There are two main ways to backup your Apple computer. Use to automatically backup. This is the Apple way – the easy way.
Manually backup your computer with some other software such as Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner. If you are a beginner I recommend Time Machine.
Look Apple’s way (Time Machine) is a lot simpler. It’s automatic. It doesn’t rely on you remembering to do anything.
How to create a bootable USB drive to install Windows on OS X. From scratch directly from Windows, not OS X. Insert the DVD into the media tray, and connect the USB drive to an available USB.
The big disadvantage is that the backup is not bootable. So if your computer crashes you need to insert the original DVD and restore from the Time Machine backup. This process can take hours – not good if you are just heading out the door and need a file. But it will get your computer back to what it was like the hour before it crashed! The second method takes a few steps longer to set up, but your backup will be bootable. That means if you plug your backup drive in, and then hold down Option-Command-Shift-Delete during startup, you can boot instantly off your backup drive. In an emergency you can plug in your backup and be running from it under a minute.
You can’t do this with Time Machine. The downside it it will only take you back to THE LAST TIME YOU BACKED UP. I have time-machine running so my most recent work is always backed up, and I do a CCC backup monthly so I have an instant bootable backup ready to go for emergencies. This article describes how to manually backing up using Super Duper.
If you want to use Time Machine as well, here’s an article on how to backup using. To make a bootable backup you need to:. Buy an external hard drive.
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Format the hard drive. Download some backup software.
Backup your Hard Drive. Run the backup software often Now let me explain those steps in more detail.
Buy an external hard drive You need an external hard drive at least as big as the hard drive on the computer you are intending to back up. Eg if you have an 200G hard drive on your imac, you should get at least an 200G for your backups. This way you will always fit your backup on the external drive. Format the hard drive Plug in your new hard drive. Run Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder). Select your new Hard Drive in the left pane. Before you format it, check in the bottom right of the window that it says “ Partition Map Scheme: GUID Partition Table”.
If it doesn’t go to the partition tab, choose ‘1 Partition’ choose ‘options’, and make sure it is set to ‘GUID Partition Table’ then ‘Apply’. Now in the Erase tab check it says ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled)’ as below, type in the name you would like to call it e.g. “Backup” and press Erase.
It will now erase and format your external Hard Drive ready for use and call it Backup. Download some backup software Go to and download the latest version of SuperSooper. It’s free to be able to do a basic backup, or you can pay if you want extra features such as incremental backup (it’s faster, but the end result is the same). Backup your Hard Drive Run SuperDuper. Select your Macintosh HD in the left menu, select your new firewire drive in the right one, select ‘backup – all files’.
Press copy now, go and have a cup of coffee while you wait for it to copy all your files, perhaps up to an hour or so. It’s good to select ‘Repair permissions before copying in the options tab, see below. This makes sure your OS X is functioning well before you back it up, otherwise there can be some problems. Run the backup software often The most important thing about backing up is to do it regularly. It’s also a good idea to do a backup before you install any new system software in case something goes wrong in the installation so you can go back to what it was when you backed up. How do I use the backup in an emergency?. Plug in your external drive.
Go to System Preferences, select ‘Startup Disk’, select your external Backup, press Restart. OR. Plug in your Hard disk and Press Option during startup. This will bypass the primary startup volume and seek a different startup volume such as the external one. You are now running from your backup.
You can now run Disk Utility and erase your main Macintosh HD, then run Superdooper and backup from your Backup to Macintosh HD. When the backup is finished, select Machintosh HD, and restart. You will now be running from your main computer again. You might want to print these instructions out, so they are handy in an emergency.
It’s no use having the instructions on how to boot in an emergency on your computer – you won’t be able to read them. Don’t laugh, I’ve done it! Here’s an article on how to use. Due to a HD failure, I just had to install a new internal HD on my macbook (running snow leopard) and did a restore from TM onto new HD. (New HD is 1TB, old HD was 750) The “old” external HD that I used for the TM backup (1TB, partitioned with a clone of my “old” “old” HD — was too small to run Snow Leopard, etc.) is now telling me that it’s outta room when I run TM.
Question: I have an unused external 1TB drive. Will this be enough space for my “new” TM backup? My new internal HD currently reports 596.57 GB free of 999.86 GB. Am thinking that once I have a separate TM external drive (which seems to be the reco) that I can erase the old bootable clone from the old external hard drive and create a new bootable clone of the current system there? Or will it not do that bc the new internal is 1TB (even though the actual usage on it is far less)??
I guess for right this moment I want TM to start running. If I need to purchase another external HD I will.;-) Thanks for your input!! Recently, I decided to replace my old MacBook Pro’s 120GB internal HD with a new 500GB internal HD. I did copious (or so I thought) research on how to proceed and went with the SuperDuper clone route. Everything worked greatuntil I connected to TimeMachine.
It deleted ALL of my old backups (some of which went back years!!), kept the most recent backup I made before replacing the HD, and then said the latest backup failed because “this latest backup is too large for the backup disc. The backup requires 126.35GB but only 39.25GB are available.” Because this was a clone why did it try to do a new full backup without asking me if I wanted to start a new set? I’ve now lost all of my old backups.
I bought a new external HD yesterday and will be using this from now on for TimeMachine so this is all semantics but what went wrong? Or did it go right and I just wasn’t informed enough? Nobody ever said to expect or plan for this. And I guess all of my “deleted” backups are unrecoverable? Thanks for any insights you can provide.
Hi, I have a 27″ imac with 10.8.5 that just crashed, can only open in Safe Mode. HD doesn’t appear as a Startup option (only shows external TM disk), resetting PRAM doesn’t seem to help. I have a TM external backup from earlier today but nothing cloned from internal HD, so not sure how I can get the internal HD back as a Startup volume to boot from. Haven’t tried Target Disk mode from my MB Air, but not sure if that’s necessary since I have TM. I can click on the Mac HD in Safe Mode and see all my files, so really don’t want to erase/reformat anything if I don’t have to.
Hi, thank you for this detailed topic, very helpful. It made my mind more clear. I can expose what I would like to get: I have a macbook pro with 500Gb HD Moutain Lion that is almost full and would like to – prepare a bootable clone – free some space by moving old folders occupying 25% of present HD I have in hand a 500Gb for current running time machine (but now running out of space) and about to buy a 1Tb drive. I do not necessary want to continue running TM. My thoughts are to get the 1Tb turned into a bootable clone, that I will renew monthly. I would prepare first this HD with a partition A of 550Gb size, a partition B of 400 Gb size and an (optional) partition C of 50Gb for exchange with PC world.
Once the clone n1 is prepared on the partition A of 1Tb HD, the HD 500Gb would be erased from its TM backups and will be used to free space on the Mac by moving old folders from Mac to the 500Gb HD. So far it is seems OK. But since in the clone n2 and following, the old folders will have been removed, I need to backup the 500Gb HD.
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Question: Shall I use partition B of 1Tb HD to backup folder from 500Gb HD? Do you have any comments on the respective sizes of partitions A and B of 1Tb HD (i.e. Is the size of 550Gb not a bit excessive to perform only a bootable clone of 500Gb drive? ) Thank you for your answer and comments on this situation. That all sounds OK, unless you plan on using this new hard drive on a daily basis. IF that were the case I’d keep it seperate from my monthly backup – ie not just a seperate partition but a seperate drive. The broad principles are: You want a backup on a completely seperate drive, not on a partition on the same drive as a drive that you regularly use.
Don’t partition unless you absolutely need to because a larger drive runs faster and more efficiently then a large drive split into 2 partitions. Best to have 2 clone backups and alternate to each one. I’d still keep a time machine going even if you do a monthly backup because if you lose an important file you were using yesterday, Time Machine will save that but the monthly backup wont. Thank you Wayne for your answer. I understand these main principles. But your answer is not clear about the hard disk supposed to host the bootable clone: is it possible to get 2 partitions, one to be a regular bootable backup, and the second for 2nd backup of another smaller hardrive? Otherwise your suggestions are valuable, but it would inflate the number of copies I need: 2 HD for clones, 1 for time machine, 1 to host the folder I want to remove from the Mac to save space and 1 to backup this folder.
A total of 5 HD, that I am not ready to manage yet. I tried both Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! Neither would run on my Mac PowerPC G4. I have the latest version of Mac OS 10.4. I cannot upgrade to a later OS, as I must have the ability to use “Classic” to run my System 9 software, and OS 10.4.11 is the latest system that will run Classic. (I have 20 years of work on System 9 software!) My hard drive is now crashing more and more frequently. I have a good backup drive, but I cannot make it bootable.
I also have a separate System 9 hard drive that used to be bootable on this computer, but it doesn’t appear in the “Startup Disk” dialog. Any help will be greatly appreciated!