GBK.Xscape Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 i was wondering if any one knew a way to back up their partition as an image so i can easily restore it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McSkywalker Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 You can do it in disk utility. It was something like "Create new image from HD". (I'm in windows now ) To restore, startup from your installation DVD, open disk utility, select your partition, click on the tab "Restore", the rest is simply explained there. PS: Don't format your partition before you verify that you can select the disk to restore onto. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe75 Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 You can do that right in Disk Utility, click on you drive then go up and click New Image McSkywalker beat me to it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McSkywalker Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe75 Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBK.Xscape Posted October 22, 2006 Author Share Posted October 22, 2006 it wont let me it just says unable to create disk0s3-resource busy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McSkywalker Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 I remember successfully doing it, but as I said, I'm in windows now and I'm not able to help you furthermore right at the moment. Did you try to save the image into another partition? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBK.Xscape Posted October 22, 2006 Author Share Posted October 22, 2006 yea i tried to save it to my external hard drive. and one more question. will the image be the same size as the partition? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe75 Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 I tried and got the same results. I haven't backed up a mac drive in a long time so maybe hold out for some better suggestions If you could do it from Windows it would be easy. Have you tried any boot Cd's Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBK.Xscape Posted October 22, 2006 Author Share Posted October 22, 2006 i heard something about using acronis true image working. can anybody confirm this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe75 Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 I can confirm it will copy it but not that it wont get messed up If you can remove the drive and hook up to another machine you can do what ever you want Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nargot Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 i synchronise my boot volume with synchronize pro, that means if i screw someting up i just reboot on the synched partition and image it back. no problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LedY Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 I backed up my volume/partition with DU so it works. If you only have 1 OSX install it won't work as DU won't let you save your currently booted volume/partition into an image file. I have 2 partitions with a seperate install of OSX on each (in case I mess something up on one) so I just booted up one and then backed up the other non-active one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob D Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Chaps, get an Ubuntu CD, boot into it, with your USB 2 drive installed. Once you get the desktop, double click on the usb drive to mount it, then open up terminal sudo -s (to get administrator / root priveledges) find out which partition you have mac os, hda1 is the first primary hda2 - 4 the second, third, forth 5 - 8 are extended partitions, which I don't think work for a primary mac partition. You could load fdisk /dev/hda, followed by p to print the partition table, a mac os one has a partition type of AF. cd /media/NAMEOFYOURUSBDRIVE dd if=/dev/hda2 of=macos.img bs=512 (substituting whatever your mac partition number is). (It will sit there for ages copying..) On another terminal, you can: cd /media/NAMEOFYOURUSBDRIVE ls -lah macos.img to check the size. or even, watch ls -lah macos.img which will run the command every 2 seconds. Obviously this could work for any partition, including windows and linux. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toddicus Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Disk utility won't let you image your boot drive as others have said, but my memory is that you cab boot off an install DVD and then image the drive to an external or another internal drive. And you would restore it booted from the DVD as well. Someone asked if the image would be the same size as the partition, yes it will be. There is an option for a compressed image, but I don't know if those work for restoring disks, anyone know? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wallet Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 GO here : http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=30654 It's easy and works great Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbmkgd Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 For a simple (non-bootable) backup, TrueImage works (even v8). The image file can be stored on fat/ntfs partitions. Image can be restored without problems. (I used the one on Hiren's BootCD) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gaucho Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 I wrote a bit about it here: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=30322 But I focused more on getting a bootable second HD working with a clone. I am currently using Carbon Copy Cloner and it's working very well (as clone and as an image maker). Make sure not to rely on the "bootable" flag since on OSx86 it won't work. But I outlined the complete way of making sure you get bootable clone on the other post. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChiefWiggum Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 I found dd as the simplest & fastest method.... (from http://www.chrysocome.net/dd) Since some of us already use it to transfer a VMWare image into a HFS+ partition, it just a question of doing it in reverse; to copy from the HFS+ partition into the windows one.. Example command for 10GB partition to create a backup file called MacOS_Tiger10Backup.img dd if=\\?\Device\HarddiskVolume2 of=MacOS_Tiger10Backup.img count=4161 bs=2580480 --progress Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe75 Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 dd would be safest and probably fastest, I always hated having to type all the commands Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
calinb Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 i was wondering if any one knew a way to back up their partition as an image so i can easily restore it. dd is completely reliable only when backing up to an identical drive. You might try Carbon Copy Cloner. It works on a mounted and running OS paritition. Even though CCC is still PPC only, it runs under Rosetta. You might have to first install OS X or Darwin (bare bones install is adequate) or otherwise copy the MBR to your backup disk because I don't know if the boot drive feature is working with CCC on Intel Macs. You might also have to set the partition on the backup drive as active afterwards. (Search for "b0 error" in the forums.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BladeRunner Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 What has worked well for me on an OSX only system is as follows: 1: Boot from the install DVD and select Uitlities -> disk utility. Click on your boot drive and then select New Image - when the dialog window appears click the down arrow to the right of the "save as" field. Select a destination on an external drive, name the image as you wish and create the image file. It will be compressed and not take as much space as the used space on the source drive. 2) Repartition your internal drive to provide a small - about 10 Gb - maintenance partition and a new partition for your normal boot partition. Add other partitions as you need and space will allow. 3) Continue with the install to your new maintenance partition. All you need is a basic operational OSX system with standard applications and utilities. 4) Boot the system into the new maintenance partition. Run software update if you wish to get the latest versions of your applications/utilities. 5) Start disk utility and select the backup image created in step 1. Click restore and follow the disk utility prompts to restore the image to your new normal boot partition. 6) Before you reboot - edit your /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist on both the maintenance partion and the normal boot partition to be sure you have a timeout value set. this will allow you to press a key and select which partition to boot when you reboot your system. After I did these steps I was able to reboot my system and make an external backup of my running system prior to making any major changes. I know this works. I have had more than one reason to restore an image to get back to a previous position. As long as the backup images are external, you cna always replace the hard drive, partition as described above and rebuild to where you left off with a minimum of effort. Anyway, that's the method I use. Hope it gives you some usable ideas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe75 Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 BladeRunner, excellent job. :censored2: It needs to be a sticky :censored2: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBK.Xscape Posted October 23, 2006 Author Share Posted October 23, 2006 blade runner that is a really good way fo backing up except i was wondering if there was a way to make it i could boot automatically into the main partition of osx and only boot into the maintinence one if i had to and if i did i would press f8. thanks for the help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe75 Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 except i was wondering if there was a way to make it i could boot automatically into the main partition of osx and only boot into the maintinence one if i had to and if i did i would press f8. thanks for the help. Thats what he said Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts