Clone to PC w/CCC or Super Duper

I have a PC with a 500 GB HD and I am wondering if I can clone my mac partition to that PC, instead of buying an external HD that way, if something gets screwed up I can just load the image and I'll be back in business? I am a college student and am really low on cash, so I can't spring for and external HD. I just want to check if this is possible before doing this. I think I can simply create a shared folder and just have the image there can't I? Will Super Duper and/or Carbon Copy Cloner help me out here? How do those apps create the image? is it a .dmg file?

Thanks for reading.

cad2blender said:

I have a PC with a 500 GB HD and I am wondering if I can clone my mac partition to that PC, instead of buying an external HD that way, if something gets screwed up I can just load the image and I'll be back in business? I am a college student and am really low on cash, so I can't spring for and external HD. I just want to check if this is possible before doing this. I think I can simply create a shared folder and just have the image there can't I? Will Super Duper and/or Carbon Copy Cloner help me out here? How do those apps create the image? is it a .dmg file?

Thanks for reading.

Click to expand...

Both programs do a file for file clone to another disk (they do not create an image file), SuperDuper supports backing up to a network attached volume (I don't believe CCC does, but don't quote me on that). With that said, the destination volume will be completely overwritten, so you will not be able to store any other data on that disk unless you have it partitioned and are dedicating a partition to Mac backups. You will also not have the option of booting from the backup volume as you would on an external hard disk.

I was a big fan of SuperDuper until recently as the author has been dragging his feet in releasing a Leopard-compliant version (JMO, folks - and yes, I've read the author's blog).

CCC is supposed to do basically the same thing, although I haven't ever used it on a network volume. Give it a shot - you can't beat the price.

So for this to work I would need to:
1. create a partition on the pc dedicated for the mac (does the format matter? ex. ntfs, hfs+, fat 32)
2. get super duper and tell it to clone to that created partition, will it work via ethernet cable?, if not I could just use usb or firewire right?
3. Now If I would look and the newly created files on that clone, it would be identical, bit by bit clone of my mac right?

are there any pitfalls that may occur? things to watch out for?

cad2blender said:

So for this to work I would need to:
1. create a partition on the pc dedicated for the mac (does the format matter? ex. ntfs, hfs+, fat 32)
2. get super duper and tell it to clone to that created partition, will it work via ethernet cable?, if not I could just use usb or firewire right?
3. Now If I would look and the newly created files on that clone, it would be identical, bit by bit clone of my mac right?

are there any pitfalls that may occur? things to watch out for?

Click to expand...

1. Yes, create a partition and share that drive out in Windows. It doesn't matter what format you use because you're connecting to it over the network - Windows handles all of the reads and writes.

2. Yes, you'll need to establish a network connection to the other computer. I guess I just assumed that you had a little network there inside your dorm, but now it sounds like these two machine aren't on the same network. What was your plan to get them talking?

3. It won't be bit by bit, but file by file. Again, SuperDuper does NOT create an image like products you may have used in the past (like Ghost or DriveImage or TrueImage). If you want to create a disk image, Disk Utility can do that.

If I were to put it into a disk image, then what would it look like when I opened it? See I am going to go back to 10.4 from 10.5 but I want to back it up first. I have an external drive, but its not partitioned or anything and I dont want to lose all my files on it when I use Superduper.

KB3GZW said:

If I were to put it into a disk image, then what would it look like when I opened it? See I am going to go back to 10.4 from 10.5 but I want to back it up first. I have an external drive, but its not partitioned or anything and I dont want to lose all my files on it when I use Superduper.

Click to expand...

It would look like any other DMG file, just an ordinary disk image. The biggest difference is that you wouldn't be able to boot from your backup, like you can with SuperDuper. The other nice thing about a SuperDuper backup is that if you choose to do a clean install, at the end of the clean install, you can just use the Migration Assistant to import all of your data, files and applications back onto your system disk. That's how I did my Leopard upgrade and it worked out very well.

As an aside, the one thing I would caution you on would be to run a program like AppFresh to check all of your existing applications and make sure they're up to date (and therefore ensuring better Leopard compatibility) prior to doing the backup in preparation for the upgrade.

Do you think this is the best option without buying another External HDD, since I am going from 10.5 to 10.4?

KB3GZW said:

Do you think this is the best option without buying another External HDD, since I am going from 10.5 to 10.4?

Click to expand...

I apologize, I misread your original statement, thinking you were preparing for an upgrade.

To be honest, I'm really not quite sure what I'd recommend to go backward, as I haven't done that yet. Did you not backup prior to upgrading?

Unfortunately not, I also have some files I made in 10.5 that wouldnt be there if I did backup.

KB3GZW said:

Unfortunately not, I also have some files I made in 10.5 that wouldnt be there if I did backup.

Click to expand...

Ugh, that's a bummer. 10.5.2 is right around the corner, and I would stick it out as it's rumored to be a huge improvement. With that said, this is what I would do if it were me and I didn't have access to an external hard drive of significant capacity:

1. Create a new Disk Image using Disk Utility
2. Copy your entire home folder into the disk image. Hopefully it won't be too large for a DVD.
3. Burn the resulting disk image to a DVD.

Then, after the clean install, you should be able to mount the DMG and use the Migration Assistant to import your home folder back in.

I have a bunch of dual layers that I will sacrifice one to use. Do you think it will be bigger than 8 Gigs? Also I may wait until 10.5.2 then see what its like after that... actually thats what I think I will do.

KB3GZW said:

I have a bunch of dual layers that I will sacrifice one to use. Do you think it will be bigger than 8 Gigs? Also I may wait until 10.5.2 then see what its like after that... actually thats what I think I will do.

Click to expand...

It's hard to say - I said to create an image of just the home folder, hoping to cut down the size of your backup. It all depends on the size of your data.

Is there any way you could repartition the MyBook's free space to do a full backup? Disk Utility in Leopard is supposed to be able to do an in-place repartition (i.e. you shouldn't lose your data). As long as you have a clear partition equal to the size of your system disk, you should be OK to use SuperDuper.