For example, do you occasionally clone the disk to some other location?
That. As I pontificate in my "How To" on "OMFG!11!! MY DATA!!1!" I do not use
TimeMachine because it does not make a bootable clone. I have, as you can see, laptops so it is convenient to boot off of an
Ex-HD when something goes amiss. Here is an example of "amiss":--
Firefox updates and nothing works with it! I can test the update first on a clone. If it no workee . . . I no likee . . . I go back.
More seriously, I tried out
Lion that came with the current machine . . . no wikee . . . cloned back.
I got
Super Duper! on recommendations of how well and thoroughly it clones. The few times I have replaced an
Int-HD then cloned, I have not had to re-enter passwords and settings for software. It costs $ so others HERE have recommended
Carbon Copy Cloner.
With
SD--and I am sure
CCC--you can set "Smart Updates." This simply updates your clone with whatever changes. Takes less than 10 minutes for a good 300-odd Gigs. Sure, when you first clone, it can take an hour or two.
I CANNOT STRESS the utility of that. Every time I frell something up--delete something I should not--hard reboot because . . . I am an idiot--when I
would have had to pull out the
Installation Disks to
Disk Warrior in the hope I can salvage--I can now simply boot off a clone and chortle.
How often do you clone? Depends on what you do. For me, once a day is enough. I happen to have three
Ex-HD that I acquired over a "long story short." That is probably a bit much! The advantage to more than one is level of paranoia. To give an example: I accidentally do something to mess up my volume but do not recognize it . . . I clone . . . that clones the error. Error perpetuates. Eventually, volume on
Int-HD fails and I have to restore the OS.
But my clone is corrupt!
So . . . if you have another clone
Frankly, that is "paranoia" because that only happened to me YEARS ago before I knew about maintaining your OS--and I was on
OS 9! The only thing you reasonably have to worry about is your main HD failing AND your clone HD failing. At that point, you probably have pissed off some Polynesian rain goddess or something and need more specialized help.
--J.D.
