Best way to clone a drive daily?

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I'm looking for a daily back-up solution. For example, everything I add/erase on my primary drive I'd like to see done on my back-up drive, preferably on a nightly basis. Can Time Machine or some other software do this?
 
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Yes time machine can do this, wonderfully actually.

The only question you have to ask yourself is if you want your backup to be bootable.

Example:

If you have an external HD and make your backup using Time Machine all of your files will be on there safe and sound. However, you will have to copy them all back onto your new internal should it fail, and your system won't be exactly the same.

Carbon Copy Cloner, a nifty little program, will make a bootable copy which you could boot your mac from, then copy over directly onto your new internal, and it will be like nothing ever happened. This takes about an hour to do and it is easy to schedule. I run mine every sunday.
 
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The other well used clone software is SuperDuper:

SuperDuper!

I actually use both this and Time Machine, hey you can NEVER have enough backups!
 
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Thanks for all the suggestions. Stupid question, but am I gonna have to completely re-install Leopard for this new HD? Or is there a way for Time Machine to save all my settings/preferences on an external so I can just load it onto the new HD?
 
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Yes time machine can do this, wonderfully actually.

The only question you have to ask yourself is if you want your backup to be bootable.

Example:

If you have an external HD and make your backup using Time Machine all of your files will be on there safe and sound. However, you will have to copy them all back onto your new internal should it fail, and your system won't be exactly the same.

That's not entirely true. You can recover a system via a Time Machine backup during OS X setup.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Stupid question, but am I gonna have to completely re-install Leopard for this new HD? Or is there a way for Time Machine to save all my settings/preferences on an external so I can just load it onto the new HD?

If you get a new hard drive, as I stated above, you can use the recover from Time Machine option during OS X setup. It's essentially the same as using a clone image.
 
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Do I have to copy over the entire drive or can I just select certain folders like all my music?
 
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Will a Time Machine save point also restore all my OS X system settings, specifically things like apps I had installed down to my color scheme?
 

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Will a Time Machine save point also restore all my OS X system settings, specifically things like apps I had installed down to my color scheme?

Yes, it's a complete backup. All you have to do is supply a reliable external hard drive large enough to accommodate all your data, and make frequent backups.

Regards.
 
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Yes, it's a complete backup. All you have to do is supply a reliable external hard drive large enough to accommodate all your data, and make frequent backups.

Regards.

How much space does Leopard 10.5.6 + the usual apps (Final Cut, GB, Office) usually take up?
 

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