[HOWTO] - Backup and Restoration made easy

[stizz]

Sometimes configuring a mac is a long and lenghty process. It might involve several major application installs that each require their own individual reboots and consequent updates. I don't like to do it often myself. So thanks to Apple and Panther, I only have to go through that hell once.

1. Get your system perfect the way ou like it. To me that means everything you use is installed and properly licensed and updated, and your machine runs smoothly. This is your ideal system and you want to preserve it because it took a lot of work and 20something reboots.

2. Plug in an external drive that has enough space to copy your boot partition.

3. Boot off the Panther install CD

4. When the installer launches, open the Disk Utility.

5. Use the Disk Utility to repair your permissions.

6. After permissions are corrected, select your Boot Drive in the Disk Utility window and select "New Image". A save dialog will open. Choose a location on your external drive. Hit Save.

7. It will take a few minutes, depending on the size of the Drive you are backing up.

8. When it is done, you can reboot and eject the Installer CD.

9. You now have a replica of your system drive stored as an image file on your external drive.

If you ever have problems with your mac down the road and wish to wipe the slate clean and reinstall everything, all you have to do is boot again off the Panther Install CD, run Disk Utility, choose restore from Image and point it to the image you just made. It will wipe the destination drive, and replace it with the image.

[naodx]

That is a good way of doing it, although here is a method that I prefer myself.

I use carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of my setup onto a firewire drive. It is quite easy and very painless, plus it allows you the ability to start off of the firewire drive (on supported macs) if you ever need to.