Software to image backup MacBook Pro

[bowlesj]

Hi, my daughter has a very recent and and an older MacBook Pro. She knows very little about computers. I am a PC person who knows a fair bit about PCs but very little about Macs. I need to help her set up an image backup routine for her machine and I need to know how to help her return it in the event she needs to. She is using two partitions (one for Mac and one for windows) - it was set up for her. Does anyone recommend any programs I could buy for her (learn a bit myself) and help her set this set up? At present she has an external drive I bought for her and one she bought. She backs up windows to one and the Mac data to the other drive. I was thinking I should get her a 3rd drive specifically for image backups. I use Acronis for my Win7 machine (it works well) but I have no idea if they make a good program for my daughter's situation.

Thanks,
John

 

[honestone]

First of all, what is an "Image Backup"? Secondly, you state that your daughter is backing up Mac "data" to her other external drive. What software is she using to do that?

 

[bowlesj]

Hi, by image I mean a byte by byte image of a partition or of the whole drive (including more than one partition). It captures everything (operating system, configuration of the operating system and of all software etc). With Acronis the backup of the whole drive takes about 8 minutes and the return of the whole drive about 15 minutes and you are right back up and running (I have done 3 returns without issue on a Win 7 machine and a Win XP machine). Acronis now is smart enough to backup from one machine and return to a completely different type of drive (for example from a spinning drive back to a solid state drive) and apparently it does this without issue these days (in the old days it had to be the same drive type or same drive).

Right now my daughter is using whatever software came with the backup disk drives. I can't remember exactly what it is. It backs up her data files only (doing full and differential) and if a configuration file goes bad she can't get it back by her self with this type of backup. Even if she gets help it can take from hours to days.

 

[honestone]

I suspect that SuperDuper! is what she wants. You can get the "free" version" of it here:

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/13803/superduper

It backs up (actually clones) everything on the source device, and it makes the backup bootable! Thus, the restore process is very easy to use, and it has saved my "bacon" on at least 2 occasions. The "free" version does not run automatically, but that is fine for my needs (I eventually paid for it (only $27.95)), and I still do the backups for each of my machines manually once a week (usually on Saturdays, along with doing three other tasks first).

For the software that she uses already, it "sounds" like Time Machine, which is part of the OS for Apple (I do not use it). But, if one needs to do an entire restore from a Time Machine backup, I believe that is either impossible, or takes quite a bit of time and effort. It's a snap with SuperDuper!.

 

[bowlesj]

Thanks honestone.That sounds great. I have just copied your whole response into my to-do list. I will check into it and paying for it is not a problem if it does the job. With her when the machine goes down it will save a lot of tears (especially when she has a school assignment the next day).

 

[honestone]

Sounds good. As I said, I am not using any of the scheduling features of the paid version, but the backups seem to take less time than with the "free" (demo) version. The only "bad" thing about SuperDuper! is that it does not back up the Recovery HD partition (another cloning program, Carbon Copy Cloner does). Time Machine also does not back up that partition. There are a couple of ways of recreating it, and it can be a useful tool. However, if I want to do any repairs to my internal drive (SSDs in my case, for each of my machines), I either boot up TechTool Pro (an excellent disk maintenance/repair program; Disk Warrior is another one, and I have them both), and then launch it further via its eDrive, or I will boot my machine from the SuperDuper! backup, and run any Disk Repair/Maintenance program from there. In the two instances I mentioned about doing a recovery from the SuperDuper! backup, after booting from that backup, I launched Disk Utility form there, Erased and Formatted the internal hard drive on the affected Mac, and then did a restore. I then booted the machine up, and I was back in business, painlessly and basically effortlessly!

I still, though, recreated the Recovery HD partition, just in case.

 

[bowlesj]

Thank honestone, so if SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner can both back up the Mac partition and the Windows partition at the same time that would be fine. I gather the recovery HD partition would be the one that comes with the Mac at purchase and would recover only the original operating system (not the user software and configurations after that and of course not the windows Partition since it would be created later.). The thing too is even if I could get her executing the image backup and she or I had trouble with the return we could at least take the machine to someone in the business who could quickly get through it. However the documentation is probable good enough.

 

[honestone]

Thank honestone, so if SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner can both back up the Mac partition and the Windows partition at the same time that would be fine. I gather the recovery HD partition would be the one that comes with the Mac at purchase and would recover only the original operating system (not the user software and configurations after that and of course not the windows Partition since it would be created later.). The thing too is even if I could get her executing the image backup and she or I had trouble with the return we could at least take the machine to someone in the business who could quickly get through it. However the documentation is probable good enough.

No, neither SuperDuper! nor Carbon Copy Cloner can back up the Windows partition. It only works with the Mac one. As for the Recovery HD partition, that is part of the Operating System, it gets created with an installation (or re-installation) of the OS, and one can create it anytime they want (if it's not there). I have read about instances where that partition does not get created with an OS Installation. This link tells you what you can do from the Recovery HD partition:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4718

You can tell if it's there by launching Disk Utility, then click on the Debug menu, and then enable the option that says "Show every partition". If it's there, it will be "greyed out". Normally, it is not visible, but by doing what I said, she can see if it's there.

By the way, what OS is she running under?

 

[bowlesj]

Thanks honestone. I am not sure what OS she has. I know she got the latest MacBook Pro about a 1 to 1.5 years ago. The first one was about 4 years ago and had a flaw that apparently apple is now paying to fix (like a car recall kind of thing) so she will get it fixed and sell it.

I was thinking I would email Acronis as well about backing up either the windows partition and the mac partition. Here is the link if you are curious.
http://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/mac-backup/
The thing is with a bad system crash she may need to recreate the partitions from scratch (both of them - not sure what software is used for that in Mac). On the other hand I suppose that does not happen very often. Just being able to load in either the Mac partition image or the Windows partition image would be good enough. Maybe Acronis only brings in the Windows Partition image. However Acronis for Windows can backup 2 or more partions at a time and return 2 or more partitions at a time so that is why I want to email them.

 

[honestone]

First, regarding the OS, assuming she purchased it brand new, it either has Mountain Lion (OS 10.8.x), or Mavericks (OS 10.9.x). There is actually a newer version of the OS called Yosemite (OS 10.10.2 (latest version)). She can upgrade to it for free.

Secondly, there are versions of Acronis for PCs (http://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/pc-backup/), and for Macs (http://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/mac-backup/). Each one would need to be run separately to back up the respective systems (I'd be very surprised if, say Acronis for the PC, could backup the Mac partition). So, for backing up the Mac partition, she can use either SuperDuper! (again, that makes the backup bootable), or the Mac version of Acronis (not sure if it makes the Mac backup bootable). Additionally, does the Acronis PC backup software make the backed up external partition bootable?

Third, how does she "get to" the Windows software on the (internal) Windows partition? In the Mac "world", there are three tools for doing that: Boot Camp, Parallels Desktop, or VMware Fusion (I believe there are a couple of others, but those 3 are the "best"). The Boot Camp "method" is free, but there are disadvantages to using it. From numerous reviews, the other two are about "neck and neck".

As for a complete recovery, what could be possible is:

1) Assuming she uses SuperDuper! for the Mac backup, launch the SuperDuper! backup.
2) Using Disk Utility on that SuperDuper! backup, erase everything on the internal hard drive, format the drive, and create two partitions (one for the Mac stuff, and the other for Windows).
3) Restore the Mac "stuff" using SuperDuper! on that Mac backup.
4) Here is where I don't know how she would "get to" the Acronis external backup, boot from there, and then do a restore to the Windows partition created in step 2 above.

Maybe someone else could "chime in" here, and offer further advice/information.

 

[bowlesj]

Hi honestone, Thanks for your four point guide. I think I know more or less what she needs to do now (or maybe I need to-do, to get her going so she can do the backups at least).

BEFORE I FORGET. I am switching internet service providers. I will probably loose my internet by tomorrow mid-day and will not get it back until Thursday night or Friday with the new ISP (touch wood on that - LOL).

Regarding "does the Acronis PC backup software make the backed up external partition bootable?", No it is just a file. To return it on my machine I put the Acronis CD-rom in the CD-rom drive and restart the machine and the Acronis CD-rom has the boot software for the PC.It is able to find the backup on the external drive attached to the USB port. On her macbook, I think she gets to the Windows by Boot Camp (I think??). I just seem to remember that name.

Regarding: 'Here is where I don't know how she would "get to" the Acronis external backup, boot from there, " I am not sure how she would do this either. I send Acronis an email asking this but they have not replied yet. I don't think her new machine has a CD-ROM drive since it is very thin. Maybe she needs an external CD-ROM drive through the USB port.

Unfortunately she does not live with me right now and it can be a bit hard to get in touch with her at times to get some of these answers.

 

[bowlesj]

Hi, this issue with my daughter's Mac Book image backups is still pending but I think it is about to be solved now that both my daughter and I have time to get together.
To prepare for our meeting to resolve this issue, I was watching the videos below about boot camp.
It appears it can create and restore an image of the Mac partition and the Windows Partition.
This makes it easy since she has boot camp on her machine now.
I am assuming it could put both these backups on the same external USB terabyte drive.
Assuming I am correct I only have three questions.
1/ Can boot-camp create an emergency boot disk such that both the Mac partition backup image and the windows partition backup image can be restored?
2/ If this is done is boot camp itself restored (assuming restored to the Mac partition)?
3/ My daughter and I will meet to try to get these backups created (me new to Mac and her new to image backups). Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,
John

======== Videos I have watched ===================================
How to backup your windows partion with bootcamp

How to backup and restore bootcamp partitions:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/ap...-to-back-up-and-restore-boot-camp-partitions/

Useful Information:
How to install a new version of windows on a Mac using bootcamp
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201468

 

[bowlesj]

Here are some reviews fo the winclone software that is mentioned in the techrepublic.com video above.
http://download.cnet.com/Winclone/3000-2242_4-172338.html