Create a bootable backup or clone of your Mac OS X hard disk

Posted on September 22, 2007 at 8:00 am

Make sure to read other posts from the Backup Data series!

If you’re looking for a free program that will either create an identical clone or a complete backup of your Mac OS X disk and data files, then check out Carbon Copy Cloner, a nice Mac backup application that is supported by donations from loving users. Many Mac people have been using this program for a while, but it’s not been updated to version 3.0 and supports the Tiger and beyond OS.

CCC can clone, synchronize or backup your data on a schedule with a few clicks. The interface has been completely re-designed and now resembles a FTP program with source files on the left and the destination or target disk on the right. By default, the program is set to copy the entire hard drive, but you can change this easily via the advanced options. The nice thing about CCC is that it creates a full bootable clone of your hard drive for easily recovery in case of a computer crash, etc.

Here are a couple of the major features of Carbon Copy Cloner:

Supports block-level disk to disk clones for exact copies
Supports backing up across a network to another Macintosh computer
Support for advanced scheduling including hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. You can also set it up so that the backup starts whenever the backup device is attached (external hard drive, iPod, etc)
Built-in software update notifies you of new updates to the app

Overall, a nice donation-ware piece of software that quickly and effectively finishes the job of backing up your Mac. Now that I’m talking about Mac backups, I should also mention another program that is quite popular and used by a large number of Mac followers called SuperDuper.

This program is known for it’s ability to create a fully bootable backup of your entire hard disk painlessly! It runs on both Intel and Power PC Macs and is extremely easy to use. You can backup and clone your computer for free using SuperDuper, but have to shell out $28 if you want the advanced features like scheduling, Sandboxes, scripting, and Smart Update.

Using SuperDuper consists of 5 simple steps:

1. Partitioning your external hard drive
2. Confirming your new partitions
3. Configuring the settings in Super Duper
4. Confirming the erasing of the target disk
5. Watching everything being backed up!

That’s it! It’s pretty simple and works amazing well. You can rest assured that your data will not be lost and that you can recovery it quickly in case of disk damage.

Do you use any other programs to backup data for your Mac? Post a comment to let us know!