On 3/26/09 5:19 AM, "Neil Laubenthal" <neil at laubenthal.net> wrote: > True . . .both cloning programs and backup programs are important as > part of a comprehensive backup strategy. GREAT discussion (from all contributors). As you said elsewhere in the post to which I'm responding now, most users are just that: users, not techies. So, a question from a user. Following your example of a couple whose FileMaker database was deprecated by an unwitting error and who then lost the last "good" version of that database when their cloning "backup" program overwrote it, I'm curious about an extension of this scenario. I have a Time Machine backup. I'm trying to decide which cloning tool to use. Let's say that my Boot drive fails, and that after I switch over to my clone of that drive, I discover that I'd inadvertently done something akin to the woman who tossed the record from a key database, sometime BEFORE creating the most recent clone. That file exists in my Time Machine Backup (I assume). Can I find that file in my Time Machine backup of my original boot volume and restore it to my CLONED boot volume? Restoring the entire Time Machine backup isn't an option for me because of the things I exclude from Time Machine; i.e., multi-gigabyte files such as virtual machines and my MS Office "database" file (THAT bizarre design choice may yet drive me into the arms of Apple's own Mail, Calendar, and Address book programs). Jim Robertson --