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!

  1. Backup unlimited data online and offsite for free using Zoogmo
  2. Backup your computer by making an image of your hard drive
  3. Synchronize files or replicate data between PC computers using Allway Sync
  4. How to backup your blog using Feedburner and Gmail
  5. Create a bootable backup or clone of your Mac OS X hard disk
  6. Share, transfer and sync files between computers with FolderShare
  7. Windows Tips – How to automatically backup or update your computer’s device drivers
  8. Tips for backing up your computer system and data files – Using the Windows Backup Utility
  9. Tips for backing up your computer system and data files

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

carbon copy cloner

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.

superduper mac backups

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!

[tags]macosx backup, backup os x, backup osx, mac backup software, superduper, bootable backup[/tags]

» Filed Under Computer Tips

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Comments

4 Responses to “Create a bootable backup or clone of your Mac OS X hard disk”

  1. juuser said on : March 22nd, 2009 at 7:20 am

    How about using Disk Utility?

    Have tried to use Disk Utility Restore tab? There are source and destination fields, just drag your source disk to the source field and destination disk to the destination field.. and voila..

    ??


  2. cafeine said on : July 20th, 2009 at 7:45 am

    Juuser,

    Having just recovered from a total mac os x server failure, i first tried disk utility to make a copy of the installation cd but the copy it made to my usb 2.0 external disk was not bootable.

    Only SuperDuper actually made a bootable copy of the a mac os x server installation cd.


  3. Bryan said on : December 30th, 2009 at 9:45 am

    This was quick and clean and did the job without a steep learning curve. Very Mac-Like. Very happy. I will be support it’s development


  4. Gary said on : June 12th, 2010 at 3:27 am

    Unfortunately, you cant boot from a USB drive in OSX10.5.x.
    You CAN boot from a FW drive – but not USB.


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