Taha Needs You!

I'm planning to reformat my Mac, and I needed your help.

What is the best way to backup 13GB of data? Ok, so most of you might not know too much about macs but still, what is the best way to backup? (maybe make a disk image or something, I donno..)

@Contra: there is an app called HFSPax, which uses the UNIX utility pax. I was just wondering, will that be of any use to me? Will it shrink the size of the backup?

PLEASE HELP IN ANYWAY YOU CAN! I might talk to Goku about giving away a badge to the most helpful person :naughty:

#35997

My idea:

Copy your entire HD into a disk image (.dmg file) using DiskCopy. Then compress that .dmg file with stuffit. Then use something similar to this utility to split up that large file into chunks that can fit onto a CD. Then, after you reformat, use the same utility to recombine the files again. Then unstuff, mount the image, and voila! You may end up using a few CD's, but it should work.

My $0.02

-godpunk

#36000

hey that looks cool. I think I'll do that.

Unless someone else has a better idea.

You have your eye on the badge dontcha, Godpunk?

#36001

Originally posted by Taha@Jun 27 2003, 12:35 AM

You have your eye on the badge dontcha, Godpunk?

I don't need no badge to know I'm da man. j/k

-godpunk

#36002

Do have any idea how long is going take to compress a 13gig image. You will be at it for hours and hours. I tried to compress just 2gigs on my 350MHz G3 and it was still crunching after 8 hours. Needless to say I quit this and just grabed another drive and going into OS 9 used the software restore aplication which can be found in and on the OS 9 install Cd and did image backup or copy however you want to put it, to another drive. That only took about 20 minutes. A 13gig partition if full might take an hour or more. If you can try breaking it down into multiple parts. Or just the real important data. Most OS X appication will work fine if they get copied to another drive. Just remember to copy any nested data that might be hidden in your account folder. Also just go through the drive and dump anything that you really don't need to back up. Meaning if you have the install CD just dump it and reinstall it on the fresh install. If its ah, stuff off the web, than you should have backed that up as well. From my experience a tranfer of OS X to another drive or from an image only works out right half the time and then if it does it is often buggy. This is one place where XP and OS X are very similar. They don't like getting moved from there original installed drive. But hey give it a try. As long as you verify that everything works right before you format your other drive you should be ok. Good luck.

#36004

Unless you know someone with either:

i) An external DVD burner;

ii) A Firewire hard drive;

iii) A 15, 20 or 30GB iPod with a lot of free space (or someone who has their music all backed up who would wipe it temporarily to store your files);

Then godpunk's idea is probably the best.

#36010

Choose what you really really need off the 13gb, and burn that onto cd's,

...delete the rest.

#36016

taha dude..

with the mac things are so much easier than the pc (old news) and since im installing a precious little OS now, I backed up a lot of rare apps by zipping them and throwing them all to my pc. Once you have your OS installed from scratch, all you need to do is just throw all your backed up apps back to your application folder again.

If its more complecatd than just applications (like screen savers and library files) then go for godpunk's suggestion.

other than that - do what i mentioned.

good luck!

#36025

i think you can get 40GB for $40 or something stupid.

fissy

#36039

I was actually wondering how to go about this myself as well. My friend has an iMac and he is deciding to reformat the hard drive, only because the stupid seller he bought it from messed up by now updating the firmware before installing OS X. He updated the firmware after installing OS X and now his os is not the best. Plus, we dont know what other stupid things he might have done so just to be safe we are reformatting and reinstalling os 9 and jaguar. I love fresh installs.

He wants to save his personal data, of course, like Taha wants to do. I'm not sure how to access the bookmarks in Safari and application data like that. If I just save the entire application and then put it back on the clean install, will it have all of my saved settings and stuff? Just drag the icon of the app from the app folder correct?

Goku, I think your idea is pretty good. I'll just back up the apps that I want the personal info saved, and zip them up. He has a zip drive so I'll use that.

Taha, I dont have any other ideas. I would say Goku's is the best choice in terms of ease, but whatever floats your boat man.

#36047

Maybe you can make a partition like windows and drop stuff in there, but I dont know how to and how effective it is in mac, in windows it is very effective.

Other solution, look for a friend that has a network adapter, and user a crossover cable or get a way to join both computers and send him all the stuff via netowork, 13gb might take some 45 to 60 minutes.

#36053

Ive actually got a 5GB tape drive by HP, I think thy make them for Mac to...

God, as many times as I re-format my HD, when I get my Mac i'm going to do it several times a week !

Do you have a CD-RW on your mac? You can probably get good .sitx compression w/ stuffit, and just copy it to a CD..

#36074

well, after reading all your great replies, I think here's what I'll do:

Copy all the important stuff (e.g. the installers not the apps) and make compressed disk images of them (.dmg). Then with the cross-over cable, I'll simply copy them to my pc. After formatting, I'll just move back and expand the dmg's and copy the folder to the specified place.

Thank you for your replies everyone.

#36079

Sounds like a plan Taha. Thats what I do.

I just copy the installation directories onto my Win Partition, compress them (bz2) and then just move them back when i'm done.

Isnt unix wonderful.

Can you make your /home directory on a seperate partition, because thats a good way to do things. You install all your personal files/programs in /home, and then you can reinstall the OS and still have all your stuff.

But if you want to back everything up, making an image is a good idea.

#36083

damn, i got here too late

i was gonna say copy the most important files (installers, music, etc) and make a disk image of them and copy to either a pc or a firewire hard drive (or if you have a powermac, add another HD if you have one).

unfortunetly, everyone else has said this, and i shall have no badge >.<

#36086

here's a question for Contrasutra or any other UNIX guru.

In OS X there are 'resource forks'. I was wondering if I just zip (dmg actually) a drive and move it to Windows, then move it back after formatting - will it destroy the resource forks? And what the hell are resource forks anyway??

#36089

Resource forks are one part of a file. Each file on a mac is divided into 16bits, 8 bits data fork, 8 bit resource fork. Where as Windows only uses one 8bit fork of data.

I believe you have to encode the file AND compress it to allow safe transfers. Stuffit or other compression programs can do it. Im not sure if its automatic or not though. If a files been encoded, I believe it has an .hqx extension. This means that the 16bit forks have been encoded down to one 7bit data fork thats transferable everywhere.

Heres something that may help you:

http://www.chemistry.ucsc.edu/~wgscott/xta...X_and_fink.html

#36095

make test with small dmg's before proceding to make all a dmg and send to pc, just to make sure that the dmg works when it returns to the mac after being send to the pc. To make sure that it doesnt corrupts or something.

Good Luck

#36162