Does time machine make a bootable drive too

Time Machine backups are not bootable.

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Niel wrote:
Time Machine backups are not bootable.

Niel,
Can I clarify what you mean here please. Obviously the Time machine disk is not bootable, but I was under the impression that if my main boot drive goes belly up, I could restore the entire drive from Time Machine and it would be bootable.

If this is right, the answer to the OP's question would be "it depends". If the goal is to have a means of recovering from a HD failure then Time Machine would do it. If the need is to have a bootable clone on hand then Time Machine doesn't do it.

Edit, Re reading the OP the word continually implies he wants a handy clone, so TM won't do it.

Message was edited by: Mike Boreham

Message was edited by: Mike Boreham

You can do a full restore by booting the Installation DVD and running Time Machine there. The Time Machine external HD itself isn't a bootable clone like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner can create.

Doug

Mike:

You have hit the nail on the head squarely.

1. Use TM for quick retrieval of lost data.
2. Use TM for a complete system restore via the DVD Installer's Utilities->"Restore from Time Machine" feature. This will take time but will produce a bootable Volume system image. This feature also allows user to restore a system from the recent and distant past. SD! will not do this unless several SD! cloned images are maintained.
3. Use say SD! for a rapid switch over to a recent system image.

I believe having TM and SD! gives the user various options with SD! providing the shortest time to recovery of a failed/corrupted boot Volume. Both complement the other with little overlap in feature content.

Note that the SuperDuper! site says that the current version isn't Leopard-compatible, and that they're testing a free update to make it so. I wouldn't use SD (or any other disk utility tool) until they've verified Leopard compatibility. Their blog also has a year-old item describing how they see Time Machine and SuperDuper! working together.

Doug

If you will have access to a Mac OS X installation disk, you can use Time Machine on its own, as the disk can be used to restore the backup.

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What I personally plan to do is use Time Machine, and on a weekly basis update a bootable SuperDuper! clone on one of two external portable HDs that I keep at work ("Disk A" one week, "Disk B" next, then "Disk A", ...) That gives me the ability to NOT have Time Machine back up some things (Parallels virtual disks, Entourage data, possibly File Vault accounts, etc.), it gives me a bootable clone that I can use until I have time to restore things more fully, I have off-site backups in case the computer AND the Time Machine HD burn up together, etc. I think everyone has to figure out for themselves what the right scenario is, and different people may well use different approaches. The blog on the SuperDuper! site discusses this, and even though the blog entry is a year old I think it's applicable today, they just couldn't discuss some things because of NDA.

Doug

Doug:

Yes - I'm aware of that. I'm looking forward to the SD! update for Leopard compatibility. The SD! folks have been working on this since Feb 2007.

OK, so if I understand this. I have been backing up regularly with Carbon Copy Cloner. I liked that it was bootable because I would boot it up and then use Diskwarrior from my external to check my MacBook harddrive. I know I could use the Diskwarrior startup disk but it takes much longer to boot up. Now, with TM, are you saying that even though it is NOT bootable, I would still be able to reinstall it on my system if necessary by booting up in the Leopard DVD, connecting my firewire drive and then go to the option to restore from TM. Is that correct? If so, I will then start using TM daily and either make a clone once a month or once a week. Ideally, having 2 external harddrives seems right - one for a bootable clone using SuperDuper or CCC and another for TM. Do I have that right?

Thanks for clearing this up for me.

Thom