Two bootable clones on one physical disk

D

diarad

Registered
OK,

I have backed up an iMac G5 and iMac G4 on two separate logical partitions on *one* 300GB external USB 2.0 drive using Carbon Copy Cloner (a great program I might add). If I ever (God forbid) have to boot either CPU from the external drive, will there be chaos; i.e. will which ever iMac fails and requires resuscitation not boot because of confusion over the two bootable saved systems? A hypothetical, but should I backup using a different strategy?

Regards,

diarad
 
Actually, you can't boot a mac from a USB drive. It has to be firewire. But assuming you meant to say firewire, the easy way to get your boot options is to hold down the Option key when you turn your computer on. That'll bring up all bootable drives onto the screen. Select the right one, and continue.

The reason you can't boot from a USB drive is because the USB drivers are loaded by the OS. Thus, you need an OS loading before you can use USB. Firewire's drivers are stored in the firmware.
 
When connected through FW, you just have to make sure it's starting from the right partition. AFAIK when you hold down the option key at startup, it might only show the harddrive and not both partitions, but I might be wrong. Even so, you should still be able to boot from either system and select the right one through "Startup Volume" once booted into the system. If that fails, you can startup from the installation medium and select the correct partition from there (Apple menu).
 
fryke said:
When connected through FW, you just have to make sure it's starting from the right partition. AFAIK when you hold down the option key at startup, it might only show the harddrive and not both partitions,
Click to expand...

My Firewire drive has 4 backup partitions, and when I boot with the Option-key pressed, all 4 boot partions are available to me.
I cycle through these partions weekly using SuperDuper, works for me...
jb.
 
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