[hart]

Sorry for enigmatic title.

I have a busted macbook, damaged by beverage spillage. Hard drive is intact but no backup was made which I'm trying to do now before getting the macbook fixed. I have the hard drive out of the case and am accessing it via another computer using a docking station.

I have an external drive to back it up to. This drive has other things on it so I'm not formatting the whole drive.

What procedure should I follow so that after it comes back from being repaired I can restore the macbook from the backup that I'm making? The user didn't keep a very organized computer so stuff is scattered all over the place. Just copying the account is not going to really do the trick.

Thanks.

[jmiddel]

I may be off base, but what if you created a disk image about 20% bigger than the original HD on your b/u drive, and cloned the original to it using Carbon Copy Cloner at Carbon Copy Cloner - Home and then clone it back to the original from the disk image.

[Big Mac]

Why 20% bigger than the original drive?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Why 20% bigger than the original drive?

Perhaps in case the replacement hard drive is larger? I'm not sure how safe growing HFS file systems to use up the available space is these days?

[Big Mac]

There's no problem with restoring a smaller image to a larger drive with HFS+. The image just takes up a smaller portion of the larger drive, so there's no reason I can think of to make a 20% larger image.

[hart]

So I would FIRST make an empty disk image on the back-up drive THEN clone the existing data to that disk image? I haven't made any disk images so forgive my ignorance but you can't just make a disk image of the original drive in one step?

Or is the idea that CCC makes a bootable copy instead of just making a simple, unbootable copy, if that's even possible. Then when I'm putting it back on the original drive what do I do?

I'm having a bit of difficulty putting the pieces together for some reason here.

[OreoCookie]

You don't need CCC at all: just use Disk Utility to make a clone.

You can clone one volume onto another (the other volume should be empty!) or you could clone onto a disk image that you can then clone back once you have your new computer. You want to clone to a disk image if you have other data on the backup harddrive you don't want deleted and/or transferred back.

If you clone volume to volume, the target will be bootable. If you clone volume to disk image, then you will not end up with a bootable backup drive.

I would buy a new harddrive for your notebook (just in case), unless you get a new notebook anyway.* Then I would simply take out the old harddrive and use Migration Assistant with your new Mac.

* Spilling liquids on your computer almost invariably means that you need to replace at least the mainboard, sometimes also the screen. If you add up the costs, they may be close to what you pay for a new Mac.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

There's no problem with restoring a smaller image to a larger drive with HFS+. The image just takes up a smaller portion of the larger drive, so there's no reason I can think of to make a 20% larger image.

Is the extra free space available upon restore?

[hart]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

You don't need CCC at all: just use Disk Utility to make a clone.

You can clone one volume onto another (the other volume should be empty!) or you could clone onto a disk image that you can then clone back once you have your new computer. You want to clone to a disk image if you have other data on the backup harddrive you don't want deleted and/or transferred back.

If you clone volume to volume, the target will be bootable. If you clone volume to disk image, then you will not end up with a bootable backup drive.

I would buy a new harddrive for your notebook (just in case), unless you get a new notebook anyway.* Then I would simply take out the old harddrive and use Migration Assistant with your new Mac.

* Spilling liquids on your computer almost invariably means that you need to replace at least the mainboard, sometimes also the screen. If you add up the costs, they may be close to what you pay for a new Mac.

OK, I think I'm getting this bootable/not bootable variable. I'm not sure I need a bootable clone for this procedure. I'd have to do a fair amount of juggling with my pile of hard drives to get one completely free drive.

Also the idea of getting an all new hard drive is pretty good.

I am so keeping my fingers crossed that this computer will repair for the price estimated by the "Genius" which was around $300. Buying a new laptop is seriously out of the question right now.