[X4U] Backing up with Disk Utility

[Randy B.Singer]

Kevin Willis said:

>If you use Disk Utility to create a disk image of your start up  
>drive, will it be a bootable back up?  

This was a matter of discussion on the Mac-L list recently.  If you use 
the "Restore" tab in Disk Utility  (OS X 10.3 and 10.4, but not 10.2) you 
can create a bootable clone of your drive to another drive.  It will not 
create a disk image. 

See: The Missing Manual, page 320.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031030154346917

http://pinkmutant.com/articles/trouble101.html

http://www.hmug.org/man/8/asr.php

>Also, would I need to save it  
>in a compressed format, or does it need to be read/write?

The Restore tab in Apple's Disk Utility works almost exactly like Carbon 
Copy Cloner.  It makes an exact bootable clone of your disk.  The only 
options are to erase, or to leave alone the data on the destination disk, 
and to do a checksum integrity test of the data being copied.  

However, this feature does not offer syncronization of files, to update 
your clone. (As CCC does with PSYNC.)

Note that the fields in Restore can be dragged and dropped into.



Randy B. Singer
Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

Routine OS X Maintenance and Generic Troubleshooting
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html