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Time Machine question

T

thomasp

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 18, 2004
654
1
UK
Hi,

I don't have Leopard yet and am still debating if it's worth upgrading my 1.5GHz G4 PowerBook to it.

Anyway, one of the deciding factors will be - can you boot up from a Time Machine backup?


Currently, I use SuperDuper! to (occasionally) back up my hard drive to a partition on my external firewire HD, and I can boot my laptop up from this should my hard drive or whatever go pear-shaped, or restore my entire hard drive if needed (and don't say it won't happen - because it did.). When the computer's started up from the FWHD, it runs just as it did when I last did the backup, albeit slightly slower.

Will a Time Machine backup from Leopard allow me to boot the computer up into Leopard from my external HD should something prevent me from booting up from the internal disk?


Thanks :)
 
thomasp said:
Hi,

I don't have Leopard yet and am still debating if it's worth upgrading my 1.5GHz G4 PowerBook to it.

Anyway, one of the deciding factors will be - can you boot up from a Time Machine backup?


Currently, I use SuperDuper! to (occasionally) back up my hard drive to a partition on my external firewire HD, and I can boot my laptop up from this should my hard drive or whatever go pear-shaped, or restore my entire hard drive if needed (and don't say it won't happen - because it did.). When the computer's started up from the FWHD, it runs just as it did when I last did the backup, albeit slightly slower.

Will a Time Machine backup from Leopard allow me to boot the computer up into Leopard from my external HD should something prevent me from booting up from the internal disk?


Thanks :)
Click to expand...

I never heard that you can, and if you could, i would think they would advertise something like that. So i'm going to say 70% sure you can't. Reason being that many people may use USB external HD and i believe you can only boot from firewire HD...

if anyone else has anymore info...


cheers
 
Oh well, looks like the one feature I would have actually used in Leopard I won't be using now.

Guess this PowerBook will be staying on Tiger.


Thanks for the replies :)
 
thomasp said:
Hi,

I don't have Leopard yet and am still debating if it's worth upgrading my 1.5GHz G4 PowerBook to it.

Anyway, one of the deciding factors will be - can you boot up from a Time Machine backup?


Currently, I use SuperDuper! to (occasionally) back up my hard drive to a partition on my external firewire HD, and I can boot my laptop up from this should my hard drive or whatever go pear-shaped, or restore my entire hard drive if needed (and don't say it won't happen - because it did.). When the computer's started up from the FWHD, it runs just as it did when I last did the backup, albeit slightly slower.

Will a Time Machine backup from Leopard allow me to boot the computer up into Leopard from my external HD should something prevent me from booting up from the internal disk?


Thanks :)
Click to expand...

Don't Quote me but while the partition is not wholly bootable in itself. If your system crashes and you put in your Leopard Disk and click Revert to Previous version. The Time Machine screen will appear letting you go back through the hours or days and then restore that complete backup of anytime. So while it can't boot from it directly. It can boot directly from the CD and then you can restore. Much nicer too I find.
 
Chef Medeski said:
Don't Quote me but while the partition is not wholly bootable in itself. If your system crashes and you put in your Leopard Disk and click Revert to Previous version. The Time Machine screen will appear letting you go back through the hours or days and then restore that complete backup of anytime. So while it can't boot from it directly. It can boot directly from the CD and then you can restore. Much nicer too I find.
Click to expand...

Yup found it.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15638.html

You can restore your system from Boot Camp the only problem is you need the Leopard CD. I dont know how much of an issue that is for you. For me since the HD is at home anyways, the CD is not far away, its not a big deal. But unsure if its a make or break for you.
 
Chef Medeski said:
Don't Quote me but while the partition is not wholly bootable in itself. If your system crashes and you put in your Leopard Disk and click Revert to Previous version. The Time Machine screen will appear letting you go back through the hours or days and then restore that complete backup of anytime. So while it can't boot from it directly. It can boot directly from the CD and then you can restore. Much nicer too I find.
Click to expand...

Chef Medeski said:
Yup found it.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15638.html

You can restore your system from Boot Camp the only problem is you need the Leopard CD. I dont know how much of an issue that is for you. For me since the HD is at home anyways, the CD is not far away, its not a big deal. But unsure if its a make or break for you.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the replies.

Unfortunately, I think that would be a "break" for me, because if the internal hard drive goes kaput, there'd be no way to boot off the external hard drive. The problem I had with my PB earlier in the year could potentially have been a hard drive failure "in the making", but because I had a fully bootable backup on my external HD, I was able to use the computer more or less as normal and diagnose the HD at the same time (which thankfully, wasn't dying).


If Time Machine cannot provide a bootable backup, then there's no point in me using it - I might as well just carry on as I am. Tiger's running perfectly well on my PB at the moment. Shame - Leopard seemed so good a week ago...
 
thomasp said:
Thanks for the replies.

Unfortunately, I think that would be a "break" for me, because if the internal hard drive goes kaput, there'd be no way to boot off the external hard drive. The problem I had with my PB earlier in the year could potentially have been a hard drive failure "in the making", but because I had a fully bootable backup on my external HD, I was able to use the computer more or less as normal and diagnose the HD at the same time (which thankfully, wasn't dying).


If Time Machine cannot provide a bootable backup, then there's no point in me using it - I might as well just carry on as I am. Tiger's running perfectly well on my PB at the moment. Shame - Leopard seemed so good a week ago...
Click to expand...
Oh I see what you are saying. Just an idea, but couldn't you make a bootable diagnostic partition on your external, so if you merely wished to diagnose the problem you could boot into that. I mean you don't need all your data from an hour ago just to diagnose a hard drive, no? Just a full set of OS X with all the diagnostic tools. Just an idea, unsure if thats what you're lookin at exactly.
 
Chef Medeski said:
Oh I see what you are saying. Just an idea, but couldn't you make a bootable diagnostic partition on your external, so if you merely wished to diagnose the problem you could boot into that. I mean you don't need all your data from an hour ago just to diagnose a hard drive, no? Just a full set of OS X with all the diagnostic tools. Just an idea, unsure if thats what you're lookin at exactly.
Click to expand...

It's more so as I can continue with coursework, etc, if my HD decides its time to visit the great hard drives of the skies. Speaking from experience, computers always die when you least want them to. The way I do things, I can just run off the external HD. Yes, there is a small speed penalty (not much mind you, as its a FW800 drive, and my PB has FW800 on it :D), but that's nothing compared to being with a doorstop rather than a computer.


Also, a friend of mine has just had the hard drive die in her Toshiba laptop (4 years old), so I guess it's made me a bit paranoid ;)
 
thomasp said:
It's more so as I can continue with coursework, etc, if my HD decides its time to visit the great hard drives of the skies. Speaking from experience, computers always die when you least want them to. The way I do things, I can just run off the external HD. Yes, there is a small speed penalty (not much mind you, as its a FW800 drive, and my PB has FW800 on it :D), but that's nothing compared to being with a doorstop rather than a computer.


Also, a friend of mine has just had the hard drive die in her Toshiba laptop (4 years old), so I guess it's made me a bit paranoid ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah I know the feeling. My PB hd died and I was so glad that during Final Exams I had started to do backups. I guess I just would restore as fast as I can so Im not in the same position. Anyways....
 
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