Backing up files

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I use SuperDuper, but you could certainly check if it's bootable by going to system prefs and selecting Startup Disk, if it's bootable it will show up there. My guess is it won't be bootable and you won't be able to make it bootable without redoing it.
Thank you for your assistance. You are correct, it was not there. Since posting my query, it has occurred to me that this really is not very important. If I had a catastrophic failure of my internal HD, I would either have it repaired & get a new OS put on it, or, more likely, just buy a new Mac. Is there a fallacy in my reasoning?
 
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Thank you for your assistance. You are correct, it was not there. Since posting my query, it has occurred to me that this really is not very important. If I had a catastrophic failure of my internal HD, I would either have it repaired & get a new OS put on it, or, more likely, just buy a new Mac. Is there a fallacy in my reasoning?

There is no question of 'fallacy' of reasoning because you haven't given any reasoning for making your choice. Having said that, I recently had an iMac repaired and completely unnecessarily Apple reformatted my HDD, I know they did it in this case just to be asses, but it mattered not to me because I just cloned my clone back to the HDD and wa la, exactly as it was when I handed it in. I'm not sure if TM is able to do this type of thing or not. Also another side benefit of cloning a bootable clone of your internal HDD back to the HDD is that during the process ALL the fragmentation that was on the internal drive and is also on the clone to a lesser extent is completely removed in the restored internal drive. Hope that wasn't too confusing.
 
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There is no question of 'fallacy' of reasoning because you haven't given any reasoning for making your choice. Having said that, I recently had an iMac repaired and completely unnecessarily Apple reformatted my HDD, I know they did it in this case just to be asses, but it mattered not to me because I just cloned my clone back to the HDD and wa la, exactly as it was when I handed it in. I'm not sure if TM is able to do this type of thing or not. Also another side benefit of cloning a bootable clone of your internal HDD back to the HDD is that during the process ALL the fragmentation that was on the internal drive and is also on the clone to a lesser extent is completely removed in the restored internal drive. Hope that wasn't too confusing.
No, not confusing (or I'm so confused I don't know I'm confused). And you give a very good reason for making the BU HD bootable. I reckon I'll just move my present BU to an off-site location and then start a new BU, this time making it bootable.
 
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No, not confusing (or I'm so confused I don't know I'm confused). And you give a very good reason for making the BU HD bootable. I reckon I'll just move my present BU to an off-site location and then start a new BU, this time making it bootable.

Another more obscure reason for having a bootable clone is that you can use it as a sandbox for example if you have some software to install, and you suspect it may possibly cause some problems, or if you remove it you don't want any trace of it on your system. Or if you simply want to do an update but you are a bit concerned that you may not like it and won't be able to revert back, then you can boot from your bootable clone and do the installation there, check it out thoroughly and if you don't like it just ignore it and boot back into your system, the clone will be restored next time you update it. I presume that CCC has a smart update function like SuperDuper where it only updates what has changed.
 
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Yes, the option I use for CCC does only update those items that have changed. Thanks for the "sandbox" tip. Would that also work with regard to the OS? I'm reluctant to upgrade from my Snow Leopard, but I know that eventually this will become a necessity.
 
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I'm not sure what you are referring to about what would work. Bear in mind that most people when installing a major upgrade like from SL to ML or higher, would take the opportunity to do a clean install and this is probably a good thing to do.

However if you wanted to upgrade SL to Mavericks and if it were possible to let the upgrade package do the whole thing without doing a clean install, then you would certainly want to do that on the sandbox and see if any funny business ensued.

But if you are nervous about upgrading then you could always simply buy another 500GB external drive which are pretty cheap to keep a clone of your SL set up until you felt whatever it was that you were reluctant about was not going to happen. Or maybe you have software that you really want to keep using and is not longer supported on a higher OS, well in that case you could keep the aforementioned extra SL clone forever just to use with that software.

I'm not really sure what all the "SL is the last decent iteration of OS X" is all about really. But then I went from Leopard to Lion then to ML then to Mavericks and skipped SL, but when I see all the whinging about how fantastically marvellous 'Spaces' was in SL and how it is completely banjaxed on ML, I wonder about the sanity of the world.
 
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I'm not really sure what all the "SL is the last decent iteration of OS X" is all about really. But then I went from Leopard to Lion then to ML then to Mavericks and skipped SL, but when I see all the whinging about how fantastically marvellous 'Spaces' was in SL and how it is completely banjaxed on ML, I wonder about the sanity of the world.

Me either. I think it comes from the fact that Lion introduced a few new user conventions that people didn't like (like autosave -- [facepalm]). But any issues Lion had were completely ironed out by the time Mountain Lion came around. Mavericks has only had one serious issue -- if you're using Gmail through Mail, the first two releases were pretty rough.

Apart from that, I'd have said that Mavericks is the best OS release ever. People have very short memories about the anxiety and wailing and gnashing of teeth they all went through when Snow Leopard came out -- the one many of these same people now remember fondly as "the best." :)
 
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I really liked OS9 and when OS X came out I was horrified, I loved the minimalism of OS9 and I found the colour and clutter and what to me was overly elaborate design to be an abomination to my finely tuned zen sensibilities. But now I can make Mavericks as minimal as I like by almost blacking out the menu bar keeping nothing at all on the (grey striped) Desktop and hiding the Dock which I keep on the left, so all is right with the world again.
 
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I readily admit that I do not have personal knowledge to compare Mac OSs. Snow Leopard is my first and only experience with Mac OSs. It did not take long for me to appreciate its superiority to the various Window OSs I had used. I have heard from people with more experience than I have had that many of the newer Mac OSs are inferior to Snow Leopard. It is for that reason only (no personal knowledge) that I have been reluctant to upgrade to any of the newer OSs.
Quizzical: Thank you for your suggestion re simply devoting a HD to a clone of SL.
 

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