How to Backup your Hard Drive without Time Machine

mende1 wrote:

They overwrites your hard disk. As you make clones, you can only restore it to the OS X version with that you made the clone. Also, I recommend to use a blank drive to make the clone

If you make a full clone you can restore it to any Mac that is compatible with the OSX version it contains, it does not need to be the same. This will overwrite the existing hard drive content.

I totally agree on the need for a blank drive.

But it will restore the OS X version that has the clone. That's what I was referring to, not that you can't restore it with another Mac OS X

If you mean that it restores the OS version that was cloned we are saying the same thing. 🙂

Come on, people now, smile on your brother everybody get together ...

(those younger than me will not get that reference)

steve359 wrote:

Come people now, smile on your brother everybody get together ...

(those younger than me will not get that reference)

Just a misread on my part (I believe) mende and me are making the same point, I was not clear from his first post, but that's my mistake.

I was referring to the fact that all had reached to same point in analysis. I apologize if it was mis-read. 😊

mende1 wrote:

You don't need any application. Just drag the files you want to backup to the external disk

Open Finder, choose Macintosh HD in the sidebar, go to Edit > Select All and drag it to your external disk. If you don't see this volume, open Finder > Preferences > Sidebar and tick Hard disks

This is actually pretty horrible advice. There are a lot of files in OS X that are invisible, like the entire Library folder which contains all of your preferences, registrations, activations, profiles, drivers, etc. Also, the way Unix permissions work means that dragging and dropping will not create an exact copy of some files that are restricted.

The great thing about backup utilities is that they are smart enough to do a complete reconstruction of important parts of your disk. Also, drag-and-drop will not automatically do updates of changed files. Utilities make that dead simple, especially Time Machine where automatic backup updates are no effort at all.

Because if you are not continually updating your backup, you won't have a current backup when your disk fails.

Drag-and-drop backups were a little more justifiable back in the Mac OS 9 days. But that was over 10 years ago and OS X now has a lot more important hidden files and a more complex file system. Combined with drag-and-drop being a labor-intensive way to do ongoing backups, I would not recommend drag-and-drop as a long-term scalable backup solution. This is why backup utilities are created.

Most commonly used backup methods

darkhorse85 wrote:

I'd like a backup which will open and be fully accessable on both Snow Leopard and Lion

Problem with this is programs on later OS X versions change things and thus a older OS X version with older version of the program can't open/use the newer changed formats.

So if you create a Pages document in 10.7, it might not open in a 10.6 version of Pages.

Also where I can access all of my backed-up files individually without having to the TM like program to open them.

I hate TimeMachine for many sound reasons, however for newbies it's better than nothing.

I think what your looking at is bootable clones, this way you clone (and can hold option key and boot) from 10.6 and 10.7 backups and it's exaclty like the original until the last time the clone was updated.

darkhorse85 wrote:

Using backup utilities as you suggest, is there I way a can make a backup of my whole drive just the once without out it automatically backing up, risking file deletion?

I'm not sure what you mean there, but I'll guess. When I make a full backup, I usually do it at a time when I am not going to use the computer, so that I won't be changing files while it's backing up. I also tend to quit out of programs like Mail that might automatically update their files during a backup.

If you want to be totally OCD about it, log in with the Shift key held down so that no programs auto-open and no Login Items load. That would mean the minimum number of processes are running and changing files. Or put the Mac into Target Disk Mode so that the Mac isn't even booted into OS X and then back that up.

darkhorse85 wrote:

I'd like a backup which will open and be fully accessable on both Snow Leopard and Lion

If you create a clone or just drag-copy files, it happens on a regular Mac disk, and the disk format should be the same on both Snow Leopard and Lion, so you should be able to simply plug in your backup disk and copy whatever you need. Your user documents should be accessible on both. As ds store pointed out, the main issue is with certain files created by a newer system that might not be understood by an older system. But files you create yourself should be fine, only subject to the format changes as a result of upgrades you do to apps like Pages or Photoshop or whatever.

darkhorse85 wrote:

Also where I can access all of my backed-up files individually without having to the TM like program to open them.

Any utility creating a bootable clone will create a normal Mac disk you can easily access all the files on. If it wasn't a normal Mac disk it wouldn't be bootable. What you want to watch out for are some backup utilities that save in their own format or that compress backups. Those backups are harder to get files out of.

darkhorse85 wrote:

is there I way a can make a backup of my whole drive just the once without out it automatically backing up, risking file deletion?

Yes, clone your hard drive.

Repartition your external drive, make a partition that is about 50GB larger than your startup disk. Use that space to clone to. There are apps that can repartition a drive without loosing the data on that drive.

LexSchellings wrote:

Repartition your external drive, make a partition that is about 50GB larger than your startup disk. Use that space to clone to. There are apps that can repartition a drive without loosing the data on that drive.

Which apps? (actually if the external is HFS Disk Utility can resize it) but I do not recommend doing this without a backup.