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I want to know how to backup my hard drive completely without Time Machine as soon as possible.
All help appreciated, thank you.🙂
Sorry to hijack your convo. Two nights ago my MacBook Pro which I had purchased in mid 2012 would not start up. I keep getting a grey screen with apple logo and wheel plus a bar. I tried doing everything to start it up and I even tried to repair it using disk utility but it said to back up my data and restore my hard drive. I panicked about my pics on the computer so I tried to back up Mac hard drive onto my 2TB external hard drive which had important files on it. I had the first aid option selected and I chose my Mac HD as source and ext hard drive as destination to save the files to. I cancelled the process an hour later because I read that my external hard drive would be erased. I don't know if my files were deleted or not because my Mac book pro doesn't work and now I'm left with possibility of not having pics on my computer nor on my external hard drive. I am taking my MacBook Pro to Apple Store tomorrow but I haven't been able to back up my data.
Please help!!
You can create a clone. Use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper
Please understand that there are difference between Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner.
CCC will give you a bootable HDD and have all your data backed up AS OF THE BACKUP DATE. Time Machine will not create a boot drive but will retain a history of prior activities. Ex: If you create a document and TM records it, and then you delete the document you can still retrieve it at a later date. CCC does not have that capability.
It has been my experience that CCC takes a much longer time to index and add updates compared to TM.
The best of all possible worlds is to have both. Redundancy of backups should not be viewed as excessive or frowned upon.
Ciao.
You can also clone using the Restore feature of Apple Disk Utility. "Restore" the disk you have to a blank disk.
But the advantage of Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper is that for subsequent backups they provide the option of only copying the changed files, saving a lot of time.
Also, there are many other backup utilities available for the Mac, because people have been backing up long before Time Machine existed.
To pick the right backup software, you need to say what kind of backup you want.
Bootable clone? Use Disk Utility, Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper, etc.
Versioned but non-bootable backup? Use Time Machine, Retrospect, etc.
Internet cloud backup? Use Crashplan, Backblaze, etc.
and so on.
Like a lot of people, I use two types of backup, a combination of Time Machine and SuperDuper. Other people use a combination of onsite and offsite (cloud) backup. You should design a backup plan that fits your needs.
Well unfortunately I don't have a blank drive. What I do have is a partitioned external drive (both partitions are in use).
I have recently started using one exculsively for Time Machine backups (from Lion) and the other general storage.
I will soon be upgrading my hard drive and will running both Lion and Snow Leopard so I cannot guarantee that my Time Machine backups made in Lion will work in Snow Leopard so I need to an alternative backup.
I am looking to make single backups manually (with or without additional software).
You don't need any application. Just drag the files you want to backup to the external disk
CCC and SuperDuper can be downloaded. I keep one TM and one CCC, though my experience may be less than others and I may be viewed as a "novice intruder".
Pretty much *any* drive of sufficient size can be reformatted to GUID/HFS within minutes, so Walmart at 1 AM is a possible solution.
USB-powered drives are smaller and less expensive than self-powered, and will work in a pinch if your data is at grave risk of going away catastrophically within 24 hours.
I'm looking to backup the whole hard drive manually, whats the best way to do this?
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
Good news. I like to be smartly, not dumbly. Thanks.
steve359 wrote:
Good news. I like to be smartly, not dumbly. Thanks.
And I am sure that SD will update their (excellent) software quite soon, so it may be moot.
Thanks that is very helpful 🙂
When I open up Finder I don't see Macintosh HD just Matt then All My Files, Applications and so on etc.
I forgot to mention about SuperDupa and similar programs...
Thanks again!
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
CCC and SuoerDuper make copies of your drive, they don't overwrite the internal unless you choose to (like when restoring a clone to an existing drive).
They are compatible with Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion.
CCC (currently) is preferable because it can clone the recovery partition and SD can't.
How to Backup your Hard Drive without Time Machine
