copy startup drive: permissions!

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Hi guys. I need to copy all the contents of my startup drive to an additional drive, so I can erase and reformat the startup drive.

In copying though, there's some stuff OS X doesn't want to let me copy. Some it asks for my password, others it just says you can't copy. I need to copy everything though. Can you tell me the best way to do this?

Thank you!
 
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Christopher
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Okay, thanks so much I'm doing SuperDuper now. It seems to be spreading my 80GB mac drive's files over the 320GB seagate drive. Is it okay when it's done to put them all in one folder? That will be everything, right? Then I can use the drive to backup other stuff?


Thanks.
 
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MacHeadCase

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A much easier way would have been to simply clone your hard drive. It would have put on your external an exact copy of what you have in your mac at the moment , meaning the files would have been in the same file hierarchy as they are now. And they would have been contained, not spread all over like that.
 

bobtomay

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Part of the reason for having a back-up is to have zero down time when a drive fails. Not only to just have all your stuff backed up. With SuperDuper, when it creates a bootable back-up it erases everything on the drive prior to the back-up.

For this reason, I created 2 partitions on my external drive. The first, only large enough to create a cloned, bootable, exact copy of my internal drive. Nothing else goes on this partition except your continuing incremental back-ups. The other larger partition is then available for whatever else you may want to store on it.
 
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Christopher
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Thanks, that's exactly what I was thinking of doing, actually, now that I know this program exists. I was going to clone my 80GB original drive, in case of catastrophe. I love that it can just boot right up. Will my apps, plug ins etc all run fine?

My only other question is, if you wanted to update this regularly, say once a week or even more often than that, can SuperDuper only update the files in this clone that have changed? Or will it copy over the entire Hard Drive again?

Thanks to everyone, this has been really helpful.
 

bobtomay

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Yes, everything works and it can update only the changed files. (edit: And yes, as MHC states below, I did purchase the license. Think it is well worth the $28 for such a nice looking / working application and a little peace of mind.)

Am no expert on all the options, but I am only wanting to maintain a bootable copy of my primary drive.
To do this, just follow the screen shots below.
Choose the options as shown in the first screen and these will never change. Of course, you'll have the name of your backup drive instead of mine.
The 2nd screen shows the options I used for the first full back up and them booted to this drive to make sure it was functional.
After you have verifeid it is working, re-boot holding down the Option key and select your primary drive instead of the back up.
Then, to maintain your back up, change the options to match the 3rd screen.
This is just a very simple use of SuperDuper. There are many others you can check out if you need more options by reading through the user manual. It is pretty detailed and explains all the other options pretty well.

SD#1.png

SD#2.png

SD#3.png
 
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MacHeadCase

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Bob, if you buy the licence it will copy just the changed system and new files if you want to. That's the setting I use.

If you do not buy a licence, the only way you can use SuperDuper! is too delete the external and start a fresh new backup as you do not have any other options in your user controls when using it in demo mode.
 
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Christopher
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Thanks so much, Bob, for such a detailed and helpful response with screenshots. MacHeadCase, that's a great weblog you have going. I love the animal photos. Blue is my favorite color; lately I've been into yellow.
 
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MacHeadCase

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Thanks Christopher! I will be changing themes... one day... soon... I hope. :[

And remember you can't go wrong with SuperDuper! The licence fee is life-time, no matter how many upgrades to the software there are. And it's the best out there, with the least dropped files in a head-to-head comparison with Carbon Copy Cloner, Apple's own Backup, Retrospect.
 
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Christopher
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No problem. It's a nice weblog. I love the photos of animals and the natural world. MacHeadCase, I have a new thread about wordpress weblogs here, if you get a chance and think you can help please take a look.

One more question about SuperDuper: I have this new 320 GB Seagate Drive. So based on the stuff I've learned here, I think it would be a good idea to partition the drive, and use one partition to clone my original Mac drive, my startup drive, which is 80GB.

My issue is, do partitions all have to be symmetrical in size? I can't do like, an 80GB partition, and then use the remaining space for backup and scratch?

If not, maybe it's best to do three partitions? Use one 100GB partition to clone my Mac drive, and the rest for storage?

Thanks again to all who helped.
 
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MacHeadCase

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I have a 500GB external and I did not partition it. If you lose the hard drive to hd failure, the way I see it is you're going to loose everything anyway, partitioned or not, so I didn't bother with partitioning it. Maybe someone else has other ideas than mine though.

I did reply to your WP thread. ;)
 
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No, I don't mean in terms of losing it. What I am saying is, does cloning take up the whole drive? and thus, it would be best to partition your drive so that one partition is dedicated to your clone of your primary/startup drive, and the rest you can use for storage?

Because I think that adding stuff to the drive you cloned to (your 500GB drive), might mess up the clone, especially when you go to update it. So it may be best to create a specific partition for your clone? To have the rest of the drive available and separate. I definitely do not know though!
 
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MacHeadCase

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Cloning means it will take the same space as the source hard drive. If your internal hard drive takes up 125GB, the cloned backup will take up 125GB. The clone is an exact copy.

My backup is an exact copy of what I have on my Macintosh HD, same file structure, same files, users, etc.

The only thing that differs is the files I manually have backed up there. The thing is that if you don't buy a licence, these manually copied files will be deleted, though.
 
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Christopher
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Right. But what I am asking is, can you then use the remainder of the drive you cloned to, (your 500GB drive), without disturbing the integrity of your 125GB clone? Or would it be a better idea to partition the drive.
 
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MacHeadCase

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Yes you can.

What you could do is, if you manually copy over other files, just create a new folder in your user account, the same as you would do right in your Mac, if you want to be absolutely safe and sure about the whole thing. I didn't bother, just dropped the files on the external and they are on the same level as my cloned system.
 

bobtomay

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My internal is partitioned into a 100GB for OS X and 20GB for XP.
My back up drive has only a 60GB partition for the backup of OS X and the balance for my movies and music.

Doubt my OS X partition will ever actually take up 60GB of data, unless I load several large games, as I am pretty fanatical about keeping systems lean and mean and deleting stuff I no longer use. I am always installing new stuff to check out and for the most part it's ends up being deleted within a week.
The primary reason I use the 2 partition method really is because I know how much writing and deleting I will be doing to the movie and music portion of the drive. It probably doesn't matter, just felt it a little safer to have a separate partition for my OS X back up. Of course if the drive fails, the different partitions won't help any.
 

bobtomay

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Yet another pretty cool find MHC.
 
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Christopher
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My internal is partitioned into a 100GB for OS X and 20GB for XP.
My back up drive has only a 60GB partition for the backup of OS X and the balance for my movies and music.

Doubt my OS X partition will ever actually take up 60GB of data, unless I load several large games, as I am pretty fanatical about keeping systems lean and mean and deleting stuff I no longer use. I am always installing new stuff to check out and for the most part it's ends up being deleted within a week.
The primary reason I use the 2 partition method really is because I know how much writing and deleting I will be doing to the movie and music portion of the drive. It probably doesn't matter, just felt it a little safer to have a separate partition for my OS X back up. Of course if the drive fails, the different partitions won't help any.

Okay, so with Mac OS X disk ultility, you can set up partitions of different sizes? I started to do this, and had the impression disk utility wanted to only create partitions of equal size. So for a 320 GB drive I may have to do three 100GB partitions?

Thanks, and thanks MacHeadCase for the above article on backup software.
 

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