt need to partition the external....would i? it would just be a fully mac formatted drive..... journled osx or whatever.......i have intel core 2 duo black macbook......

does it seem silly that i would put a time machine back up AND a carbon copy on teh external? in effect doubling my data......

I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE ARE USING CARBONCC OR SUPER DUPER.....if my mac dies or whatever.... i can just reinstall from my leopard dvd and my time machine back up from external........people keep saying time machine is not a bootable thing..... but it is..... in affect.....as you can put your system back to a previous time machine state......

 

[old-wiz]

SuperDuper and CCC allow a much faster recovery. If you lose your boot disk, then it takes longer to recover whether you re-install or recover from time machine. a SuperDuper disk is bootable allowing you to get back up much more quickly. I use two firewire 400 disks for SuoerDuper backup and alternate between them. One of the disks is also partitioned so there's a TimeMachine partition. It's mostly a question of how quickly you want to backup and how sqafe you want to be. Don't forget that you can have a problem with time machine and then where are you?

 

[bob2131]

SuperDuper and CCC allow a much faster recovery. If you lose your boot disk, then it takes longer to recover whether you re-install or recover from time machine. a SuperDuper disk is bootable allowing you to get back up much more quickly. I use two firewire 400 disks for SuoerDuper backup and alternate between them. One of the disks is also partitioned so there's a TimeMachine partition. It's mostly a question of how quickly you want to backup and how sqafe you want to be. Don't forget that you can have a problem with time machine and then where are you?

yeah good points.
i dont care too much about SPEED of recovery. Its about safety and making sure i have at least one good reliable back up in place..... but..... yeah.... if that fails....im screwed..... so would you suggest i buy two externals?? and back up the same macbook on both? in case one fails? i mean rather than the back up failing....the drive could fail too right?

 

[Cap41]

What about ease. recovery from CCC is almost instant. I had an issue, i booted with my external, formatted, and moved everything over. real easy.

 

[old-wiz]

yeah good points.
i dont care too much about SPEED of recovery. Its about safety and making sure i have at least one good reliable back up in place..... but..... yeah.... if that fails....im screwed..... so would you suggest i buy two externals?? and back up the same macbook on both? in case one fails? i mean rather than the back up failing....the drive could fail too right?

I use two externals because I'm a bit paranoid. At the moment, one external HD has two partitions: the bootbackup of 10.5.5 plus another partition which is more regular copies of my home directory. The other external HD has 3 partitions
a. bootbackup of 10.5.6, updated weekly.
b. Time machine partition
c. spare partition.

Two boot backups is nice, but it's mostly a question of how much do you have to lose? For an iMac with 320 gig HD, I prefer 2 500 gb externals as opposed to a single 1TB external for redundancy.

 

[sickmacdoc]

yeah good points.
i dont care too much about SPEED of recovery. Its about safety and making sure i have at least one good reliable back up in place..... but..... yeah.... if that fails....im screwed..... so would you suggest i buy two externals?? and back up the same macbook on both? in case one fails? i mean rather than the back up failing....the drive could fail too right?

A couple more things in favor of CCC/SD (which I use for all drives- on my boot drive I use both TM and CCC on two different backup drives)---

• While the actual speed of the of restoration is not that important to me either (though after some experimentation, clones certainly are faster in restoration) the bootability aspect is. Assuming I do not have a new spare boot drive, for instance, just lying there waiting for a boot drive failure, my system will be down until I order one and wait for delivery or go to a local store and pay more (assuming the stores are even open) if I am using TM exclusively. On the other hand if I have it cloned, then I can just vent my anger first, then restart holding the Option key and startup again immediately from my backup clone. Since I have my CCC run automatically on the most important drives every 4 hours, I would not be that far behind.

• Just as importantly to me anyway, is that with a bootable backup I can check at any time the validity of the backup itself by simply booting from it. With TM you just have to trust that the backup files have been written to the disk right and have not gotten corrupted making the backup unusable. OK, the chances of that are small of course but the clones are worth it to me if for nothing more than the peace of mind they offer.

 

[bob2131]

What about ease. recovery from CCC is almost instant. I had an issue, i booted with my external, formatted, and moved everything over. real easy.

so you booted from external..... then formatted the failed internal drive?
from within the mac + booted up external?

 

[bob2131]

A couple more things in favor of CCC/SD (which I use for all drives- on my boot drive I use both TM and CCC on two different backup drives)---

• While the actual speed of the of restoration is not that important to me either (though after some experimentation, clones certainly are faster in restoration) the bootability aspect is. Assuming I do not have a new spare boot drive, for instance, just lying there waiting for a boot drive failure, my system will be down until I order one and wait for delivery or go to a local store and pay more (assuming the stores are even open) if I am using TM exclusively. On the other hand if I have it cloned, then I can just vent my anger first, then restart holding the Option key and startup again immediately from my backup clone. Since I have my CCC run automatically on the most important drives every 4 hours, I would not be that far behind.

• Just as importantly to me anyway, is that with a bootable backup I can check at any time the validity of the backup itself by simply booting from it. With TM you just have to trust that the backup files have been written to the disk right and have not gotten corrupted making the backup unusable. OK, the chances of that are small of course but the clones are worth it to me if for nothing more than the peace of mind they offer.

thanks guys...i think im convinced now....im gonna get an extenal and use the cloning method .... along with time machine.....

ok to have a 1TB external....and put 2 clones on it? one with super duper and one with CCC.......?

so basically if you are using time machine....and internal macbook drive fails....you are screwed until you buy a new internal drive??? you cant just hook up the external time machine and run off that?

so basically..... having a carbon clone on external......allows you to hook up the external and work on mac as normal? (when internal drive fails) ..... while you order a new internal drive?? ...... kind of like a courtesy car given when you have a car crash and damage your car??

but if internal drive fails...... will the mac even power up?

time to do some hard drive shopping......

 

[sickmacdoc]

<clip>
1 ok to have a 1TB external....and put 2 clones on it? one with super duper and one with CCC.......?

2 so basically if you are using time machine....and internal macbook drive fails....you are screwed until you buy a new internal drive??? you cant just hook up the external time machine and run off that?

3 so basically..... having a carbon clone on external......allows you to hook up the external and work on mac as normal? (when internal drive fails) ..... while you order a new internal drive?? ...... kind of like a courtesy car given when you have a car crash and damage your car??

4 but if internal drive fails...... will the mac even power up?

time to do some hard drive shopping......

1. No real reason to clone with both apps- the results from either should be virtually identical. I prefer the free app CCC myself, but have a paid copy of SD also. Just keep in mind that the free version of SD you can do full drive clones fine, but to use incremental backups (just updating the backup with new/changed files which saves a ton of time) requires a $27.95 license for SD. BTW- if you are planning to use both TM and a clone on the same drive it will be a good idea to partition it so that each writes to its own partition.

2. Yes, you are interpreting that limitation of TM correctly. No use of the computer until the failed drive has been replaced and everything restored.

3. Good example with the courtesy car! It's even better though- in your example it would be like they gave you a carbon copy of your car with everything you have in it to use in the meantime!

4. Yes- a failed drive does not affect the startup of your Mac. You connect the external drive and power it up first, then start your Mac and press and hold the Option key right after the startup chime. You will be presented with a screen that shows you available bootable devices attached. Pick your external drive and off you go!

 

[old-wiz]

thanks guys...i think im convinced now....im gonna get an extenal and use the cloning method .... along with time machine.....

ok to have a 1TB external....and put 2 clones on it? one with super duper and one with CCC.......?

so basically if you are using time machine....and internal macbook drive fails....you are screwed until you buy a new internal drive??? you cant just hook up the external time machine and run off that?

so basically..... having a carbon clone on external......allows you to hook up the external and work on mac as normal? (when internal drive fails) ..... while you order a new internal drive?? ...... kind of like a courtesy car given when you have a car crash and damage your car??

but if internal drive fails...... will the mac even power up?

time to do some hard drive shopping......

You can't boot off time machine, so if the internal disk fails and you have no bootable external like from CCC/SuperDuper, you're out of luck until you get a new drive and install it.

With SuperDuper you just boot from the external and you can run that way until you get a new internal hard drive. It is sort of like the courtesy car, but you can, for example, download stuff while booting from the external drive, then when the new dive arrives you just restore the external to the new internal.

Mac should power up even if the internal fails, unless it's something on the motherboard that's screwed up, but in that case maybe the internal drive hasn't failed.

No reason to have both SuperDuper and CCC; use one or the other.

 

[bob2131]

"BTW- if you are planning to use both TM and a clone on the same drive it will be a good idea to partition it so that each writes to its own partition."
Why is it better to partition? just for speed of writing?

Yeah bootable clones are the way to go.... would firewire connection for external boot clone be better than USB external connection? (when actually using to boot the mac up) (i think im gonna buy a USB/firewire drive.... multi interface.... just to cover my options in future.... you never know)

 

[BlueRevolution]

Why is it better to partition? just for speed of writing?

Because Time Machine saves backups until it fills up the drive/partition, so your two backups may eventually start interfering with one another if you leave them on the same partition.

Yeah bootable clones are the way to go.... would firewire connection for external boot clone be better than USB external connection? (when actually using to boot the mac up) (i think im gonna buy a USB/firewire drive.... multi interface.... just to cover my options in future.... you never know)

FireWire would be faster, and leaves your USB port free for other things.