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Without getting into a Mac versus PC debate, Macs are great when they work and fortunately don’t usually give you too much trouble, but what if yours stopped working tomorrow? Even if you have a back up of all your work think about the time it would take to get all your software, fonts and work loaded up on to a new machine and working. That’s where a FREE piece of software I recently discovered called Carbon Copy Cloner could step in and save the day.
I discovered Carbon Copy Cloner when I had to upgrade my boyfriend’s Mac (my old one) and in order to do that the disk had to be reformatted first. Carbon Copy Cloner let’s you make a bootable copy of your Mac hard drive onto a external FireWire or USB hard drive. Once the bootable drive is made this means you could then connect it to another Mac and boot off it as your startup disk and it would contain all your files along with you applications etc.
Just like Time Machine you can also set Carbon Copy Cloner to do scheduled backups too. Previously I had always preferred to do manual back ups so I could swap my back up drives round. Now I am using Carbon Copy Cloner with a FireWire Drive and then doing a less regular manual back up that I don’t keep in the house.
If you are thinking of upgrading your system software and want a copy of your existing system to fall back on or just want keep a rescue drive available, take a look at Carbon Copy Cloner http://www.bombich.com/.
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6 Comments
The main problem is Mac’s getting stolen – not breaking down
Happened to us twice
What a nightmare! I must admit I like to try and keep a back up not near the computer too. i am looking forward to a time when big files can be uploaded to online storage really quickly it will make things a bit easier/
Thanks a lot. I will check right now Carbon Copy Cloner i just needed to upgrade my Mac.
Hi Tara,
Eventhough I do not have one(Mac), my boss is working on it and I thank you for the shared idea. I will pass this information to him. All the same you are great.
Blessings,
Girma
Thanks for your comment Girma
Hi Tara,
Nice post and I’ve also used Carbon Copy Cloner to create bootable ‘emergency’ duplicate hard drives.
Always think worst case scenario. So, try and have as many options to cover all eventualities – external hard drives, online/offsite storage and if you have more than one Mac, duplicate across as many computers as possible.