Boot from disk image file (dmg)

I'd like to complement my Time Machine backups with a complete disk image of my hard drive. I don't have enough free space on my TM partition, so I have to either use another external hdd (which I don't have) or backup to a disk image file. I'm using SuperDuper! 2.5 by the way.

My question is: If I create a disk image, is it possible to boot from it in the event of a system crash? Or do I have to boot from the Leopard DVD and restore the image completely before being able to access it?

Thanks a lot.

I may be wrong about this - but I don't believe either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner images are bootable. Cloning to an external drive formatted to HFS+, yes. Anyway, dig into the help file for SuperDuper, it should tell you whether or not an image is bootable.

Regards.

chscag said:

I may be wrong about this - but I don't believe either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner images are bootable. Cloning to an external drive formatted to HFS+, yes. Anyway, dig into the help file for SuperDuper, it should tell you whether or not an image is bootable.

Regards.

Click to expand...

You're correct. I backed up up to a sparse image file without problems. I don't really mind if I can't boot from it, as long as I can restore my system from it I'm happy.

However, on of the final steps of the SuperDuper process is "make image bootable".

So you don't have enough room for a TM backup, but you have enough room for an SD backup?

CCC does have a "Make Bootable" option. You would need two Macs to do the restore though. Whether you use SD or CCC. TM has the ability to be restored from the 10.5 DVD.

Tolisgroup also has a realtime clone option for boot partitions called bruCLONE.

I've an external 500GB drive. A 200GB partition for Time Machine and another one for video files and stuff I don't wanna carry with me. The TM partition only has about 30GB free, the other one has over 100.

SuperDuper is bootable if the external drive is formatted to Apple Partition Map. Just back up your system from time to time.