Backing up entire drive

P

pawel

Registered
Hi guys,

Fairly new to osx wondered if there is a way or program that lets you back up your complete osx drive so if you need to reinstall later you can just use the saved disc image?

I have alot of programs installed and don't want to have to go through the process of installing them all again should I need to reformat.

Could anyone help please.

Many thanks.
 
Well, I am a HUGE rsync fan, it's fast, free and works great, whether connected to a local drive or over a network (local or Internet). Plus, it's already installed on your Mac. The only thing you need to be concerned with is if you want that drive to be bootable, you need to take steps to make it bootable once your 'rsync' is done.

For whatever reason, about a year ago, I decided to go with SuperDuper for making backups and it works good. It provides some of the facilities of rsync but is also more limited than rsync, but does take care of making your drives bootable once the backup is complete.

Rsync is as easy as opening terminal and let's say your external backup drive is called "Backup" and your internal drive is "MacintoshHD", then you could simply do a:

Code: 
rsync -av /Volumes/MacintoshHD/ /Volumes/Backup

If you have older applications or files that use resource forks, then you will want to add a "E" to the option set, but can cause unnecessary re-copying for files unchanged. Once a full backup is made, it only takes about 18 minutes (or less) run "sync" your backups later, and this is based on about 300GB of data. Have a script run overnight (if the system is on all the time) or just run it when you want.

If you are running backup from a MacBook to a local iMac on a network, such as at home, you can run it over SSH...

Code: 
rsync -avz /Volumes/MacintoshHD/ -e ssh user@192.168.0.101:/Volumes/Backup/Macbook

VERY SIMPLE STUFF.

One note though, if you do try rysnc above and it works like you want, then add the flag "--delete" to the line as well, this will delete anything on the remote drive that is not on the local. But I don't put that on there since I'd rather not have you goof up and delete something locally if you turn your paths around in the syntax. You can also leave off the "v" if you don't want it to be verbose, which if running via a script overnight would not be necessary, but when running the first few times or manually, it might be nice to visually see what it is doing and which files it is updating.
 
ScottW said:
Well, I am a HUGE rsync fan, it's fast, free and works great, whether connected to a local drive or over a network (local or Internet). Plus, it's already installed on your Mac. The only thing you need to be concerned with is if you want that drive to be bootable, you need to take steps to make it bootable once your 'rsync' is done.

For whatever reason, about a year ago, I decided to go with SuperDuper for making backups and it works good. It provides some of the facilities of rsync but is also more limited than rsync, but does take care of making your drives bootable once the backup is complete.

Rsync is as easy as opening terminal and let's say your external backup drive is called "Backup" and your internal drive is "MacintoshHD", then you could simply do a:

Code: 
rsync -av /Volumes/MacintoshHD/ /Volumes/Backup

If you have older applications or files that use resource forks, then you will want to add a "E" to the option set, but can cause unnecessary re-copying for files unchanged. Once a full backup is made, it only takes about 18 minutes (or less) run "sync" your backups later, and this is based on about 300GB of data. Have a script run overnight (if the system is on all the time) or just run it when you want.

If you are running backup from a MacBook to a local iMac on a network, such as at home, you can run it over SSH...

Code: 
rsync -avz /Volumes/MacintoshHD/ -e ssh user@192.168.0.101:/Volumes/Backup/Macbook

VERY SIMPLE STUFF.

One note though, if you do try rysnc above and it works like you want, then add the flag "--delete" to the line as well, this will delete anything on the remote drive that is not on the local. But I don't put that on there since I'd rather not have you goof up and delete something locally if you turn your paths around in the syntax. You can also leave off the "v" if you don't want it to be verbose, which if running via a script overnight would not be necessary, but when running the first few times or manually, it might be nice to visually see what it is doing and which files it is updating.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that info scott im very new to this. Basically like I said I want to create a complete copy of my osx hd as it is now so If I need to re-Install i can return to how it is now. With the rsync command what kind of fiile gets copied to the external drive? and how is it re-loaded back to the system if I need to restore? Also is it possible to back this file up in pieces to dvd?

Thanks
 
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