External Drive with Time Machine, booting from external drive with utilitie

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Level 1

8 points

External Drive with Time Machine, booting from external drive with utilitie

I'm using Time Machine now with
a LaCie 1TB external hard drive.
Everything works fine.

But, I've been wondering:
Can I place a program like TechTool
on the external drive (that Time Machine uses)
and boot from that external drive.
I would like to be able to do that,
because diagnostics and repair programs
only works properly and fully when they run from
external drives. Anything on the internal drive can be repaired
and examine. Impossible to do if Techtool is on the same
drive that's been examined.

Any thoughts as to what I should do?
Thanks

iMac, Leopard, Time Machine, Lacie Quadra 1TB drive.

P.S. Stupid question: If my computer crashes, and I reboot from Time Machine
(from the external drive) how does the computer know which backup to take ?!?
Isn't there many versions of the OS on the Time Machine backup taken at different times?

G4, Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Dec 18, 2009 7:56 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Dec 18, 2009 7:59 PM in response to pitou

time machine backups are not bootable and you can not place anything else there. if you want a bootable backup make a clone using Duperduper or CCCloner. use a separate partition for that.

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Answer 2

Dec 20, 2009 2:07 AM in response to pitou

hi pitou,

I also have the LaCie d2 Quadra 1TB.
I'm also wondering if it's possible to make a bootable partition on your external drive (and another partition to be used for Time Machine backups, but same external drive).

I guess you can, but you will need to make at least 2 partitions on your LaCie.
The question I have is that the partition I want to install OS X on: do I have to do anything special in order to be able to install OS X on there?

Kappy,

would you be able to give an answer on this one?

Thnx in advance,
Peter.

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Answer 3

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Dec 20, 2009 9:08 AM in response to pitou

pitou wrote:

P.S. Stupid question: If my computer crashes, and I reboot from Time Machine
(from the external drive) how does the computer know which backup to take ?!?
Isn't there many versions of the OS on the Time Machine backup taken at different times?

As V.K. says, you can't boot from TM backups.

But you can restore your entire system from any one of them, per the procedure in #14 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

You can also selectively restore from them, while running normally. See #15 in the FAQ Tip.

You might want to review these:

Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine 101
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
Apple - Support - Mac OSX v10.5 Leopard Time Machine

and perhaps browse the rest of the FAQ Tip.

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Answer 4

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Dec 20, 2009 9:14 AM in response to peterimac

peterimac wrote:
hi pitou,

I also have the LaCie d2 Quadra 1TB.
I'm also wondering if it's possible to make a bootable partition on your external drive (and another partition to be used for Time Machine backups, but same external drive).

I guess you can, but you will need to make at least 2 partitions on your LaCie.
The question I have is that the partition I want to install OS X on: do I have to do anything special in order to be able to install OS X on there?

Yes, you can do that. About all you need to do is be sure the drive has either the GUID or +Apple Partition Map+ *Partition Map Scheme,* and the partition has the +Mac OS Extended (Journaled)+ or perhaps +Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, journaled)+ Format, and is large enough for your purposes.

Many of us keep both full Time Machine backups plus a bootable "clone" as a secondary backup. It's best if they're on different HDs, but separate partitions on the same HD will work. CarbonCopyCloner (which I use) and SuperDuper are the most common apps.

There are detailed instructions in #6 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum. That's for adding a TM partition to a drive with existing data, but the procedure is the same.

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