How to copy entire disk?

Question

Let me be straight forward. I am accepting that - I have installed iDeneb to my personal pc at home.( Just because I want to perform R & D and many experiments with os, yes I also want to learn mac os application development & iPhone application development - the main reason is I can't afford the original mac, right now.)

• I have installed mac os "iDeneb 10.5.8 Lite edition" after many many many tries.
• But right now, I am completely blind about what configurations & patches did I select when I installed.
• Actually, I got success in installing mac - many times - but each time - system get crashed by many ways - like panic debugger - Apple PS2 controller - voodoo kernel etc problems.
• I know the final solution is only one = Buy Original mac.

But, I still want to continue with - patched system - just because I am making experiments & I am learning not earning.

Right now, my AMD PC is perfectly on going with iDeneb & windows. ( Multiple hardDisk & Multiple boots - while booting - I just give more priority to the hardDisk - to which I want to launch).

The Question is here - I am very much afraid that, "There are many possibilities that mac will crash" - It can cause also to windows.

So, I just want to know that

"I want to back up entire mac os partition in which mac os is installed."

• so, when system get crashed - I have to just copy that disk & I need not to install again mac os.

Summary :

• Is it possible to copy & back up entire partition of mac os x?
• If it is yes - How to restore it? ( just because, neither linux nor windows is capable to read mac os partitions )
• Have you ever gone through these kind of experiments?

Please share your knowledge. Please inform me by comments if any information is missing or needed.

Thanks in advance.

Sagar.

Answer 1

I don't know anything about iDeneb. If it's mostly like OS X, here are some tips:

1. Copy disk. Use an external HD so that you can boot from that drive. Two ways:
   • Disk Utility. Restore tab. Choose internal drive as the source and choose external drive as the destination. This is good for one-time backup.
   • CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper!. I use SuperDuper! every night to clone my MacBook HD onto an external USB. This is good for synchronized backups (only backup changes).
2. Restore disk. Easiest way is to use Disk Utility (likely from the OS X DVD in a crisis situation) and reverse instructions in step one.

Answer 2

If all else fails, you could use a PC disk cloning tool like Ghost, CloneZilla (free), or TrueImage (my favorite) to back up the Mac partition, or even the whole disk. I'm not sure if these tools will recognize the Mac HFS+J format and do what I guess you'd call a "thin" or "sparse" image, but at the very least you could perform a block-level/"raw" backup, though it will be bigger. You can then use the same tool to restore the image back to the disk if something goes sideways in the future.

But, like fideli recommends, try CCC or SuperDuper! first, as they're Mac specific.