Backing up on a Mac

mkelly · Post by **mkelly** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:05 pm

Rave wrote:At the moment I backup my projects (collect all done) and my VSTi patches. Anything else I should do? I am dreading the day the drive fails and I cant get everything back to how it was.

I bought an external drive the same size as my MBP hard drive, and stumped up for the full version of Super Duper. Carried out a full duplication of my drive, and rebooted into it as a test. I then run a Smart Update on a weekly basis to keep my backup drive fairly up to date. I also boot into it every now and then to make sure it's still good. Now as well as a data backup I can load up any time, I also have an emergency bootable drive I can go back to if my internal HD takes a nose dive. It's not the most rigorous backup solution in the world, but it works for me.

I also archive projects off to a second external HD (which also has a further HD as a mirror). I spend more time backing up than making music don't I?

supamonsta · Post by **supamonsta** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:06 pm

you should make regular updates of a clone of your harddrive with Carbon Copy cloner on an external one.

and stop beeing so paranoid, your fear-thinking energy could make your drive die, actually.

(I had the same fear, but using carbon copy helps me sleep again

)

(carbon copy cloner is free and seems to work well)

good luck with your so-soon-dying-drive !!!

Landwhale · Post by **Landwhale** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:06 pm

If you've got a spare drive or partition, you could clone your whole system using Carbon Copy Cloner.

http://bombich.com/ccc

That way, if your main drive fails, you just boot right off the clone and you're up and running in a few minutes.

Time Machine is nice, but it's not an exact copy of your drive, plus you have to wait to restore from your last backup, which can be hours on end depending on your hard drive size.

(Frig! By the time I posted this, 2 other people beat me to it, haha)

supamonsta · Post by **supamonsta** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:12 pm

triple post cross !!!

you know what to do now

mkelly · Post by **mkelly** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:13 pm

Landwhale wrote:If you've got a spare drive or partition, you could clone your whole system using Carbon Copy Cloner.

http://bombich.com/ccc

That way, if your main drive fails, you just boot right off the clone and you're up and running in a few minutes.

Time Machine is nice, but it's not an exact copy of your drive, plus you have to wait to restore from your last backup, which can be hours on end depending on your hard drive size.

Advantage of Time Machine though is that you can go back to a point in time. Say you save a project, then don't work on it for a week or so, during which time you perform your full backup. You then go back to it, and suddenly you find the project is corrupt. With time machine you could always go back to before it corrupted. Best of both worlds might be to simply do both. Hard disks are relatively cheap now!

Landwhale · Post by **Landwhale** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:18 pm

I'll let someone else beat me to it.

mkelly · Post by **mkelly** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:29 pm

Rave wrote:I googled. Please let me know if this is bollox:

http://lifehacker.com/photogallery/Clon ... sk/2597718

Dunno - didn't read it

I created a new clone drive the other night.
1) Unpack new hard drive and hook it up
2) Start Disk Utility and select your drive - make sure to select the drive and not the partition on the drive.
3) Select the Partition option
4) Create your partition layout. I was working with a fresh drive - you may need to think again if re-partitioning an already populated drive!
5) Hit the Options... button towards the bottom of the page
6) Choose GUID partition table
7) Hit the Partition button to the right of the Options... button

This should partition your drive - most likely destroying all data on it. Be careful with this.

You can now start cloning with SuperDuper or CCC as you choose.

PS - I took a look at the link and I note they used Apple Parition Map as the disk type - I used GUID for an Intel Mac. Check the text on the Options... dialog for your own setup.

mkelly · Post by **mkelly** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:45 pm

Rave wrote:Much appreciated. Looks like it formats the whole drive. I may just get a new external USB drive then. An 80gb one cant cost a lot of money.

Problem is can you find an 80Gb one.

My internal HD is 120Gb and I fried my 120Gb external backup the other day. Couldn't get a replacement at 120Gb - had to buy 250Gb and split it in half. On the plus side - this allows me to do 2 backups if I so desire - I can back up to Partition 1 for 4 weeks, then switch to Partition 2 for 4 weeks, and then move back - not quite the incremental backups I really would like, but at least it's better than nothing.

mkelly · Post by **mkelly** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:58 pm

Rave wrote:Sounds like a plan. Will USB be ok or should i really get an FW one?

I'll not speak with 100% authority on this, but my recommendation would be Firewire if you can get it cheap enough. Something like Seagate FreeAgent Go for Mac - has USB2 FW400 and FW800 I think.

I bought a USB2 only FreeAgent Go and found the performance to be abysmal over USB. Backing up was slow - booting off it was pretty poor compared to my last drive (a Formac Mini). Both drives were 5200rpm and while it's possible that it's the drive in the Seagate that's slow, my money is on the USB bus.

It's not the end of the world for me cause I do my backups at night (1 hour, 6 hours, who the hell cares) and I will only be booting off these drives in an emergency so slow booting is not going to affect me day to day.

Of course, I'm assuming you're talking small bus-powered drives here - haven't seen many small capacity mains powered drives in a while.

doc holiday · Post by **doc holiday** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 7:10 pm

i just went to make a clone of my drive, and the clone failed.
looks like i have some corruption going on. i booted off the cd and cannot repair permissions or verify/repair the disk. the internal won't unmout.
i'm worried i may loose the other partitions when i reinstall which i'm about to do right now.
i also have two externals i sync with rsync for archiving data and also regular backups of my internal drives to tape (thank god).
i'm pretty safe loosing my clone, more of an inconvenience then anything. paranoia can pay off. this computer is about 6 months old.
the advice to check your clone is very sound. often times people take their backups for granted. but if you depend on your data pay attention to your backups!

hacktheplanet · Post by **hacktheplanet** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:52 pm

Rave wrote:Thanks man I will look out for a fw one

Apple is starting to drop FW on their computers. Get one of those drives that has both USB and FW.

http://eshop.macsales.com/ has pretty good deals!

mkelly · Post by **mkelly** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:53 pm

the_planet wrote:
Rave wrote:Thanks man I will look out for a fw one
Apple is starting to drop FW on their computers. Get one of those drives that has both USB and FW.

http://eshop.macsales.com/ has pretty good deals!

Sorry I should really have said that, but I'm just so used to multi-interface drives that I never even considered that there are drives out there without USB.

mkelly · Post by **mkelly** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 5:23 pm

Rave wrote:I just got my FW external drive through the post, partitioned it and now Superduper is doing it's thing.

BTW how do I boot from the FW drive please?

What can i expect not to work Ableton wise because it is on a a cloned drive?

I think you hold Option as you boot the machine (with your external drive attached). It should present you with icons for all the bootable drives attached to the system so it should show your internal and your external drives.

To be honest, I think everything should work for you, Ableton-wise. Only downside is that you're passing all HD data over the FW bus instead of over the internal ATA bus. I've never noticed much of a difference but I've never done much after booting from the external. I see it as something to use in an emergency (e.g. browsing for help with a hardware issue or checking mail).

mkelly · Post by **mkelly** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 5:47 pm

Rave wrote:This drive is just to make sure I can get ableton and my projects to work. Unless I add a new VST or do a major system change i cant see myself backup again as I will always backup project folders to another drive(s).

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to achieve with your backup then?

Is it just to be able to run a stable version of Ableton from without all the other crud on your laptop?

mkelly · Post by **mkelly** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 5:56 pm

Rave wrote:MY MAJOR concern is that I will not be able to recreate my setup if the drive fails if I am forced to replace it. This offers me piece of mind If the drive fails I can copy my clone onto the replacement drive and continue working. Any "new" projects not on the clone are backed up and can be added.

Have you thought about installing OSX clean onto the external and doing a minimal install of just what you need to keep on working. If your internal did fail you can then hook up the external and it's a pristine working environment.

Might be a bit extreme though.

Backing up on a Mac

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