I have to erase & reformat WD Passport?

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how to synchronize my HD to my external drives

I'm looking to use something like SuperDuper to update my external back ups. I have to send my MB to Apple and they will wipe the HD. The problem I'm trying to figure out is this - A few months ago, my HD was replaced. Before that I backed up everything to two different external drives that I have. I copy and pasted my user folders and apps folder. I was told to only reinstall what I needed to avoid potentially putting something back on that could have caused a problem.

So now this is what I have - I used letters to represent files:

MB Harddrive - Folder "clients" with files H,I,J,K,L,M,N

External drive - Folder "clients" with files A,B,C,D,E,F,G

How do I add my new files from the HD to a folder with the same name on the external drive without replacing the whole folder and losing my other doc's?

I really hope that makes sense b/c this is making me crazy. Right now I'm doing it one folder at a time and hand selecting what is new, then copy/paste on the external drive. Which is an extra pain b/c I have to do it twice ( I want to have 2 back ups)

Thank you for reading all this!
 
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Are you running Leopard? If so, Time Machine does that for you. And I read here in the forums that you can reinstall your OS later from Time Machine so it actually puts all the backups back on your MB.

I am trying that out myself in the next week when I get my new harddisk. Hope to just backup the current HD completely with Time Machine and get that stuff back onto the new one when I reinstall Leopard.

Hope that helps!
 
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rcronin
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Are you running Leopard? If so, Time Machine does that for you. And I read here in the forums that you can reinstall your OS later from Time Machine so it actually puts all the backups back on your MB.

I am trying that out myself in the next week when I get my new harddisk. Hope to just backup the current HD completely with Time Machine and get that stuff back onto the new one when I reinstall Leopard.

Hope that helps!

No, I don't have Leopard. I know it comes with Time Machine, though. Which could help me. I think it does what I need, but I'm not sure. Nor am I ready to upgrade or pay for it considering all the other things I'm dealing with on this machine.
 
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If you buy your SuperDUper! licence you get that as a backup option: updating only the newer files and adding them to the old files so you basically get what Time Machine does but the SuperDuper! backup is bootable straight from the external HD.
 
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Someone please take pity on me and tell what to do here. I need to back up my HD b/c my MB is being sent to Apple for a diagnostic and they will wipe the HD. I've recently had the HD replaced and backed up all my stuff. Now my HD and back up are not identical anymore. I'm using SuperDuper to create a new, current back up, but I have to keep the older version. I have a WD Passport external HD. When I started the back up with Super Duper, it told me the Passport wasn't formatted correctly and needed to be erased and reformatted (see attachment). If that's true, I need to copy my previous back up onto my HD, reformat the Passport, copy the old backup on to the passport and then do the back up. I think. Yikes. If there is a better, faster, easier way, I would be VERY happy to hear about it. I've spent hours reading M-F's trying to figure this out and I really need to get it done so I can hand it over to Apple.

Picture 19.png
 

cwa107


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It looks like your external drive is formatted as "FAT32", probably because you were looking to maintain compatibility with a Windows machine. Unfortunately, one of the cool things that SuperDuper does is make the volume bootable so that you can literally start your machine from the backup drive - it is an absolute clone. So, it wants your drive to be in the Mac's native HFS format (Mac OS Extended Journaled).

If you have data on this drive, SuperDuper will wipe it out either way. So, if you need to keep the data on that external drive, you either need to offload it elsewhere and format it, or get another drive that you can use for SuperDuper.
 
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It looks like your external drive is formatted as "FAT32", probably because you were looking to maintain compatibility with a Windows machine. Unfortunately, one of the cool things that SuperDuper does is make the volume bootable so that you can literally start your machine from the backup drive - it is an absolute clone. So, it wants your drive to be in the Mac's native HFS format (Mac OS Extended Journaled).

If you have data on this drive, SuperDuper will wipe it out either way. So, if you need to keep the data on that external drive, you either need to offload it elsewhere and format it, or get another drive that you can use for SuperDuper.

BTW, CWA107, you're saving me tonight!

So SD will erase everything on any external drive? I can't have that. I have a portable external and a desktop external and both have other data on them. I want to back up my MB to both of them and maintain what's already there, including PC files on the desktop external. Where do I go from here? I can't possibly be the only one trying to do something like this. I'm surprised I'm not finding other threads covering this. I'm gettting tired, so tired.

Should I just copy and paste my stuff again into a folder with today's date on it.?
 
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I second MHC. I bought SuperDuper! recently and it does the job. It worked in my USB external HD but should work faster with firewire. It is Tiger OSX compatible at the moment but upgrade to Leopard is free once it is ready.
 

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Third vote for SuperDuper! It really is worth the $28.
It will create a complete bootable backup, so if your drive fails, you just boot from your external and keep going. Has configurations to automatically do incremental back ups (only the new and modified stuff) at preset times or you can manually launch it for your incrementals.

If you must have a free backup utility, there are some that like CarbonCopy Cloner.
 
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BTW, CWA107, you're saving me tonight!

So SD will erase everything on any external drive? I can't have that. I have a portable external and a desktop external and both have other data on them. I want to back up my MB to both of them and maintain what's already there, including PC files on the desktop external. Where do I go from here? I can't possibly be the only one trying to do something like this. I'm surprised I'm not finding other threads covering this. I'm gettting tired, so tired.

Should I just copy and paste my stuff again into a folder with today's date on it.?

Ok I'm gonna go ahead and merge your two threads becky because they talk basically of the same thing and it is getting rather confusing. Replies go back and forth between the two threads. Your last question, as an example, was answered in the other thread.

If you buy your licence, no need to date your stuff in folders. SuperDuper! knows which files have been modified or not. If you want to keep all the generations of a certain file, just save it under another name. Off the wall example: desk1.pdf, desk2.pdf, desk3.pdf, etc. that way you have the same file but it is being built as you go ahead and work on it.

If you don't buy the licence, you only get one type of backup option that is, it wipes the external hard drive and clones the internal hard drive on the external.
 
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I understand the merge, MHC, but actually I think my question about the erasing data has possibly not been answered yet, just mentioned in passing. And I goin' nuts trying to figure this out, lol.

If I use SuperDuper or CCC, can I have anything else on the external device? Will it automatically erase and replace everything on there? My externals are an 80 g and 500 g drives. And the only thing I can use them for is my HD backup? What a waste of money. I bought them so I could back up my HD AND have room for other stuff. For example, I carry my portable around for large files I need to share when I'm working or picking up a lot of picts from a clients. And I use the 500g desktop one for my husbands PC back up.

So is there any software that will allow me to back up my files and put them in a sensibly named folder (with a date,etc)?

What's the drawback if it's not "bootable"? The way I did it the first time was copied/pasted my user home folder and my apps folder. When I put them back on the new HD, I copied/pasted them back and them by hand resintalled all the user preferences for each of the necessary apps, like FF so my bookmarks were there. iTunes I had to hand copy/paste the data back in. I would love to not have to do that b/c it was very fussy and took me days. Is having a "bootable" back up the only way to get your apps back w/preferences intact? Is that what bootable means?

What about restoring HD from the SuperDuper back up, how is that different from archive and reinstall?

And since my HD will be wiped very soon, I have to figure this out asap.
 
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If the copy is not bootable, should your internal hard drive ever encounter problems and will not let you start up from it, you cannot start up from your copy either. You would need to pop in your restore CD/DVD or your OS install DVD and boot from the optical drive, navigate to your external HD and try to run the apps from there and it could be awkward. BTW, this is how Time Machine works, if I'm not mistaken: you cannot boot from the external hard drive that has your Time Machine backups.

If you use an external hard drive for SuperDuper! you could partition the external and have one partition for the Windoze/Mac stuff but what I am not sure of is if you can have a multi-file system fro the drive example one side in HFS+ and another partition in say FAT32. Someone else should come in here and explain this to both of us. You might need third-party software to create multi-file system partitions.

The ideal and easiest way is to get another external hard drive: one is for SuperDUper! backups, the other is to share with the Windoze machine. With the dropping price of external hard drives nowadays, it won't put you in the poor house.

Maybe someone else has better ideas though.

About restoring from the SuperDuper! external, you boot from the external by holding down the Option key, launch SuperDuper! and make a reverse backup i.e. the source is the external and the target volume to be copied to is the internal. You would need however to change the backup option to Erase and Copy.
 
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MHC, I think your suggestion to get another, small, external HD is a good one. I'll try to pick on up today. Or, actually, maybe I'll use the smaller one for now with SuperDuper and the big one for other stuff and to carry around. I'd like to have more than one back up of my HD. I'll probably get another smaller external soon. The 80g portable was $80, so they're not free, but another $40 wouldn't kill me. Thanks.
 
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Get a FireWire one. They're faster and if ever you need to use it with a PowerPC Mac, they will only boot from a FireWire external drive anyway. If it's to use only as a Windoze/Mac drive then maybe USB 2 is ok. Depends on what you plan on using it for.
 
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http://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/showthread.php?t=461 Good info here - an excerpt: The most important thing is to have an Oxford-based FireWire bridge chipset. Prolific and Initio "Oxford compatible" chipsets often have problems with OSX, both when copying and trying to boot.

Finally, since some release of 10.4 after 10.4.0, probably right around the time Boot Camp came out, Disk Utility started being able to format a partition as HFS+, even though the underlying partition scheme is Master Boot Record (Windows).

Macs cannot start up from volumes that are partitioned with Master Boot Record, regardless of chip. So, make sure your external drives are partitioned with APM (if you want them to work with both Intel and Power PC Macs) or GUID (if you're only working with Intel).

...if anyone's interested.
 
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Backing up data from My Book/Using Time Machine

I posted this somewhere else and I apologize for posting a duplicate.
Like Becky, I am perplexed on how to save data from an external HD. I recently installed Leopard from Tiger and want to use Time Machine. I have a Western Digital My Book and all of my data is backed up there. Before I can begin using Time Machine, I read that I must reformat My Book and in doing so, it will erase all my files.
Do I have to purchase ANOTHER My Book to save my files to? This seems a little crazy and expensive. I have so many files that it would take me a very long time to burn to CD and DVD so that really isn't an option.
I even contacted Western Digital support and asked them what to do. Their response was: "Back up your data prior to reformatting your external hard drive". That response was of no help to me. I KNOW I have to do that I just don't know WHERE to back up the data prior to reformatting!!!
Just when I thought I was pretty computer savvy......
 

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