Imaging a G3

#1 Mon, 17 Jan 2011 - 16:50 68kMLA

Is there a way i can backup my Indigo G3 iMac as I am going to have to place it in storage with a friend and the machine was supplied without restore disks.

The machine only has 10.3 so i cant use Time Machine

Is there a Mac eqivalent to Norton Ghost where i can clone the machine onto DVDs.

Any help appreciated

#2 Mon, 17 Jan 2011 - 18:55 68kMLA

Have you tried Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper?

#3 Tue, 18 Jan 2011 - 13:55 68kMLA

+1 carbon copy cloner... There is a version for OS10.3.

If you can't find it LMK.

RP

#4 Tue, 18 Jan 2011 - 14:03 68kMLA

I used CCC when I upgraded my MacBook's hard disk and it worked fine. But I don't know if it can backup to DVD-sized segments. You may need to use another tool to split your backup file.

#5 Tue, 18 Jan 2011 - 17:49 68kMLA

I will have a look at CCC. I have an external 250GB hard drive I can clone it to. So it looks like the way forward

Cheers

#6 Tue, 18 Jan 2011 - 19:32 68kMLA

With an external drive that size, we could back-up 4 or 5 of our imacs!!!

It is not uncommon at our place to have more than one machine backed-up on a single external drive.

RP

#7 Thu, 20 Jan 2011 - 16:18 68kMLA

You could also make an ISO of the drive and save it to the external. That might be a slower option too.

#8 Thu, 20 Jan 2011 - 17:36 68kMLA

use CCC or another cloning app to at least 2 external firewire HD's

HD's (with FW4000) of 250 GB are cheap and easy to test from time to time

don't clone to a serie of DVDs, self written dvd are not secure/save enough, if one DVD isn't readable after some time, it's possible you don't have a usable backup/clone at all

the best way to perform a clone is by connecting the indigo imac and another mac with a firewire 400 cable

start up the indigo imac in target disk mode (starting up with key T pressed down)

and the other computer as usual

the HD of the indigo imac is shown as firewire symbol on the desktop of the other mac

clone the HD with CCC, on the working mac

#9 Sat, 22 Jan 2011 - 21:44 68kMLA

CCC for Mac OS X 10.2 and 10.3 are up on their website: http://www.bombich.com/download.html

#10 Sat, 22 Jan 2011 - 22:56 68kMLA

it's always better to make a clone of a HD with a non working system on it

that's why i suggested making a clone trough target disk mode

#11 Sun, 23 Jan 2011 - 06:39 68kMLA

Why not boot the machine from an OS X disc and do a .DMG copy of it and store it on a hard drive?

That way you don't waste the whole HDD, and you can store more than one restore/image on it without having to dedicated a whole HDD.

I do that on my machines. Restore them again and they are bootable too