Multiple SuperDuper Bacckups, One Disk, Several Paritions... Question

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In addition to an external TM backup disk, I am using another for SuperDuper Archives. This disk currently has two partitions, one has a close of my iMac internal drive, the other am archive copy of a particular important folder. I propose to add a third partition to this particular external drive and use the new partition for a SuperDuper backup of my wife's MacBook Air, prior to installing Mojave. THis is not meant to be a long term solution - just a belt and braces backup should the update fail. I should add that I do copy (the very few) data files from my wife's laptop to my iMac at least weekly and these are included in my TM backup.

My question is this: should it be necessary to restore the MacBook Air backup, will the Superduper backup of that machine be bootable - ie is the 'bootable' part associated with each partition or the external drive as a whole? I don't propose to restore any backup to the 'wrong' machine.

Any and all advice would be welcome.
 

Slydude

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I've been doing this for some time now and it works. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to create the bootable clone but a SuperDuper clone should work as well. The "bootability" is associated with each partition. Here are a couple of thibngs to keep in mind:

1. Each bootable clone must be on its own separate partition in order to be bootable.
2. For convenience, name each partition something that helps you remember which backup is which.
3. When you finish cloning her system test to make sure it's bootable before updating to the new OS.
 

chscag

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You need to do whatever works for you, but I'm sure someone with as much IT experience as you have, realizes if that hard drive fails there goes all your backups at once. I too make regular Time Machine backups but I know how glitchy it can be at times.
 
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I've been doing this for some time now and it works. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to create the bootable clone but a SuperDuper clone should work as well. The "bootability" is associated with each partition. Here are a couple of thibngs to keep in mind:

1. Each bootable clone must be on its own separate partition in order to be bootable.
2. For convenience, name each partition something that helps you remember which backup is which.
3. When you finish cloning her system test to make sure it's bootable before updating to the new OS.

Excellent news. Thank you For info the partition names are "drive name & backup".
 
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Sawday
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You need to do whatever works for you, but I'm sure someone with as much IT experience as you have, realizes if that hard drive fails there goes all your backups at once. I too make regular Time Machine backups but I know how glitchy it can be at times.

Very true and a lesson learnt a few years back. I actually have two external disks for TM (TM alternates between them automatically... as you know) which back up my hard drive and an external data drive, the aforementioned SuperDuper drive (a portable USB drive that sits in a fireproof safe when not in use), plus (and only because I got an absolute bargain 5TB usb drive on eBay last year) I make occasional copies of my hard drive and the external data drive as an archive.... belt, braces and truss approach to back up!
 

krs


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In addition to an external TM backup disk, I am using another for SuperDuper Archives. This disk currently has two partitions, one has a close of my iMac internal drive, the other am archive copy of a particular important folder. I propose to add a third partition to this particular external drive and use the new partition for a SuperDuper backup of my wife's MacBook Air, prior to installing Mojave.
As already mentioned, the "bootable" part is associated with each clone on each separate partition - I have four partitions of 500GB on a 2TB external with 4 different clones on them, each one done with SD, however, I didn't think one can add another partition to a hard drive without deleting everything that is on the hard drive and then partition it again with the number of partion one requires.
 

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