When should I clone my Mac drive ?

[stuartbell]

My cousin wants to backup his Mac. He has two options - Clone & Image Mac drive.
Out of these which method should he implement ? I just want to know the conditions when these methods be applied.

[SINC]

	Quote:			Originally Posted by stuartbell
	My cousin wants to backup his Mac. He has two options - Clone & Image Mac drive. Out of these which method should he implement ? I just want to know the conditions when these methods be applied.

I clone my MBP daily on one drive and back it up daily with Time Machine on another drive. The clone is bootable, using either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper's smart update feature and does it in about six to eight minutes per day. Time Machine takes somewhat less time.

[DavidH]

	Quote:			Originally Posted by SINC
	I clone my MBP daily on one drive and back it up daily with Time Machine on another drive. The clone is bootable, using either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper's smart update feature and does it in about six to eight minutes per day. Time Machine takes somewhat less time.

I do the same process as Sync and it provides two very important backup solutions.
It provides an incremental backup copy for file versioning (Time Machine).
It also provides a clone bootup copy in case of catastrophic failure and/or needing to use your documents immediately even when you have a disabled/failed internal Hard Drive.

I have also added one more step - Offsite Clone Copy.
I make another clone copy and move the External Hard Drive to another location (sister in-laws). This provides some protection against Fire and Theft.

DavidH

[Mike457]

I don't have a lot of file changes from day to day, so I clone my drive weekly. It's always good to have a bootable drive. DavidH's suggestions are sensible; your frequency should depend on how much you do in terms of creation of new files and alteration of existing files.

[SINC]

	Quote:			Originally Posted by DavidH
	I have also added one more step - Offsite Clone Copy. I make another clone copy and move the External Hard Drive to another location (sister in-laws). This provides some protection against Fire and Theft. DavidH

Actually, I forgot that I do this too with another bootable clone, again daily. One in the house and one in the detached heated garage 50 feet away from the house.