Preparing to upgrade to Mountain Lion

I just got my code from Apple for the free upgrade from Lion to Mountain Lion. I have a current backup with time machine. Is this sufficient or are other types of backups needed?

I see many complaints about problems after update. I will go on and update and keep my fingers crossed.

A Time Machine backup *should* be sufficient. Personally, I'm paranoid about my data so I keep an extra copy of my most important data on a separate hard drive as well outside of time machine (so if the upgrade fails and the TM backup is bad, I can reinstall my OS then just copy back my data) - here's a blog entry on where some of that data is kept (favorites, mail, etc.): How to Transfer Mac OS X Application Data between Computers - Professional PHP

I upgraded my work computer and haven't had any problems as of yet. I plan to upgrade my home computer probably next week or so if my work computer continues to have no problems with ML.

Although I did not do it personally may I suggest making a bootable clone of your system before the upgrade? This would be the easiest way to revert to your old setup should you find Mountain Lion unstable or you just don't like it. I don't think either will be the case but it is nice to have that option.

Thanks for the reply. I will try copying files to another drive and making the bootable clone.

What tool do I use to create a bootable clone? I bought a 3TB disk and partitioned it into 2 1.5 TB disks. I gave one to time machine and plan to clone to the other. What is the best software to use to make the clone?

I don't think you need to be so paranoid. For my money, if you have a Time Machine backup, you're already way ahead of the game. Chances are you can go ahead with the upgrade without worries. The chances you'll have problems are very slim, and even if you do, you'll already have a backup handy with your data.

I don't have the install image for Lion, my MBP came with it installed. If the update fails, will time machine only restore my data, or will it put Lion back?

Yet another question about time machine. I have parallels installed with a windows 7 virtual machine. Is the virtual machine backed up as part of time machine backup? A clone of the HD obviously would include it, but I am not sure about time machine.

As for clone backup it looks like asking which to use between Carbon Copy Clone and SuperDuper is like asking about vi vs emacs or ksh vs csh...

Both tools should get the job done. Carbon Copy Cloner has the advantage of cloning Lion's recovery partition as well as the rest of the drive.

Time Machine should copy those vm files that constitute the virtual machine unless you have excluded that folder. In fact many users exclude the vm files from Time machine because merely opening the vm causes Time Machine to read that as a change to the file thus including it in the next backup. It would not copy an actual Boot Camp partition AFAIK.