Safety in Backups

Here's a lengthy report from John Carter, but it's worth your time to read it.  From here on we're quoting John. 

Scenario: You've had your Mac now for 2+ years and everything seems to be running just fine. Suddenly, without warning, you can no longer boot up the system. What happened?

The hard drive just failed!!! Well, maybe something else, but let's say it was the hard drive.

What's the best recovery method? Well, to get you started right away it would be nice if you could simply continue to use your computer until you have the time and the money to get it fixed. That can be done if you have an external drive ready to plug in and boot from.

To prepare an external drive as an alternate boot source, you need an external hard drive of the same size as your internal hard drive (use Get Info on Macintosh HD and read the Capacity). The external hard drive can have any configuration of inputs; USB 2.0 is the most common, but Firewire 400 is better, and Firewire 800 is best. When USB 3.0 is available for the Mac, that is even better. However, the price increases with each better interface, so it is quite all right to use USB 2.0 for this emergency external hard drive. Don't worry if the external drive doesn't say it is for a Mac, because it will be reformatted when you create the boot drive next.

The next thing you need is SuperDuper! for Mac. Download it from here. You can use SuperDuper! for free as long as you don't attempt to use any of the advanced features, and you won't need them for creating an emergency boot drive.

When the USB external drive is connected, launch SuperDuper!.

 (Double click to enlarge the illustration.) 
Notice in the image above that the Copy field points to the Macintosh HD (your internal drive) and in the To field you click on the double arrow and select the external drive you plugged in.

Next comes the easy part. Click on "Copy Now," take the defaults for any prompts that follow, and go to bed. In the morning, you may discover an error message on your screen that says, "You have been logged out..." blah, blah, blah. Just ignore that message. What you need to know at this point is that you should now be running off of the external drive and NOT off of the internal drive. This is simply a confirmation that creating the external boot drive actually worked!

To get back to working off of the internal drive, open System Preferences and click on "Startup Disk." The external drive you are running on should be highlighted. If it isn't, something went wrong with the copy process. (I shouldn't scare you like that. But if this did happen, you should still be running off of the internal drive and you should then call for help to figure out what to do next.) To boot up off the Internal drive, click on the icon identifying "Mac OS X < ... > on Macintosh HD," then click on the Restart button. When the Mac starts up again, eject the external hard drive and put it away for emergencies.

You're not done. If you ever do need to use the external boot drive, remember that the only applications, updates, and files in it are the ones at the time you created the boot drive. Maybe once in a while you might want to do this all over again? Not really. If you were also smart enough to maintain a Time Machine backup, you only need to update the boot drive from the latest Time Machine backup entry. Now you're back in business right where you left off, and maybe with just a few lost minutes (the Time Machine performs a backup every half hour). When time and money permit, take your Mac to your repair center and have them install a new drive. Be sure to also give them the boot drive you created so they can restore it to the new internal drive.

Remember, failure to protect your work with adequate backups is a down payment on future upsets.

When you are ready to purchase a suitable boot drive, do a Google/Yahoo search on the Internet for "external hard drivegb" (fill in the size - without the < and >) and consider one of the compact (thin) drives from Seagate, Iomega, Western Digital, or LaCie - because small is cute.

A NOTE ABOUT TIME MACHINE.

A recommended external drive to use with Time Machine depends on how much of your internal drive is being used and how much you expect to fill it in the next year or two (before it crashes). The size should be at least three times larger than what you expect to be using in your internal drive. Let me explain why. The larger it is, the farther back in time you can go to retrieve a lost file. For example, a 1.5TB drive used to backup a 500GB internal drive that contains 300GB of data will store backups for about the last three or four months. If your internal drive is 500GB and you're using less than 100GB, then a 500GB external drive might be adequate for short-term recovery. However, it is highly recommended that the drive has a Firewire 800 input so that performing a backup is performed in the quickest time possible. That being said, a USB 2.0 drive will work if saving an extra $50 means more. At least do a search for "external hard drive firewire 800" and look for bargains.

There's a bright side to every catastrophe. If your hard drive does fail, it could be a good excuse to buy the newest computer. You really don't need to hang onto years of photos and email anyway, right?

Strategy & Need for Backup

Here's that reminder we need. De Prez Allen Laudenslager explores the serious need for backing up, and explains his strategy. "This article at Daring Fireball is just about the best description of backup strategy and the critical need to stay of top of the latest software and techniques.

"While most of us don't make our living from what's on our computers, as John Gruber does, what's on our hard drives is critical to each of us. My personal back up strategy is a monthly back up with Super Duper that clones my hard drive including the OS, all applications and all files. I also run Super Duper every time I add an application.

"As things change I run Time Machine. If I write something I'm worried about, I just run a special back up, but I run Time Machine at least once a week.

"His point about multiple external drives may be over kill for most of us but with a 750 gig external drive at $125 (Costco) and Super Duper for $40 (direct on line) it's cheap insurance. I saw 100 gig drives for under 50 bucks at both Best Buy and Costco, and that will back up most of our computers unless you're really loading up on pictures or music."

(Your eyes might thank you if you use Command and + to bring up Daring Fireballs small white print to a larger size.  You might also try Control and Option and Command keys in unison with the number 8 key to toggle to black print.)

Backing Up: Part 2

If you read Part One, posted 12-29, then you're ready for the next installment by De Prez Allen Laudenslager. He begins with, "I back up with both Super Duper and Time Machine.

"Super Duper will create a bootable sector on your external drive that will allow you to boot from the external drive if your internal drive quits for any reason. The process to select which drive to boot from is: turn your Mac off. Boot while holding the option/alt key down. This will bring up a dialog box listing any internal, external or CD drive the computer can access. Select your external drive and your back up and running on the external drive.

"Super Duper is free, but will only backup ALL the files you select, changed from the last back up or not. If you pay the $15 bucks, then you only need to fully back up once, all future backups will only be changed files, much faster that way.

"Since I’m on a laptop, my external drive is not always connected. I do a Super Duper back up at least once a week. I backup with Time Machine whenever I do anything that I would hate to lose, every two to three days at least.

"My goal is to be able to restore my hard drive in case of another crash. So my restore process would be to install the new internal drive and then boot from my external drive and restore from Super Duper, which will reinstall all my software including the OS. Then do a Time Machine restore to get my files (to the latest backup date/time).

"Without a fatal crash or a blank drive to try this on, I can’t be sure it will work the way I expect, but my Mac expert claims that it should. I am sure that all the files I need will be on the drive, it is just the recovery steps that are in question. And since restoring the files will not erase them from my external drive, if I make a mistake, all it will take is time to get the step right."

Downgrading from Snow Leopard?

John Carter has been plagued with several problems with Snow Leopard. He says, "The interesting part is that the problems are isolated to my login and the problems did not show up in another login. However, in the process of trying to resolve the problems with my login, my iMac no longer allows me to login as any user. These problems are quite unique to my computer and may not happen to anyone else."

As a result, John needs to downgrade his computer back to Leopard and then restore all his applications and data from his Time Machine backup to the date prior to upgrading to Snow Leopard.

He warns, "If you are not keeping frequent backups of your computer, you may not be so lucky as to restore to a known good snapshot."

How Do YOU Backup?

"Hi all," begins Jim Hamm. "Here is an article, from Mac Tips and Tricks Newsletter, on creating a bootable backup for your Mac. We've had some other backup comments recently, and I'm interested in feedback on this process from anyone that would want to comment on a couple of questions I have:

1) do you have a bootable backup for your Mac?
2) did you purchase a separate external hard drive to do this on?
3) do you use Carbon Copy Cloner or some other program to do this?
4) how important do you consider doing this?

I've been using a Mac for 2 1/2 years or so, and haven't done this yet. I guess I'm at risk of losing all my bookmarks, addresses, RSS feeds, third-party programs, etc., if I should have a hard drive failure. A real pain--impossible?--to resurrect all this. I'm torn, in my mind, on whether to go to the expense of doing this or not. Comments appreciated."

Click to drop Jim a line here.

First up to reply is Art Gorski. He writes, "Hi, Jim.

1) I create one right before installing a major OS update.

2) Yes, but I've only got one drive and 3 Macs.

3) I used CCC years ago, but SuperDuper is free (for this purpose) and slicker.

4) I have both Chronosync backups and Time Machine backups on my network ReadyNAS, although not the System and not bootable. That's close enough for me."