Introduction

We have previously covered Windows and Linux backups, and now it's time to talk about our third, and final, operating system: Mac OS X. Of the three, OS X is by far the easiest to back up and restore. With that said, this should be very short, sweet, and right to the point. Let's dive in, shall we?

Backup

OS X has a built-in backup utility. No, I'm not talking about Time Machine on Leopard. I'm talking about Disk Utility, which has been a part of OS X since the inception. You could use Time Machine, if it was available to you, but there have been so many reports of it just not working properly. Besides, to restore, you would have to install the operating system, and run the restore before you'd be back up and running. The only real benefit of doing a Time Machine backup would be hourly backups. In that respect, you might want to give it a try, if the option is available. (You could also set up a cron job using rsync to shove files over the network to a network share, but we're not going to get into that.) No, today we're going to use Disk Utility. You can find it at /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app. You will need a place to put your data. I suggest an external hard drive over firewire, but a network share or a secondary internal drive will work just the same. With Disk Utility open, click the partition you want to back up. Generally, this will be the top drive - you'll see the hardware information on the drive (in my case, 232.900003 GB WDC [serial] Media) and below that, your partitions will be indented. It may say something like "Macintosh HD". Once you have the partition selected, click "New Image". Choose a name for your backup (the partition name is default) and a location to save it. Kick back and wait. Your backup is in progress.

Restoring

In order to restore your backup, you will need to boot off your OS X install CD/DVD. After selecting your language, you should be able to find the Disk Utility app under the utilities menu, but the location varies depending on which Big Cat you're using. This is the same app you used to back up the drive. We're going to assume you want to do a full restore from your backup - so let's format the drive. Click the drive identifier (that's the one above the partition(s), in my case the 232.900003 GB label), and on the right pane, click the partition tab. You will want to partition this according to your own individual needs - if you have multiple partitions that you have backed up, you will probably want to create a partition for each that needs to be restored. For many people, a single partition works alright. Additionally, if you have boot camp installed, you might want to forego partitioning altogether and simply erase the partition. We'll go over that in a moment. Once your partitions are set up as needed, you will see them show up under the drive identifier in the list on the left. Go ahead and select the one you want to restore on to. There will be a few tabs on the right, and one of them (conveniently) is restore. Select that. Where it says "source", you will want to browse for the disk image you made of your drive before. For the destination, drag and drop the partition you want to restore to into the text area. Here you can decide if you want to erase the partition, or just overwrite files and add new ones if necessary. Click the restore button. Once it's finished, reboot, and you're good to go.

Final Notes

Backups in OS X are really, really easy. Thank you Steve. This is just another testament to the usability that's been taken into consideration when OS X was designed. There aren't too many situations when this won't work. There would be some extra steps for RAID, but if you've got RAID set up, you probably aren't reading this simple guide anyway. If I have missed something, or you have any suggestions, comments, or questions otherwise, be sure to leave them in the comments.

Backups, Mac OS X