partition and bootable clone

If one of the partitions on a disk is bootable, then all the partitions can have bootable versions of Mac OS X.

So yes, you can clone the 1st partition to the 2nd partition and it will be bootable. Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper, Disk Utility restore from the existing to the clone.

Yes you can add more stuff to the 2nd partition, just like you can add stuff to the partition you are booted on, and that does not cause you to loose bootability.

NOTE: Cloning to the same physical disk is NOT a backup, as if the disk fails, both partitions are lost.

A proper backup should follow 3-2-1

3 copies of your data (that includes the original)

2 different backup formats (a clone is an acceptable format)

1 copy off-site (prevents against natural disasters and theft)

And none of those backups should be on the same disk with the original data.

A bootable clone is an acceptable backup format (Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper, Disk Utility)

Apple's Time Machine (part of Mac OS X)

A network backup (CrashPlan, Carbon Copy Cloner, Mozy, etc... -- also can be the off-site backup)

There are other backup utilities available, and each has its own unique format.

What you are trying to protect against is a bug in one backup utility contaminating ALL your backups. By having different utilities and formats, you will not be affected by the same bug in all your backups.

Yes. The advantage of Time Machine is it backups up incrementally so you can go back to a certain date and restore data from that data. The advantage of online is it is also an offsite backup.

Commonly Used Backup Methods

Ok so personnaly what do you advise ? I got the bootable clone so i need one more format right ? so it can be timemachine format or online network right ?

The bootable clone, is on the same disk, so it is not a backup. At most it protects you from fumble finger deleting something you should not have. You can get it back. But if you loose your boot disk, you will loose your clone.

The original, and the 2 backups should all be on separate media so that a media failure does not take out more than just one copy of your file.

But with time machine if your internal disk failed can restore everything like a clone would do ?

A clone is very easy to just boot into, and continue as if nothing happened, except for the loss of new information between the time of the last clone and the failure. And it can then be used to restore the boot disk (or the boot disk replacement, if your clone is on a different disk).

Time Machine can be restored to the boot drive (or the boot drive replacement) via the Recovery Partition

<OS X Yosemite: Recover your entire system> This applies to Mavericks exactly the same

<http://www.imore.com/how-set-and-restore-time-machine-backup>

I do like having a bootable clone, because I can get back in business quickly booting from the clone. But it is not my only backup. And in my case I have more than 2 backups of the really important stuff. Time Machine, Clone, CrashPlan, a custom built rsync command line backup. And some of my backups are backed up 😮

One last question, can we use time machine to back up on a APM drive partition disk ? ( because i would like to use time machine to back up my new mac on a drive where im gonna made a bootable clone of my very old powerbook...)

Yes. Since Time Machine is not bootable, it can go onto an APM partition tabled based Partition.

The Clone, however, needs to be on an APM if the version of Mac OS X requires APM, or it needs to be on a GUID based partition table if the version of Mac OS X requires a GUID partition table to boot.

But Time Machine does not care about the partition table information, as long as it has an HFS+ file system to work with it is happy.

What cloning utility?

What did you specify for the backup destination?

Have tried talking to the cloning utility vendor?

Have you consulted the cloning utility -> Help?