Backing up bootable image over a LAN?

August 19, 2008 8:15 AM

I'd like to create a bootable backup of my MacBook's hard drive 150GB hard drive. I've got a 500GB drive, but it's in an Ubuntu server on my LAN. Is there a good way to back up a bootable backup to another computer?

And what would my restore situation be? I know Macs can netboot, but I don't know anything about it. Would I move the whole image to my laptop using target disk mode, or something similar? I've never worked with full, disk image backups.

Only other detail is, I'd like to do this weekly or so. However, I don't suspect that scheduling it will be the difficult part of this plan...

posted by nasty, brutish, and of average height to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Carbon Copy Cloner. I backup to a FireWire drive connected to another computer over wireless LAN, using SSH. The application comes with complete instructions for how to do this.

I have two backup routines, one which copies my Users folder only and does not delete files that have been deleted from the original (Daily) and one that copies everything and does delete deleted files (Weekly).

I've not tried netbooting from the remote drive, but I have restored my internal drive from the copy by disconnectiing the FireWire drive and connecting it to the Mac to be restored.

Good luck!
posted by al_fresco at 8:33 AM on August 19, 2008

I've done this on Windows but I have no experience with doing it with Macs, so YMMV.

Is there a good way to back up a bootable backup to another computer?

The way I did it was to create an image file of the raw harddrive image (scheduled), saving it to a shared network drive.

And what would my restore situation be?

Assuming the drive has failed, my method has always been to buy a new hard drive, plug that new hard drive into an already working computer as an extra drive, and write the backed-up image to the new drive.

I've used both Ghost and True Image to do this, but for Mac a quick Google search turned up SuperDuper as a good alternative. On preview, al_fresco's suggestion sounds good too.
posted by burnmp3s at 8:46 AM on August 19, 2008

Among my Mac aficionado friends, SuperDuper is universally beloved. If you can mount the drive over the LAN, SuperDuper can back up to it.
posted by jjg at 10:24 AM on August 19, 2008

One more point for SuperDuper: it seems to be the only Mac backup utility that preserves all your metadata.
posted by jjg at 10:26 AM on August 19, 2008

SuperDuper does sound nice — it looks like I should try to to mount the drive with MacFusion or similar, then treat it as a normal drive. Thanks, all!
posted by nasty, brutish, and of average height at 11:08 AM on August 19, 2008