Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/08/27
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hi Nathan,
It's a good backup of your personal data, but not a good backup for
this purpose.
You should have a cloned backup, ie, one that is a mirror image in
all respects of the hard drive in your computer. While Time machine
runs regularly on my computer, I generally update a cloned backup
once a week from my machine. As I have a 500Gb drive in my laptop, I
have a 500Gb external drive (WD Passport) as my clone drive. My Time
Machine is bigger, as it has multiple versions of my documents, and
also copies of things I've put in the trash already.
There is free software, Carbon Copy Cloner available through the
software update site versiontracker.com. Use that or something like
it to do the clone. I use SuperDuper even though it costs a bit as it
has a bit better interface and I use it regularly. They all tend to
use the same Unix engine built into OSX.
You have to do the following to allow booting up from the external drive:
Format the external clone drive with Disk Utility, and select the
drive and then 'Partition'. Under 'Volume Scheme' select '1
partition', and then below the graphic for the partition click the
'Options' button. Select the 'GUID Partition Table' for Intel
computers and 'Apple Partition Map' for PowerPC computers. You
wouldn't do this update on a Power PC Mac, so don't select this.
Click OK, and then type a name for the volume, and for 'Format'
select 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' for your Intel Mac. The click
'Apply' and your backup volume is correctly formatted. Now use CCC or
SuperDuper (or one of a bunch of other clone utilities) to fully
backup your computer.
BTW, you can also get Applejack through versiontracker.com. This is a
very good maintenance utility, and especially useful for laptops that
aren't on all night.
After you have cloned your computer, you can select the external as
your startup drive, either through the pref panel 'startup disk' in
System Preferences, or by holding down the option key when starting
up and then selecting the external. It's a good idea to check once in
a while that the external is capable of starting up your computer.
If you've formatted the drive correctly, and done a good clone job,
the computer when started up from the external will look _EXACTLY_
the same as if you'd started up from your internal hard drive.
So now you can update your internal hard drive, and if something goes
haywire, you can immediately restart from your external, and if
necessary, clone the external back onto your internal and be back
where your started from, or keep working from your external startup
while you figure out what's wrong with your update.
Let me know if there are any questions.
At 8:27 AM +0200 8/27/09, Nathan Wajsman wrote:
>Can my Time Machine backup serve as that pre-upgrade backup? I.e. if
>installation of Snow Leopard is screwed up for whatever reason (and
>screws up my user data) can I then recover using Time Machine?
>
>Nathan
>
>Nathan Wajsman
>Alicante, Spain
>http://www.frozenlight.eu
>http://www.greatpix.eu
>http://www.nathanfoto.com
>
>Books: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/search?search=wajsman&x=0&y=0
>PICTURE OF THE WEEK: http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws
>Blog: http://www.fotocycle.dk/blog
>
>
>
>On Aug 27, 2009, at 7:19 AM, Adam Bridge wrote:
>
>> You're right that it's not necessary, but isolating user data from the
>> OS just strikes me as a good idea in general. And, as I pointed out,
>> it lets you easily roll back to the old version of the OS without the
>> loss of data that went into your account in the meantime. If, for
>> example, you need a program that only runs properly under 10.5.8 but
>> want to run Snow Leopard otherwise you can easily do it just by
>> rebooting from another volume.
>>
>> It might be overkill for your basic user but as our software suites
>> become more complex I'm thinking it's worth the effort.
>>
>> Adam
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 7:28 PM, Henning Wulff
>><henningw at archiphoto.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> If you have a cloned backup, and your drive is healthy as per the
>>>utilities, that's not necessary.
>>>
>>> At 5:42 PM -0700 8/26/09, Adam Bridge wrote:
>>>>
>>>> If you can, I recommend moving your user accounts to a separate
>>>>drive. this
>>>> isolates all your crucial user data from the OS system drive. In
>>>> Leopard
>>>> (and Snow Leopard) it's straightforward although you need to use
>>>>the command
>>>> line "ditto" command to do the move. Once your own data is
>>>>isolated from the
>>>> system disk it's a whole lot nicer to make OS changes. Having a
>>>> separate
>>>> clone of your system disk allows for the old OS to simply be rolled in
>>>> or
>>>> out as needed.
>>>> Adam
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 12:05 PM, Henning Wulff
>>>><henningw at archiphoto.com>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Just a general reminder:
>>>>>
>>>>> Make sure a full backup on an external drive is up-to-date.
>>>>> Run Diskwarrior or similar directory analyzing/repair software.
>>>>> Run applejack or similar to clean caches, fix permissions etc.
>>>>> Update computer.
>>>>>
>>>>> --no worry, no pain--
>>>>>
>>>>> If some drivers or other software that is essential doesn't
>>>>>work or cause
>>>>> sproblems, you can immediately boot from the external and be
>>>>>running again.
>>>>>
>>>>> Otherwise, you're home free.
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> * Henning J. Wulff
>>> /|\ Wulff Photography & Design
>>> /###\ mailto:henningw at archiphoto.com
>>> |[ ]| http://www.archiphoto.com
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
>
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--
* Henning J. Wulff
/|\ Wulff Photography & Design
/###\ mailto:henningw at archiphoto.com
|[ ]| http://www.archiphoto.com