Super duper or other clone app?

Try the preloaded Disk Utility's Restore function, and Carbon Copy Cloner.

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Carbon Copy Cloner will also copy the recover partition.

I have a great deal of respect for both SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner, as the have both saved me from broken disks.

Both have demo modes so you can try before you buy. Both have scheduling features for automated clone updates if you like.

A third vote for Carbon Copy Cloner due the already stated features of creating the recovery partition and incremental backups.

Disk Utility>Restore will not allow for incremental backups so it should be viewed as an 'all or nothing' proposition.

Ciao.

A 4th for Carbon Copy Cloner.

The backup is bootable, unlike TimeMachine.

The backup drive just has to be larger than your current partition. Not 3-4 times as large, as for TimeMachine.

Lanny wrote:

The backup is bootable, unlike TimeMachine.

You actually can boot from Time machine in the recovery partition to restore the Mac. 🙂

Ciao.

You would be booting from the Recovery partition, not the partition that the Time Machine data is on.

When you select Time Machine from the 4 option menu, you are in effect booting from the Time Machine HDD.

Ciao.

We disagree, you're re-installing the OS and migrating the data from Time Machine. That's not the same thing.

And, if the users hard drive is dead, he won't have a Recovery partition. His external drive with the Time Machine data won't have one either.

Reference paragraph #3: http://www.macworld.com/article/2461362/drive-cloning-utilities-the-best-mac-app s-for-making-a-bootable-backup.html

and: paragraph #1: http://www.cnet.com/news/ensure-that-time-machine-is-making-restorable-backups-i n-os-x/

http://mac-backup-software-review.toptenreviews.com

http://store.hermanstreet.com/mac-software-data-backup-3-for-mac-download?&ICID= ttr-cid%7C612%7Cpid%7C50488%7Cpos%7C

Time Machine has yet to be bootable; you are booting into the recovery partition and then restoring from TM. Without booting into recovery (COmmand + R or Command + Option + R), you cannot boot from TM.

For the OP:

Another vote for CarbonCopyCloner as it does create and/or back up the hidden recovery partition as well (which SuperDuper cannot do).

If you have the Time Machine connected to the MBP and use startup manager, the Time Machine icon will appear. You can select that in lieu of the recovery partition and it will boot the MBP to the 4 option menu. I acknowledge that it is semantics on my part. 🙂

Ciao.

Possibly (semantics).....but (sorry) I must still disagree (using startup manager will still boot into the recovery partition because TM is not bootable):

it will boot the MBP to the 4 option menu

that is the recovery partition, therefore you are booting into the recovery partition. TM will be just one of the options listed in the Utilities screen..

Hopefully this will help:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204417

and this (scroll down to "restore complete contents....":

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

If you can find anything that confirms that Time Machine is bootable (on its own - without using recovery), I'll gladly add that to my "having learned something new today" list, but if it actually was, then the need for CCC or SuperDuper would dwindle rather quickly, wouldn't it.