Time Machine Backup and Recovery on a CustoMac

[Ritey]

Article: Time Machine Backup and Recovery on a CustoMac

Right then. I'm not embarrassed to admit I'm wrong. At least some of us have learned something.

Basically then, with my CCC, I can pick it from the Boot Menu saving the need for a Unibeast stick etc.

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First, the USB cloned by CCC must have a bootloader installed on it (Chimera from the Downloads).

The CCC clone I made on a USB stick with Chimera would not load, even using Unibeast to boot from.

Ritey ..

 

[mushin]

Don't use time machine. Don't trust it. I've had many clients of mine have there time machine backups fails (on real Macs).
I do things old school:
- Make a .DMG with disk utility of my system drives.
- Task Scheduler + Synchtoy Under windows running in echo for daily backups of the user folders to a network drive (I'm running Mac Drive and I have my HFS partitions mounted in windows)

Since I'm 90% of the time in Windows I go this route. (not to mention I like to have control of my backups)

 

[Ritey]

Article: Time Machine Backup and Recovery on a CustoMac

Don't use time machine. Don't trust it. I've had many clients of mine have there time machine backups fails (on real Macs).
I do things old school:
- Make a .DMG with disk utility of my system drives.
- Task Scheduler + Synchtoy Under windows running in echo for daily backups of the user folders to a network drive (I'm running Mac Drive and I have my HFS partitions mounted in windows)

Since I'm 90% of the time in Windows I go this route. (not to mention I like to have control of my backups)

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On a crashed install, how do you RESTORE the DMG back to the system drive?

Ritey ..

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[arehep]

Great video tutorial
Thanks Beelzebozo

 

[djlightfighter]

I use a time capsule which is awesome IMHO ...... it also allows you to bring up a new MAC in a few minutes by restoring account information

 

[mushin]

Article: Time Machine Backup and Recovery on a CustoMac

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On a crashed install, how do you RESTORE the DMG back to the system drive?

Ritey ..

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I boot with an "installation disc" and use Disk Utility to restore the DMG. (Which is the same way I made it)

 

[Ritey]

Article: Time Machine Backup and Recovery on a CustoMac

I boot with an "installation disc" and use Disk Utility to restore the DMG. (Which is the same way I made it)

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Ahhh! An obviously overlooked 'old timer's' trick

Q: Does it restore the bootloader as well?

Ritey ..

 

[mushin]

Article: Time Machine Backup and Recovery on a CustoMac

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Ahhh! An obviously overlooked 'old timer's' trick

Q: Does it restore the bootloader as well?

Ritey ..

An old timer's trick indeed. (or more just a windows guy's trick)
In my opinion no fancy backup system with cute features like previous files versions and etc... Is as reliable & stable as a true system image.


A: Yes it does, most of the time anyways. There has been once or twice where it hasn't. Easy solution is boot with iBoot or other boot disc and run multibeast or chameleon/chimera installer to put it back. There was also the off time that the restored partition wasn't active. (easily fixed). Most issues have risen when it was a multi-boot off the same drive. If your drive only has OSX on it you shouldn't run into any major issues.

Example of a Setup I had made for a coworker (an apple user and graphics designer of over 20 years) who was tired of buying Macs mainly cause he got screwed over and bought a super nice Dual G5 PowerMac for 4000$ less then 3 months before the Intel ones were coming out and the apple dealer never told him that they were. (this was the first of many "screw overs" that he experienced over the next few years and is now washing his hands of apple) Now his PowerMac is worthless.

The 1TB drive Partitioned as Follows
128GB HFS+ (For OSX)
128GB NTFS (For Windows)
The Rest: extFAT (For Data)

Once the operating systems are installed and running I Move the OSX user folder to the extFAT partition. Then I remap the windows user folder to the same ones. (the only down side of this is you can't have itunes in windows). I then boot with my "install disc" and make a DMG of the OSX and WINDOWS installs (as separate images of coarse) onto the extFAT partition. Voila! Now if anything happens to either operating systems I can restore the image and pick up where i left off and none of the personal data is effected.

 

[Ritey]

Article: Time Machine Backup and Recovery on a CustoMac

The 1TB drive Partitioned as Follows
128GB HFS+ (For OSX)
128GB NTFS (For Windows)
The Rest: extFAT (For Data)

Once the operating systems are installed and running I Move the OSX user folder to the extFAT partition. Then I remap the windows user folder to the same ones. (the only down side of this is you can't have itunes in windows). I then boot with my "install disc" and make a DMG of the OSX and WINDOWS installs (as separate images of coarse) onto the extFAT partition. Voila! Now if anything happens to either operating systems I can restore the image and pick up where i left off and none of the personal data is effected.

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AWESOME feedback, MANY thanks

I have SSDs and hard drives coming out my nose.

OS x on the primary SSD by itself booting first into Chimera.

Win 7 on secondary SSD booting Win7.

(We are both using the same great motherboard.)

I've been building computers for 30 years, and wanted OS x purely for the joy of Photoshop CS6 on the MAC, which is unbeatable photo editing. Especially so with the ATI 7950 with 3 Gb DDR 5. Thanks for helping your friend come up with a better MAC solution, BTW.

I'm not familiar with exFat yet. Does both OS x and Windows read and write to it?

Ritey ...

 

[mushin]

Article: Time Machine Backup and Recovery on a CustoMac

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AWESOME feedback, MANY thanks

I have SSDs and hard drives coming out my nose.

OS x on the primary SSD by itself booting first into Chimera.

Win 7 on secondary SSD booting Win7.

(We are both using the same great motherboard.)

I've been building computers for 30 years, and wanted OS x purely for the joy of Photoshop CS6 on the MAC, which is unbeatable photo editing. Especially so with the ATI 7950 with 3 Gb DDR 5. Thanks for helping your friend come up with a better MAC solution, BTW.

I'm not familiar with exFat yet. Does both OS x and Windows read and write to it?

Ritey ...

I had setup a similar setup like yours for another friend who was forced to do video editing on final cut cause of his new job and didn't feel like dropping over 2000$ so we upgraded the his system to an i5 on an UD5H with a 6770 loaded on 2x128gb ssd (1 for win/1 for osx) and a 1TB split 50/50 NTFS/HFS+

I no longer believe Photoshop runs any better on OSX then windows. The dev team split (use to be the same team doing both versions) many years ago and the windows version seems as good if not better then OSX one (IMO that is).

Only issue I came up with in my setup with the extFAT DATA partition was that Illustrator didn't like having it's primary scratch drive on the extFAT drive (stupid Fraking adobe doesn't anyone test anything properly anymore #@%$%@%#&%&$*&#!!!!!!!!!!!) It wouldn't render anything when the file opened. (Same bug under the windows side)

A: As far as exFAT is concerned it's pretty dame solid: Has large file support (files over 2GB) and has full support under Windows (if XP you will need an update) and OSX. (even linux) Only bad thing I've noticed with it is sometimes is if you do an unclean unmount (unplug an external drive without safe removing or turn of the machine without shutting down). You wont be able to write to it until you run a chkdsk on the drive even if it's not flagged as dirty. It's a great file system option when running different operating systems.