make my backup bootable without erasing?

I have existing backups, which I'm not sure are bootable. One is my Time Machine backup, but I believe those are not automatically bootable (which seems kinda silly, eh?).

My Blue backup is more up-to-date than my Red drive, though probably 90% of the files are the same but but BUT not in the same folder or sub-folder organization.

I've posted elsewhere my frustration at not being able to find backup software which will MERGE folders and sub-folders (because I don't want to clone/over-write my "Judas Priest" folder or whatever, since the same named folder has different items on different machines). Without such software, I decided I would have the one primary backup where I basically merge by hand, and use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone that. But it seems like I should make a bootable backup first, and THEN clone that?

Another example of why I don't want a clone is that, for example, I download music, but don't have enough space to keep all of it on my laptop. On my laptop is stuff I intend to listen to soon; once I listen to something, I transfer it to the backup and erase it from my laptop hard drive.

So can I take my latest, Blue backup, and make that bootable by adding files to it? Or do I need to wipe the older Red backup, make that bootable, make Red my Time Machine backup, copy the files from Blue to it, and make Blue the clone?

P.S.: really truly nobody has software to MERGE folders and their sub-folder layers on a backup?!?!? Or, isn't there some way when you do a drag/drop copy in OS X to force the merge behavior? (It only randomly asks if you want to merge, I guess according to the phase of the moon or something). I simply CANNOT be the only person on Earth who wants to back up multiple machines with similar but not identical content to one backup drive.

Just an FYI, a backup, is a copy of something. If you copy a file and save it on a different drive, that is a backup. If you delete the original file, you no longer have a backup, you only have one copy of the file.

I think you are making this way too complicated for yourself.

I am so confused with all your blue and red descriptions, maybe clarification of what you have will help.

I'm also confused, but from what I gather and understand from what I read of what you wrote, you can do all that you want using some of the options available with Carbon Copy Cloner.

Archiving among others so as to preserve your "Judas Priest" folder or whatever…. plus modifying what might get cloned or should I say copied for such cases.

If you want to do some "merging", I'd suggest that's another subject and probably something Automator could possibly handle.

I simply CANNOT be the only person on Earth who wants to back up multiple machines with similar but not identical content to one backup drive.

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For that, a simple partitioning setup would sure work or I'm really missing what you're trying to do.

And as Bob says, try a better K.I.S.S Method.

BTW: I just noticed your specs say you're running a Apple iMac G5/1.8 with 10.5.8, so you may be quite resricted as to what you can do, and maybe a reason I sense some frustration on your part.






- Patrick
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ferrarr said:

Just an FYI, a backup, is a copy of something. If you copy a file and save it on a different drive, that is a backup. If you delete the original file, you no longer have a backup, you only have one copy of the file.

I think you are making this way too complicated for yourself.

I am so confused with all your blue and red descriptions, maybe clarification of what you have will help.

Click to expand...

Good point! That's why I need to update my setup. I'll write a different description.

pm-r said:

I just noticed your specs say you're running a Apple iMac G5/1.8 with 10.5.8

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Oops! I guess I hadn't updated my profile in a long time. I'll rewrite what I'm trying to do.

Sorry for confusion, let me try again:

Let's suppose both my MacBook Air and my iMac have a folder called "Music To Listen To."

Inside that on the iMac are two folders:
"The Beatles" which has
- "Yellow Dog Acetates Volume 1"
- "Let It Be"
"Chvrches" which has
- "The Bones of What You Believe"

On the MacBook Air, that folder only has a sub-folder
"Chvrches" which has
- "Every Open Eye"

What I want to do is drag the "Music To Listen To" folder onto the backup, from the MacBook and then the iMac, and end up with
"The Beatles" which has
- "Yellow Dog Acetates Volume 1"
- "Let It Be"
"Chvrches" which has
- "The Bones of What You Believe"
- "Every Open Eye"
and that way both machines have their content backed up, without losing anything.

If both copies are active partitions rather than something like Time Machine, why not copy and paste the contents of the relevant folders from one to the other, rather than the complete folder - i.e. copy each separate album folder from one "Music to listen to" to the other?

Nighthawk4 said:

If both copies are active partitions rather than something like Time Machine, why not copy and paste the contents of the relevant folders from one to the other, rather than the complete folder - i.e. copy each separate album folder from one "Music to listen to" to the other?

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Because there are hundreds of folders. What you say is what I'm doing now-since OS X only occasionally and randomly asks if I want to merge (and because I'm not sure if it will properly merge sub-folders), I am basically merging all my folders by hand. It takes FOREVER and I probably miss stuff. Actually, I'm missing one document that I need even on all my backups, and will have to re-create it. :-(

It boggles my mind that there's not a tool to do this, especially when I read articles about how Windoze (!?!) does this all the time...

Actually, I'm missing one document that I need even on all my backups, and will have to re-create it. :-(
… … …

Click to expand...

Download the Find Any File.app and you can probably find your lost file if you use some of its various search functions.

http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/

I dare say if it can't find it, it probably doesn't exist or you're not using the proper search options.





- Patrick
======

Not to be pedantic, but I don't think you are using "backup" in the common definition. A "backup" of a drive is a copy one makes to restore from when/if the source drive is damaged or replaced. Yes, technically your approach of merging the data from two systems into one new system can be called a backup in the sense of it's a copy of your files somewhere else than the main drive, but to restore either of the originals from this merged copy will be arduous, maybe practically impossible. Unless you have a separate list of what came from the two sources, you won't be able to tease out from the merger what goes where. And even if you DO have a current list of what goes where, the labor involved will be enormous.

I don't know an easy way to merge folders the way you want. However, if what you want is to use ONE drive for the two machines to backup, Time Machine can do that. It names each backup with the name of the source machine, so it can keep two backups on one drive for you. So can Carbon Copy Cloner, if you use multiple partitions and point each machine to a different partition. You can also look at ChronoSync, but I don't know if it can merge and not copy the merge back to the source drive. It's prime function is to SYNC. But you can check with the developer to see if there is a way to use it the way you want to. One question to think about is what do you want done if two files have the same name, but are otherwise different? Like two different cuts of the same song? I know that several of my albums have different versions of the same song, with different run times and file sizes but the same track name.