Preferred backup method for the entire drive? (Lion)

[Kadin]

So my specs are below and as you can see, I dual-boot Lion and W7 x64. Right now they're both working perfectly and I just want to ensure that if I bork something on the OS X side, I have a good way to restore back to where I'm at right now - no matter what I mess up.

Currently my system boots into Chimera and I choose which OS I want to load. If I unplug this HDD, my other drive boots into W7 just like normal so nothing really needs to cover that drive.

Basically does something like Carbon Copy clone the entire drive down to each and every file including the boot loader, etc.? I currently run Time Machine which backups up to another internal drive but I'm fairly certain that will only help me once I have Lion loaded back up - it won't help me get back to 100% initially.

 

[OldFred]

I know that SuperDuper has been updated for Lion, I would check and make sure that CCC has been as well. The clone will be bootable, but will not include the bootloader. Your master drive will load the bootloader then offer to let you boot the clone. You could install Chimera on your clone, but you may have a conflict at boot up as the computer tries to figure out which drive is in charge. I found that it works best to have Chimera on my main drive and just have bootable clones for backup. If you are unplugging your other drives anyway, then install Chimera on your clone...

 

[dh22r]

interesting ... i installed chimera on the drive that holds my CCC backups.
based on my boot drive priority list in BIOS, wouldn't the system boot from the 1st disk?

just not too sure about OldFred's comment about "may have a conflict at boot up as the computer tries to figure out which drive is in charge".

 

[Going Bald]

"may have a conflict at boot up as the computer tries to figure out which drive is in charge".

Doesn't happen - BIOS will boot whatever drive you have set as first drive in hard drive boot order and, unless there is something wrong with the boot files on that drive, it will not boot any other drive in the system. If your first drive can't or won't boot, the BIOS post either hangs or it boots the second drive in the hard drive boot order list.

 

[thefsb]

What are the drawbacks of creating a .dmg file as a backup using Disk Utility?

 

[OldFred]

You all have prompted me to try installing Chimera on my backup drive again. I kept getting a black screen with Boot 1, Boot 1 in a long vertical line down the screen when I tried to boot from the drive. I guessed that there could be only one bootloader in operation at a time because that's what seemed to be happening on my Hack.

So I'm asking, can you have multiple drives each with a bootloader on the same computer? The drive designated in the bios drive boots and no problems with the other bootloaders?

 

[Kadin]

So I've got everything backed up to an ext drive via CCC. If in let's say 2 weeks I wanted to wipe this main drive and start back fresh with today's backup, what would the process be at this point? Would I have to go about installing SL again and then upgrading back to Lion and then restoring everything with the cloned copy or is there a 1-shot process to get it all done automatically from scratch?

If I have to reinstall SL and then Lion, I'll just continue using TM and skip CCC.

Oh and I backed up to a CCC image file if it matters.

 

[Going Bald]

So I'm asking, can you have multiple drives each with a bootloader on the same computer? The drive designated in the bios drive boots and no problems with the other bootloaders?

Yes, you can (or, at least, with my hardware, I can). I have had up to 4 OS X drives in the system at one time:
1.working drive - still on 10.6.7
2.drive with 10.6.8 + Lion app download + xMove created Installer partition
3.drive with 10.6.8 only - used to install Lion over SL from xMove drive for testing
4.blank drive - used to install Lion from xMove drive to blank drive for testing

All drives had Chimera installed. drive 1 was default #1 in hard drive boot order - all other icons show up in Chimera screen and can be booted from there - including System Reserved and Windows NTFS. Each drive was tested with Chimera installed via MB and UserDSDT with all other drives disconnected during the testing phase.
With all drives connected, hitting F12 at the BIOS post and selecting any drive gets a Chimera boot screen showing all icons and any drive will boot from any Chimera screen.

 

[OldFred]

Going Bald: Thanks for setting me straight! I must have done something wrong when I installed to my second drive. I have an SSD primary OSX drive with 1 partition and a 1T secondary drive with seven partitions on it. 5 of these partitions contain OSX in various flavors from a very basic 10.6.0 install to a full 10.6.8 with everything working, the other two are empty. Failure is how we learn...

 

[alexamarky]

There are two types of the backup method.First use the offline for the get the backup like a take the backup in the hard disk or DVD.Second one is take the backup from online ,it is very secure method for get the data.Carbonite software is the very usefull for the take the backup.