how to make sure you got a good-trustworthy backup?

[sunbeam]

Hello again, dunno if this is the place to post this particular question that is buggin me for over one week now. (if not, sorry admins)

during the last week, i got myself a quiet fully working installation on a amilo laptop (98% working) with help (of course) of the know-how of you people here, and of course the amazing software found here (multibeast, iBoot etc.). big thank u shout to all of you. glad to be part of this community.

to get to the point.

after finishing and customizing the installation, my MacOSX project was just perfect, except some hardware related stuff (mic and Cam not working) i did a backup on image (dmg) with ccc (life saving software btw) took about 2 hours to complete.

so i wanted to get the final step, to make either the mic or the cam or both to work. after searching the net, i found some kexts, that supposed to work with my MoBo chipset, and acording to some users, sound, mic worked fine without any dsdt injection (or something like that).

result was, i was not able to get the system up and running again, either with rBoot or some other way. i even got to the point to get into installation, open terminal, and from there to restore the folder EXTRA and SYSTEM back to my installed system. Nothing worked. To get the system back again, i had to do the restore procedure through installer on a second hdd and get all my stuff (mail messages, music etc) from the ruined installation back. trust me, that's a situation where you have to have a lot of time to spend about 25-30 minutes to verify the dmg file from a external hdd, 1 hour to copy over all the backup and about 1 hour to verify files, permissions and anything else the disk utility does. all in all, about 4 hours and you got your system back and running.

so in order to be able, on a mistake (like the installation of a kext, that didnt work and gave an amazing KP) what would be an "easy way" to have a backup of all required files (not the whole installation) so a user will be able to have his system up and running in less than approx. 4 hours ?

i know, this whole hackintosh stuff, is under the 'use at your own risk and don't ask stupid questions' philosophy and for sure i can not ask Apple for help (even Leopard is legit), but to be honest, my system runs smoother than the installation i had before with windows 7 ultimate (yes yes, that is true), and until i have the money to buy me an decent MacBook Pro, im gonna work with my hackintosh.

so any help, walk-through or something else would really be appreciated, not only by me, but im sure for a lot of ppl like me (noops), that just love their hackintosh'es

thank you

 

[TheSmartGuy]

An easier way would be to use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your hard disk onto a separate partition, instead of into a DMG file. This way, when you mess up, you can just boot into your other partition, and overwrite the messed up partition with Carbon Copy Cloner. Takes less than 30 minutes in most instances.

 

[sunbeam]

TheSmartGuy, thank you, that seems a pretty fools-proof solution until the system will be completed 100%.
My Laptop got 2 slots for HDD so i guess, have to work with that until the desired 100%

thank you (once again)

but still... there must be a method to instandly fix problems like the ones i described b4

 

[ohgood]

TheSmartGuy, thank you, that seems a pretty fools-proof solution until the system will be completed 100%.
My Laptop got 2 slots for HDD so i guess, have to work with that until the desired 100%

thank you (once again)

but still... there must be a method to instandly fix problems like the ones i described b4

instantly - nope. CCC or SuperDuper! are great utilities, but it takes time. If you do incremental backups, it's very quick, the more often you backup.

Also, booting from a USB thumb drive with a clean, working, tested installation is a good idea. Given that 16Gb drives are $10 in some places, it's nice to have. You obviousely can't keep all your files and vidoes, but it is a very, very quick fix.

some people used to backup their entire system to dvd's. even span a system over several dvd's. ugh. ;-)

 

[dddirtman]

also keep in mind that cc cloner does not write efi partition.
so after u copy the drive multi beast it
at least the boot loader so the drive will boot for u...

 

[sunbeam]

instantly - nope. CCC or SuperDuper! are great utilities, but it takes time. If you do incremental backups, it's very quick, the more often you backup.

Also, booting from a USB thumb drive with a clean, working, tested installation is a good idea. Given that 16Gb drives are $10 in some places, it's nice to have. You obviousely can't keep all your files and vidoes, but it is a very, very quick fix.

some people used to backup their entire system to dvd's. even span a system over several dvd's. ugh. ;-)

it seems that the only way so far for me is ccc (tested and recovered my stuff)

cheers

 

[sunbeam]

also keep in mind that cc cloner does not write efi partition.
so after u copy the drive multi beast it
at least the boot loader so the drive will boot for u...

so now im lost again

scenario: got one healthy and one backup partition. im playing around installing and trying to make some stuff work, and the KP comes along that keeps me from booting, right ?
i plug in my backup (usb) disk, boot normally and select the backup disk. System starts up...
from the backup disk im getting all my data over again to my main disk.
If i run MultiBeast, it installs all required files on the HDD i used to boot up, in this case, the backup (or second external USB disk), right ? so still the first wouldn't be bootable, i then have to switch places (secondary to primary and vice versa) ...

 

[dddirtman]

basically the backup from ccc cloner(in its own)is not bootable...
the software assumes a real mac is backed up so it doesn't install a boot loader
thats the only issue.....
if u use a usb or cd to boot then its a non issue

 

[sunbeam]

dddirtman, thank you for your reply.
to be honest, on 10.6.x it was easy to recover/restore from an ccc image in disk utility, and then just to boot up with the iBoot CD, and the OS in save mode, MultiBeast (easyInstall) and everything was just perfect, system back as it was.

to be honest, last try i had to restore from an 10.7.x image, i was not that lucky. i couldn't boot up with anything.

So, how would i be able, after for example, swapping HDD's (just to start my system from a backed up hdd via CCC). what should i then use to boot up with success to get my boot loader installed again ?

 

[dddirtman]

yes the backup will boot on its own