Carbon Copy Cloner - or any other backup solution...

Hi there, I got my system so that I am happy with it at 10.5.6 and would like to take a backup incase it gets broken again. I have a usb external hard disc and from past experience I thought I would go for CCC as it's free/donationware. The backup to the external drive went fine and CCC even told me it was going to be bootable, but when I selected the usb drive from the aao boot menu, all I was greeted with was a blinking cursor. It appeared it was trying to boot from the usb drive but freezing for some reason.

Does anyone know what i'm doing wrong or what I should try next. Any other bootable backup solutions I might be able to try ?

thanks,

malty

 

Try booting from an iAtkos disc and reinstall over that USB drive with EVERYTHING unchecked except the bootloader.

 

that worked perfectly thank you

 

OK, CCC didn't work for me so I used the "dd" command in Terminal (I needed to unmount the target partition first for it to work):

Code:

sudo dd if=/dev/disk0 of=/dev/disk1

The cloning operation went fine, but when I reboot my One and select my external drive in the BIOS booting options (F12), the bootloader loads fine but it boots my internal drive instead.

Is there some step I'm missing there?

EDIT : OK, found it. I needed to modify the com.apple.Boot.plist file on my clone to add "rd=disk1s2" to the Kernel Flags section, so that it would boot on the second partition of my external drive. Used "df" in Terminal to find out the right number.

 

If you use SuperDuper I believe that you will be able to get a bootable clone drive.
I use it on my Macbook Pro and it is great.

I now have a perfect Fedora 10 install for my AAO.
I need to make my AAO use OSX 10.5.x but that is my next project. I have the Dell 1390 to replace the Atheros wifi adapter.

 

I don't think so, as SuperDuper! doesn't perform a block-level clone. Things are a bit different on a hackintosh, and I've found you really need a block-level clone for it to boot. YMMV.

 

You might be right but this is what it says on the website.
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/ ... ption.html

SuperDuper is the most advanced, yet easy to use disk copying program available for OS X. It can, of course, make a full backup, or "clone" — in moments, you can completely duplicate your boot drive to another drive, partition, or image file.

v2.5 now available!
The latest version of SuperDuper! can store a bootable backup alongside Time Machine backups, copy Time Machine backups to other drives, run scheduled copies on demand, and polishes and improves many other aspects as well.

It works on my MacBook Pro and so it should work on the AAO as well if you have a working OSX on AAO.
Time will tell.
When I get my second AAO - Hopefully at beginning of March and then I will test.

 

It doesn't tell anything about file-level clones vs. block-level clones. I tried to create a file-level clone of my Mac OS X system on the Aspire One and it didn't work.

Did you notice that you don't get boot messages when you boot a real Mac? This is where the difference lies.

Please tell us if a file-level clone works for you, however.

 

Hi !

I used CCC to clone my drive and it worked. I haven't tested to restore from it yet :roll:
I haven't had the opportunity.

Regards
Daniel

 

Did it perform a block-level clone? It never did here, however hard I tried. Did you try to boot from your clone?

 

UPDATE REGARDING CCC

It did a clone of my drive but it isn't bootable. Looks fine if i veiw it in OS X.

So we need another solution to get a bootable clone.

Regards
Daniel

 

See? I told you!

CCC never performed a block-level clone here, which is what you need to get a bootable clone on a Hackintosh. Real Macs are different beasts.

Here's how I did it, using "dd" : viewtopic.php?f=14&t=10939

 

hehe, stupidity always goes before logic :roll:

I will check how you did and do it the "right" way. Thnx alot.

Regardas
Daniel

 

Ok thats done, i'm up for a harddrive change tomorrow. How do i do to get the clone back to the internal drive again ?

The same command but change the "drivesletters" ?

Regards
Daniel

 

New problem....

When i try do do this command booted from the installation DVD (iAktos) i get the command not found when i try to use the sudo command.

What to do ?

Regards
Daniel

 

simply don't type "sudo", only what follows ("dd .....")

 

Thx alot !

Works perfect. But when i want do do the clone back to my internal drive. I do the same clone but starts with the external and ends with the internal.

BTW i dont do this in steep one, is that correct ?:
10. When all is finished, type "sudo pico /Volumes/YOUR_BACKUP_PARTITION/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist"
11. Under "Kernel Flags" and between "<string>" and "<string>", type "rd=disk1s2" (your external drive's id, that is, without quotes)
12. Press [CTRL]+[X], [Y] and [RETURN]

And it will work ?

Regards
Daniel

 

If you want to clone back your external drive to your internal drive, of course the "if=" and "of=" arguments of the "dd" command must be reversed.

And you still should edit "com.apple.Boot.plist" and replace "rd=disk1s2" with the reference to the internal drive (or leave it empty, should work too).

 

OK, the cloning process have been going on know for at least 4 hours, normal ?

So if i want to reverse the clone i need to typ something like this ?:

dd if=/dev/disk1s2 of=/dev/disk0s2 bs=1024k

Originally you wrote "sudo dd if=/dev/disk0s2 of=/dev/disk1s2 bs=1024k"

Regards
Daniel

 

Yes, it's a long process I warned you

That's it, provided you checked that your internal drive was indeed disk0s2 (which it should be) and your external drive is disk1s2 (could be something else if you have other drives or stuff connected).