cloning vs. time machine

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I've seen things like carbon copy cloner recommended around here as a backup tool.

The thing is, I'm just not seeing the point.
I recently got an external HD and made a time machine backup.
Yesterday I thought well since my mac is fairly new and doesn't have much on it to 'lose' yet, I'd reformat and test the time machine restore function.

I booted up using the install disk, wiped the HD and restored from my time machine backup and everything was identical to how I left it, it was perfect.

Why would I need some other software when time machine works so well?
 

chscag

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Because Time Machine backups are not bootable whereas the clone you make with either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper is. You never know when you may have to boot from a USB external drive to do testing or because of some other problem you may be having.

It's always good to have redundancy. I do both on a regular basis.
 
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You cannot boot from TM but you can from CCC thats why I have both and you never know when havoc will happen.
chscag beat me to it.
 

bobtomay

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I also keep both a TM and a SD! Bootable backup. Has saved me more than once.

Best example:

Upgraded to Snow Leopard. Upon reboot, I was brought to a kernel panic. The machine would not boot into the OS at all. Booted to my external backup of Leopard, went and looked at the crash log of my internal drive, found the name of the offending app and it's associated kext listed there. Was able to remove the kext in question and thus boot into SL.

Otherwise, my only option would have been to reinstall 10.5 and would have had no idea what the problem was causing the issue with 10.6. I had a fix in under 5 minutes instead of an hour to restore and no clue how to get SL onto my machine.

I also still keep that 10.5 bootable backup up to date for assistance in troubleshooting.

Other best example:

Your hard drive dies. With only a TM backup, you are dead in the water until you get a new drive. A bootable back up allows you to continue working until you have time to go get a new drive. Or, the time to order one online instead of paying full retail at your local big box store.
 
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Your hard drive dies. With only a TM backup, you are dead in the water until you get a new drive. A bootable back up allows you to continue working until you have time to go get a new drive. Or, the time to order one online instead of paying full retail at your local big box store.

This is the feature for me - I'm out on the road a lot, so if I carry around a CCC clone with me and my hard drive dies, I can be up and running again in minutes. With a TM backup, I'd also have to carry my two installation DVDs with me.
 
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Youse guys are losing me. Here's my situation, I have 3 external hard drives. One is dedicated to Time machine - 750gb, but the other 2 have plenty of space. (one is a 2 terrabyte the other is a 1 Tb external.) All three are daisey chained via the FireWire cables off the back of the iMac.

So isn't there a way to put an OS on some external drive and hold some keyboard combination that boots the system up instead of start up from the internal drive?

Do I need to purchase some software to accomplish this (I have a 21.5 Core 3i iMac, newly purchased)


Thanks

As a side note:
My 7 year old Motorola based iMac gave up the ghost - toasted Logic board, and I purchased a refurbished iMac. I was worried about being able to restore the new machine with TimeMachine. Worries that were totally unfounded as it turns out. I just plugged in the firewire external drives, selected the Migration Assistant and answered the questions about what I wanted transfered, and within a few minutes all was right with the world again. I have found that some of the web site passwords needed to be re-entered, but everything else (especially some oldish applications all worked fine.)

Apart from the boot question am I missing something here?




KKKKFL
 
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So isn't there a way to put an OS on some external drive and hold some keyboard combination that boots the system up instead of start up from the internal drive?

You can copy a mirror image your internal Mac system HD to an external HD/Thumbdrive with CCC. Restart your Mac, hold down the "Option" key and select to boot from your external drive that CCC made a copy to.
I use CCC as backup on a 2.5" 120GB SATA external USB HD and my 64GB thumb drive just for portability.
 
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If I pull the HD out of the Motorola iMac, place it in an external enclosure, can I just keep that in a drawer and if the need arises, plug it into the USB port, hold down option and boot up?

That's my el Cheapo way of having an external boot drive.


KKKKFL
 
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Back to my old 2.2GHz C2D MB after selling my MBP and wondering what my next Mac will be :)
What is a Motorola iMac?
 
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First generation G5 iMac used the motorola processor... All subsequent models went to the Intel processor. I got almost 7 years out of it, I think having a small muffing fan on my desk blowing additional air up through the cards helped sustain it, but a power drop out followed by a blip of on and offs finished it off.

Needless to say, I really didn't know what I was missing... this new Core 3i is Scary fast.

So back to the original question, can I remove the Old iMac hard drive, place it in an external enclosure, and use this as a Boot disk(by depressing option)?

KKKKFL
 

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