Backup help needed!

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Level 1

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Backup help needed!

I just completed my first backup of my macbook hard drive to an external hard drive. My macbook hard drive has a capacity of 500gigs with about 240gigs being used. My external hard drive has a 1tb capacity but only used 230gigs. Why didn't it back up the entire 240? I know there are temporary files that it doens't back up, but 10gigs seems like a lot for that, but i'm not really a computer techie kind of person, so I don't know. Prior to doing this backup, I took my macbook to the apple store and they said my hard drive is failing and needs to be replaced, hence the reason I'm doing this (although I know I should have done it a long time ago). Basically, my hard drive could crash at anytime, it's vital that I have everything so that when I do send it in to get repaired, I am able to restore all everything. PLEASE HELP THIS COMPUTER DUMMY!!!

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Jul 31, 2013 8:17 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

82,941 points

Jul 31, 2013 9:02 AM in response to RaelynnB

Is your backup bootable? If you did a Time Machine it wouldn't be bootable. A cloning software such as Superduper or Carbon Copy Cloner will make a bootable backup.

As for the byte size being different, that's normal to some extent. Data is stored on blocks of the drive. Different drives of different capacities have different block sizes.

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Answer 2

RaelynnB Author

Level 1

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Jul 31, 2013 9:31 AM in response to a brody

thank you.

okay... this will tell you how computer dumb i am... i did not understand half of what you said. lol. How would i know if my backup is bootable? what does that even mean? I did set it up to use time machine. is that not the best way to go?

also, as a side question... now that i have done a backup and my computer's hard drive is copied onto this external, does that mean i can acces specific files on it, just like i would my computer, from another computer i attach it to (like a flash drive scenario) or is it all one back up file? how would i go about being able to store all my photos and music to the external so that i have access to them from another computer when it's attached?

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