[MacNNUK]

Just bought a Freecom 500gb External HDD.

My iMac HDD is 160gb.

iMac as per sig.

Using OSX 10.4.11

Can I backup using Disk Utility, Superduper & Carbon Copy Cloner to this 500gb HDD, so I have 3 copies of my internal 160gb HDD ?

Why would I want to ?, 3 copies better than 1 ?

Or which is the recommended best one to use, preferring incremental backup ?

[turtle777]

First off, 3 identical backups on the SAME HD are no good. If the HD fails, all three are potentially lost.

For incremental purposes, you could create three different volumes and then make full backups, rotating through these three volumes.

I would strongly suggest to update to Leopard to get TimeMachine.
If backups are a big concern of yours, TM will make it easy and foolproof. I love TM, and feel so much safer than ever before.

-t

[MacNNUK]

I omitted to mention that I do have a 3 external HD backup system, for my photo's, videos, personal data, (backed up monthly) plus daily copy of (≈20mb) personal data, or so to 3 CD's rotated.

Plus weekly backup of data (≈120mb) not amended quite so often PDF's etc

But these only use 80gb, 120gb HDD's, not enough for full cloned backup.

My main reason for incremental backup to 500gb, is so that should my iMac crash / need re-installing, I don't have to spend days re-installing software, including OS, and reconfiguring everything to how I like it.

So, most of my iMac files remain unchanged, such as applications preferences etc, so probably don't need incremental backup very often, I'm quite happy to do a main restore from external 500gb, with day to day data from other source, such as CD, or other external HD for photo's and movies.

Fingers crossed, no problems yet with my curent iMac, my previous G3 was re-installed every year or so, for various reason, usually my fault.

[turtle777]

TimeMachine allows a FULL restore of the complete system going back to *ANY* point in time.

Plus, you have a true incremental backup system, that backs your data up every hour. You can access those hourly versions for a whole week.

I tell you, TM is definitely worth the upgrade to Leopard. Plus a lot of other nice features.

-t

[MacNNUK]

OK, forgetting Time Machine for the moment, if my iMac crashes, what's the procedure for re-installing the backed up HDD files onto the iMac.

Thinking with a disk utility backup, do I run Disk Utility from OSX installation disc, and then this re-installs everything ?

or SuperDuper & CCC, what's the procedure there, do I have to re-install OSX seperately before I copy from SD / CCC.

Thanks

[bearcatrp]

If you clone your hard drive with CCC or superduper, you fire up your mac with the external copy and clone it back. Thats the beauty of the mac using these utilities. Time machine is used more as a place to find deleted files you accidentally deleted but can also be used to restore if need be. More time involved though. Would suggest (if you can) use both to 2 different external drives.

[MacNNUK]

I have partitioned the 500gb into 3 equal partitions, just 155gb each, just enough to try out all three backups.

Very easy to do this in Disk Utility.

Backup using Disk Utility, CCC, SuperDuper.

Quick question, as they are all ≈ disk images of my 160gb (125gb) HD, does that mean they are all just about exactly the same, apart from any small changes due to time, and therefore any of the 3 could be used to restore using any of the 3 software solutions ?

When I've copied all 3, and tried to reboot or otherwise try them out, I will probably stick to the best (for me) two.

UPDATE:

I've now backed up my 160gb (125gb used) internal HDD, using all 3 software solutions, to individual partitions on the external USB2 500gb HDD.

Each took around 4 hours to copy 125gb, from scratch, CCC took a little longer, 20 minutes longer.

I have successfully rebooted, 3 times, after selecting startup disc in system prefs, so no probs there.

Just wait a while now and try updating backups, to see how long they take.

An initial trial of SD took 20 minutes to read and compare 838k files, didn't let it update, as yet.

[turtle777]

I don't get the point of having 3 time sthe same backup on the *same* HD.

-t

[MacNNUK]

Originally Posted by MacNNUK 

I have partitioned the 500gb into 3 equal partitions, just 155gb each, just enough to try out all three backups.

It's just while I try out the various means of backing up, until I find one I can trust !!

Also, they have different methods of incremental backup, from none, to various.

I can also back-up say a month apart, and keep these separate, just in case.

Once I am completely happy, I will probably just revert to ONE.

I have read about others having probs with one, or other, of the solutions.

So far, I have had none...Day One.

And now I've got into it, I'm backing up my G3's too.

So ultimately, I may back up all my 3 iMacs onto the same HDD...yes go on, warn me about it.

I'd sure like to hear from others on this !

As always, real life experiences are the best