huong23 Posted January 20, 2007 Share Posted January 20, 2007 (edited) I will be getting a white Macbook in about a week. Since I've been using Windows for years, I have relied on Acronis True Image to clone my XP installation onto my external USB HD. Now I'm making the switch to OSX, I want to be able to clone my OSX installation onto my external USB HD also. 1) Should I repartition my external HD to have one partition for a bootable OSX installation, one HFS+ partition to store OSX data files, and one NTFS partition for XP (bootcamp)? ....Or is it possible to create a big HFS+ partition to boot from and store data too? The reason I'm asking is because I'm not sure whether the creation of a new bootable OSX installation will wipe out the partition, taking my pre-existing data along with it. Can someone clarify whether this is true or not? 2) How do I create a bootable OSX installation on my external USB HD? Are there any special requirements for the partition table (ie it has to be GUID, first partition..etc)? 3) What software do I use to clone/image my OSX installation? Freeware is preferred. Thanks. Edited January 21, 2007 by huong23 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willgonz Posted January 29, 2007 Share Posted January 29, 2007 You can install OS X to an external drive. This is possible. You go into the GUID settings and there is an option for external drive. Do you want to backup everything? If so boot the external drive and then drag Macintosh HD over and you'll make a copy on your external drive. Reply back if you want more details. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Acid_Burn Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 Clone your OSX with CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner) to USB drive (with bootable Option)... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chasingcharlie Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 I have found Silver Keeper to be more reliable (for me): http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/ You have to make the partition active afterwards but I've done this several times. I don't experiment until I have a working clone (image). I make an image on a drive connected via USB, then swap the drive into the system, make the partition active, and boot from it. Once that works, then I try changing things around. I had an earlier post that has the details on how to make a partition active ... thanks charlie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
huong23 Posted January 30, 2007 Author Share Posted January 30, 2007 (edited) I found out that the best way to backup is to repartition my external USB drive to the GPT scheme with 3 partitions: 1) 30GB OS X backup partition 2) 200GB OS X data archive 3) 20GB NTFS (for XP dual boot). Then I used SuperDuper to clone my OS X installation from my internal hard drive to the 30GB on the external drive. This allows me to have a bootable backup of my installation. This approach is the best option because I have backup + a boot disk in case something goes wrong with my internal hard drive. Edited January 30, 2007 by huong23 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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