If the data on your internal drive become corrupted, if the drive fails and needs to be replaced or you simply want to do a quick and easy defragmentation, you can rely on another tool in Disk Utilities, Restore. (During cloning the image created is completely defragmented, though fragmentation is a minimal issue with OS X.)
You must boot your computer from the OS X Install Disk or a third external drive univolved in the restoration. A copy of Disk Utility is available on the Install Disk.
Choosing the Restore tab you will see the Restore feature in Disk Utility. From the left panel click and drag your source disk, usually your CLONE, to the Source field. Then do the same with your destination disk, Macintosh HD in this case. You have the option of erasing the destination disk, too. The time required to do a full restoration of your HD from a clone is usually in the order of 30 to 60 minutes depending on the number of bits you keep on your drive. Compare that to the many hours to days it may take to reconstruct your software setup manually.
While there are utilities that would allow you to automatically backup data, such as your User or Documents folders from your internal drive to a BACKUP partition, this is probably done best manually. My BACKUP partitions have different data with a lot of overlap among several backup drives. Bulky files reside at least in duplicate on my external drives.
Developers of malware are constantly improving their products while the writers of antivirus and antispyware applications are doing the same. It’s a perputual arms race. When the viruses and their cousins begin to intrude into the world of Mac (very unlikely), you should be slow to participate.
While antimalware programs have a certain allure offering to calm your anxieties about invasion and corruption of your drive, they will never offer the true security of having multiple clones of that drive. No matter what those evildoers may throw at you, you can just laugh knowing that you have another copy up your sleeve!
8 Comments to “The Importance Of Backing Up and the Increasing Virus Threat”
Good piece man. People forget how important this is.
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I have a RAID setup, it’s perhaps not as simple and easy to setup as what you suggest, but it sure is reliable.
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I have two internal hd’s in my mac pro, and then a lacie external that I use. I need more reliability. I know.
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I’m fanatical about backing up; it’s always good to see this topic addressed.
My backup centers around a FW Drobo with 2 partitions. One partition houses a bootable clone, the other is backup for my actual data which gets sync’d each night with Chronosync. The Drobo has worked perfectly for this, and IMHO is so much easier to deal with than a traditional RAID.
Off-site storage is also something that *should* be done. Whether a cheap USB drive stored at a friends house, or online services like Mozy or Jungledisk, having a copy of your data off-site is critical, but it seems few people actually make the effort.
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great post man, can’t ever hear this stuff too much
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what’ crazy is that i have been trying to figure out to get bootable clones going, and now I can. thanx man.
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I like “The Elegant Solution” part. When put that way, most people should have a clear choice on how they will go about backing up their data. It should be obvious that the “the elegant solution” you propose is a winner.
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I’m really surprised that the vast majority of people have never run anti-virus software. I always assume people have the software and just run it every once in a while. I use ClamXAV when I want to scan a file I’ve downloaded or received via email, but I don’t have it set up to continually scan. I read a post today at Mac Guru Lounge on the Top 5 Mac Security Tips for the Holidays, which also talked about running AV software.
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