Back Up Heaven: Bootable Clones

The last piece of my back-up jigsaw puzzle falls into place when I make my bootable clone.  A ‘bootable clone’ is not simply a copy of your hard drive: it is a copy from which you can boot your system when you experience disaster, and from which you can recover your system when all seems lost.  For me, it represents the ultimate weapon in countering system downfall.

There are numerous utilities out there to assist you achieve this ‘system utopia’.  Personally, I use Retrospect: partly because it came bundled with my Western Digital MyBook Pro, and partly because it is so blissfully simple to use.  My brother-in-law uses (and has been glad of) SuperDuper.  At the end of the day, whatever tool you choose the main criteria is that it provides you with a reliable recovery route.

So, to make your bootable clone you will need: cloning software, an additional hard drive (in my view, preferably an external one), and a bit of time to get things set-up and underway.

If you choose to go this route, you will find the way that works for you, but here’s my methodology:

Step 1: Tidy up my main system by running my disk maintenance utility, emptying trash, getting rid of any flab in my e-mail inbox and restarting the system.  Whether the last mini-step – restarting the system – is actually required, I couldn’t say, but it makes sense to me.

Step 2: Make sure everything except my start up items is closed down, launch Retrospect and select my set-up: Duplicate.  Click ‘Run’ and wait.  I’m fortunate – both my iMac and Macbook Pro carry Firewire 800 connections, so I get good transfer rates, but doing the 250GB drive on my iMac still takes a good while, so be warned -this could take some time; the good news is, though, that user-intervention is not required, so you can just let it do its stuff while you do something else.

Step 3: Test it!  Seriously, as anal as this may sound, you should test your clone.  Stick with me on this one: you’ve made your clone and you think your safe, but you’ll never know until you need it.  If the first time you test it is when you’ve suffered system failure, and it doesn’t work, you are going to be more than a tad hacked off.  So, when I get that “Process Complete” message the first thing I do is change my “Target Drive” (it’s a Mac thing) to my clone and restart my system.  If I boot up successfully, I know my clone is good and I can relax.

There is another advantage to keeping a clone on an external drive.  You see, if my hardware dies – OK, I run a Mac, so it’s unlikely, but it happens – then if I have a friend with a Mac I can take my external hard-drive, hook it up to his/her Mac and boot into my system.  Cool or what?

So, there you go: the final leg of your journey to back-up heaven.  Enjoy!

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">The last piece of my back-up jigsaw puzzle falls into place when I make my bootable clone.  A ‘bootable clone’ is not simply a copy of your hard drive: it is a copy from which you can boot your system when you experience disaster, and from which you can recover your system when all seems lost.  For me, it represents the ultimate weapon in

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