Carbon Copy Cloner is an OSX tool that allows you to make an exact duplicate of a drive. The software can be used to create backups of your computer. Recently I needed to make several exact duplicates of the same Mac Mini. The process is simple.

1) Boot up one Mini in target mode (hold down the T while the machine boots up.)
4) Using Firewire to Firewire, connect a second Min.i
5) Launch Carbon Copy Cloner on the source Mini.
6) Choose Macintosh HD as the source and Macintosh HD 1 as the target.
7) Click on the lock at the bottom of the window beside the "clone" button.
8) Enter the Admin Password for the source Mini
9) Click on the clone button
10)This takes about one and a quarter hours.
11)When Carbon Copy Cloner indicates that the cloning is complete, unmount the
source Mac by dragging it's icon to the trash.

Some time back I had a catastrophic failure on the drive that contained my music library. My backup regimen has not been very robust lately so I lost all my ripped music, some video files, and lord knows what else. It was a little more than a bit perturbing and it made me think of my vast collection of photos. I'd hate to lose them.

I made a vow to do better. Last weekend I was with my family at Costco. They had My Book 500 Gig drives for about $160.

I grabbed two. The first replaced the drive that died on me--I've starting putting my iTunes Library back together again. The second is sitting humming away right now backing up my computer and external drives.

The drives themselves are attractive--although they sit behind my iMac out of site. The size for the dollar seems like a pretty good deal too especially thinking back to my first computer--an Atari ST 520 that had been upgraded to a meg of RAM and had a whopping 20 meg hard drive. It was a hand-me-down from my brother Alec. I used that computer throughout my undergraduate degree. I actually still own it.

The second thing that strikes me is how good the backup software seems to be. Installing it was a snap and it added a little icon to the top right corner of my screen. Clicking on that icon opens up a little wizard that asks what you want to back up and to where. Very simple and quick.

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