Preferred backup method for a Hackintosh

[wove]

After one has gotten a Hackintosh to a stable useable state, what is the best method to back it up so that it can be restored without need to go through the whole install setup process again.

Does TimeMachine work? That seems like it would the the simplest and fastest way to go.

I have a USB stick setup with the installer which I shall keep for the purpose only, and I have made notes on how I got from the install 10.6.3 to 10.6.8. So I can start from scratch, but I would be nice to just restore the fully fleshed out system.

A big reason for asking is that at some point sooner rather than later, I will need to upgrade the current hard drive.

bill

[pete...@cruzio.com]

> After one has gotten a Hackintosh to a stable useable state, what is the
> best method to back it up so that it can be restored without need to go
> through the whole install setup process again.

I always partition my HD into (at least) three partitions:

1) Snow Leopard or Lion

2) Snow Leopard Backup or Lion Backup

3) Snow Leopard Data or Lion Data

I backup from my first partition to my second partition using CCC.

It is VERY important to keep the first partition as clean as possible.
Erasing that partition will probably make the drive unbootable as the boot
loader looks to the first partition for certain files even if it is the
second or higher partition which is being booted.

I suppose it is possible to have that first partition be a rather small
one, one in which there are few, if any, additions, except for system
updates, and then to use the second and subsequent partitions as the
active ones, the ones in which additions other than system updates will be
installed.

Special note: often, a drive which has been made unbootable by an errant
change to the first partition may be made usable again by:

1) booting that partition while using Kakawalk or UniBeast as a "helper",
and then

2) reinstalling the boot loader and the various extensions using MultiBeast.

[wove]

Thanks for the information. Not longer after I posted the question, I noticed that Doug had an article on backup posted in the documents.

My hard drive on this laptop is too small for any meaningful partitions and I will have to explore external hard drive options.

I did find that when I had mucked up the hard drive I was able to boot from the hard drive using the bootloader on the USB installer I made.

Thanks again. 

bill

[mosslack]

On Jun 24, 2012, at 2:36 PM, wove wrote:

Thanks for the information. Not longer after I posted the question, I noticed that Doug had an article on backup posted in the documents.

My hard drive on this laptop is too small for any meaningful partitions and I will have to explore external hard drive options.

I did find that when I had mucked up the hard drive I was able to boot from the hard drive using the bootloader on the USB installer I made.

Thanks again. 

bill

I don't remember what all I wrote now, but it is easy enough to substitute an external USB drive or flash drive to use as the backup. The key is to make sure it is bootable before counting on it as a backup. For the record, I use SuperDuper for this purpose. I have yet to try TimeMachine for this purpose. 

Also, the backups I make are ONLY for upgrade purposes. All of my important data is stored on my file server. That said, I'm very bad at updating this info as much as I should, so right now I have a lot of stuff on my main hard drive which is not backed up. So I really need to setup a backup solution for my main hard drive as you can only be lucky for so long.

Just a message from mosslack...

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[Louis Santillan]

Backblaze.

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[mosslack]

FYI, I just downloaded and setup SilverKeeper, a free backup program from LaCie. I first tried to setup TimeMachine, but could not do what I needed to do, which was only backup my user data to a network drive. SiverKeeper allows this and I'm hoping it will do what I want it to do, which is basically sync a backup copy to my server drive, which is automatically backed up each day.

I will let you know how well it works as I have it setup to backup my user data each week, so it will take a week to see exactly what it does.

[mosslack]

On Jun 24, 2012, at 7:56 PM, Louis Santillan wrote:

Backblaze.

I also don't want to forget to mention the program which I use on my file server. ChronoSync does everything I want and it has been rock solid for me. Tech support is good and updates are free with an initial program cost of $40. If SllverKeeper doesn't work the way I want it too I will probably install another copy of ChronoSync as it is much more flexible on choosing what you want to backup and where you want to back it up to. 

One thing is clear on this whole backup discussion, I need more hard drive space! As it is now, I think I will only have about 200 Gb free on my AVD drive once the P55 User data is backed up to it. I've gotten to the point where I don't know if I could ever go back and look to see what data can or can't be deleted, there is simply too much. I may have to try so I can free up a bit more space until the hard drive prices come down more.

[mosslack]

As promised, here is the rundown on how well SilverKeeper worked. Yesterday I was informed that the program could not do the requested sync operation b/c of limited space. This is not really a fault of the program, but rather a lack of sufficient hard drive space to perform the operation. So today I have configured ChronoSync on the server to see if it can do this. My belief is that ChronoSync is better at performing a sync operation as it doesn't require as much drive space overhead. 

This also makes it necessary to have the MSI P55 hard drive logged in as a network drive on the server so this can take place. The server and the MSI system are always on, so this should not present a problem. I went ahead and setup the login options on the server to be sure that drive it mounted on startup in the rare case of the server needing to be restarted. 

Once it has finished making the first backup, I can then test the sync operation without having to wait for the schedule to see if it will work or not. I will let everyone know what the outcome is.

[mosslack]

After careful consideration, I have completely re-thought my whole backup/install situation and will be writing about it soon. I will post a link about it when I do, but suffice to say that one size fits all does not work in a Hackintosh world. As always, please be brutal in your consideration of the facts presented. I write these things to be beneficial to widest possible audience, but sometimes the way I do things is not necessary the best way.

[mosslack]

On Jul 2, 2012, at 6:00 PM, mosslack wrote:

After careful consideration, I have completely re-thought my whole backup/install situation and will be writing about it soon. I will post a link about it when I do, but suffice to say that one size fits all does not work in a Hackintosh world. As always, please be brutal in your consideration of the facts presented. I write these things to be beneficial to widest possible audience, but sometimes the way I do things is not necessary the best way.

I decided to do it in multiple parts, so I now have the first part up here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o2btx4jGasMi5dxBy7KsY1752msia_Jqa_cVuuv3qWw/edit

I haven't really addressed the backup solution in this part, but rather tried to define the different groups of users to hopefully find a backup solution for each one.

[mosslack]

On Jul 2, 2012, at 7:07 PM, mosslack wrote:

On Jul 2, 2012, at 6:00 PM, mosslack wrote:

After careful consideration, I have completely re-thought my whole backup/install situation and will be writing about it soon. I will post a link about it when I do, but suffice to say that one size fits all does not work in a Hackintosh world. As always, please be brutal in your consideration of the facts presented. I write these things to be beneficial to widest possible audience, but sometimes the way I do things is not necessary the best way.

I decided to do it in multiple parts, so I now have the first part up here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o2btx4jGasMi5dxBy7KsY1752msia_Jqa_cVuuv3qWw/edit

I haven't really addressed the backup solution in this part, but rather tried to define the different groups of users to hopefully find a backup solution for each one.

While doing research for this project, I stumbled upon this TimeMachine resource for those who would like to know more about it:

http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

[mosslack]

Cnet also has a good rundown of Mac backup software here:

http://download.cnet.com/mac/backup-software/

There are a lot more programs out there than one might think.

[mosslack]

I just posted part 2 of the article on Google docs and it can be found here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14r1LIz8mT5fwTv3i_b8ZJu5iC2IwcfBDAJixFFbEpR8/edit

Unfortunately I could not fit it all in so a final part will be necessary. Hope to get that up later tonight or tomorrow at the latest. 

[Louis Santillan]

You ought to consider cleaning up your work/writing afterwards and posting it on readewriteweb or Engadget or lifehacker or phoronix or arstechnica or iclarified, etc.

-L

[mosslack]

On Jul 3, 2012, at 6:07 PM, Louis Santillan wrote:

You ought to consider cleaning up your work/writing afterwards and posting it on readewriteweb or Engadget or lifehacker or phoronix or arstechnica or iclarified, etc.

-L

I appreciate the comment Louis, but I'm not sure I'm ready for that just yet. For now I'm happy just sharing my thoughts with HQ-A, and speaking of that, the fireworks show was cancelled for tonight (due to dry conditions), so I went ahead and finished the article. You can see part 3 here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FWdpytnzhVyOIwzAdhkwHIKLiAcfZMDL-w26ZsJNiSU/edit

As always, please let me know what your thoughts are on whatever I write for the group. I've always gotten a lot of joy out of supporting the community and Hacks in general. 

[Louis Santillan]

I found this interesting post on the Quo Computer Facebook Timeline.
(http://kremalicious.com/ubuntu-as-mac-file-server-and-time-machine-volume/)
I may have to try it out.

-L

[mosslack]

On Jul 5, 2012, at 6:55 PM, Louis Santillan wrote:

I found this interesting post on the Quo Computer Facebook Timeline.
(http://kremalicious.com/ubuntu-as-mac-file-server-and-time-machine-volume/)
I may have to try it out.

-L

I'm a little confused, unless you just want to do a file server. But if you do, I'm still confused as to why you want to use TimeMachine. I mean you could just add another hard drive to your current system or use an external hard drive if you don't want the backup enclosed in the same system. Unless you have something else in mind?

[Louis Santillan]

Part 6 of that article is what I'm most interested in. Being able to
make use of my old linux laptop and old IDE drives in an external USB2
case would be handy. Doing it all over gigabit ethernet should also
be faster than USB2 directly connected to my Mac Mini. A kind of poor
man's SAN.

-L

[Christian Wacker]

Although you will have the gigabit link between machines, it will still be limited to the speed of the server's disks. If they are connected to the server by USB2, that is the fastest it can go then. Same speed as if it was connected directly by USB2 to your Mini. It may actually be slower than a direct connection since you have the overhead of the network usage, and the server usage too.

The only advantage to doing this would be if you have a few large USB disks, and multiple computers that need to backup, as you could store the server somewhere like the basement and keep it out of sight instead of on a desk.

[mosslack]

On Jul 6, 2012, at 1:10 AM, Louis Santillan wrote:

Part 6 of that article is what I'm most interested in.  Being able to
make use of my old linux laptop and old IDE drives in an external USB2
case would be handy.  Doing it all over gigabit ethernet should also
be faster than USB2 directly connected to my Mac Mini.  A kind of poor
man's SAN.

-L

I'm not really sure speed is so much of an issue, but then I never really tried out TimeMachine that much once I found out how it worked. Good luck and let us know how it works out.