Partitioning a Macbook's HDD and Image Backups

[Aaron here]

My daughter graduated high school last month and is about to enter college. She really wanted a MacBook Pro and although I'm a PC-guy she's the 'light of my life' so I bought it for her. Before she leaves for college I would like to create two additional partitions on her Mac's HDD, one for data-backups (using time machine) and the other for disk-image backups (using ?).

As both she and I are Mac noobs, I would appreciate some advice on how to create the additional partitions and also which backup app to use for creating disk-images.

Aaron

 

[Zaap]

Congrats to you daughter! A MacBook Pro is a very nice gift. I'm a very biased, but I personally think Macs are among the best laptops money can buy. (They also run Windows just fine using bootcamp, by the way). I'm a little non-plussed with my 15" rMBP's inability to officially do *any* user-servicing what-so-ever -not even a RAM upgrade which is ridiculous- but I'm learning to cope.

Which model MBP did you get, does it have a hard drive or flash storage, and what capacity?

Anyway, you should be able to repartition the hard drive using Apple's Disk Utility. (Applications/Utilities)

There's a fairly decent guide here, or search the web for a better one:
http://macs.about.com/od/applications/ss/diskutilitypart.htm

As for disk images, the two I know of and recommend are:

Carbon Copy Cloner

and

SuperDuper.

I prefer CCC myself (I prefer the interface and find it faster than SD) you can try all of its features free for 30 days and it's $40. It does incremental and bootable backups either locally or network. You can select just what you want to include in a backup, or backup everything.

SuperDuper is free to just make clone backups, but costs $30 to unlock it's full feature set which is on par with CCC.


I would suggest making a USB flash drive backup installer of OSX Mountain Lion as well as keeping a bootable backup:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriank...n-os-x-10-8-mountain-lion-bootable-usb-drive/

 

[Mixolydian]

For partitioning, use the built in Disk Utility app.
For backups, use the built in Time Machine app.

 

[TheStu]

My daughter graduated high school last month and is about to enter college. She really wanted a MacBook Pro and although I'm a PC-guy she's the 'light of my life' so I bought it for her. Before she leaves for college I would like to create two additional partitions on her Mac's HDD, one for data-backups (using time machine) and the other for disk-image backups (using ?).

As both she and I are Mac noobs, I would appreciate some advice on how to create the additional partitions and also which backup app to use for creating disk-images.

Aaron

I would recommend against using Time Machine internally, or only internally at least. Part of what time machine's role is recovery in the event of catastrophic failure, which is impossible if it is on the drive that failed.

An external drive will solve both problems, and with USB 3, will still be mighty fast. You can get a 2TB external, and partition that using Disk Utility. Time Machine can be used to do a system restore, but you start by re-installing the OS (which is done through Internet Recovery), and then restore from Time Machine backup.

If you want to store disk images, then Carbon Copy Cloner like Zaap suggested is also my preferred route.

Congrats to you daughter! A MacBook Pro is a very nice gift. I'm a very biased, but I personally think Macs are among the best laptops money can buy. (They also run Windows just fine using bootcamp, by the way). I'm a little non-plussed with my 15" rMBP's inability to officially do *any* user-servicing what-so-ever -not even a RAM upgrade which is ridiculous- but I'm learning to cope.

Which model MBP did you get, does it have a hard drive or flash storage, and what capacity?

Hey, props to you for using nonplussed correctly! And I agree with you, Apple makes some of the all around best laptops out there. They can't compete in the workstation or gaming space, but in any other way, they are worth the money.

OP, make sure you get AppleCare on it, it won't cover against accidental damage or spills (really wish they would roll out AppleCare+ for their computers...) but if there is an Apple store near her campus, then being able to just walk in and walk out if there is an issue is huge.

 

[Aaron here]

Hey guys, thanks for those tips! But I just ran into another noob problem with her Macbook. I installed a demo version of Hands Off (firewall) but didn't like it much so I dragged the app from Finder to the Trash (which I thought was an okay way to uninstall it). However, the Hands Off icon still appears in the App Menu Bar (top of screen) even after rebooting! Can someone please tell me how to get rid of it?

 

[TheStu]

Hey guys, thanks for those tips! But I just ran into another noob problem with her Macbook. I installed a demo version of Hands Off (firewall) but didn't like it much so I dragged the app from Finder to the Trash (which I thought was an okay way to uninstall it). However, the Hands Off icon still appears in the App Menu Bar (top of screen) even after rebooting! Can someone please tell me how to get rid of it?

For something like that, you want to get AppCleaner or AppZapper (one is freeware, the other is trialware, I can't remember which). Have you emptied the trash yet? If not, then just put it back where it was and then drag it into AppCleaner, it will find all the associated files.

OS X has a built in firewall. And VPN. And SSH, VNC, and their own screen sharing protocol.

 

[Aaron here]

For something like that, you want to get AppCleaner or AppZapper (one is freeware, the other is trialware, I can't remember which). Have you emptied the trash yet? If not, then just put it back where it was and then drag it into AppCleaner, it will find all the associated files..l.

Yup, I emptied the trash before realizing that dragging the app into the trash didn't completely uninstall it.

I will get AppCleaner, but for now I need to get rid of that orphaned icon in the App Menu!

 

[Zaap]

Hey guys, thanks for those tips! But I just ran into another noob problem with her Macbook. I installed a demo version of Hands Off (firewall) but didn't like it much so I dragged the app from Finder to the Trash (which I thought was an okay way to uninstall it). However, the Hands Off icon still appears in the App Menu Bar (top of screen) even after rebooting! Can someone please tell me how to get rid of it?

Try this:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3185667?start=0&tstart=0
(For this person, AppZapper still left the problem.)

I think this application has its own uninstaller script. OSX can be inconsistent with how to uninstall applications. Of course some devs don't help with inconsistent app behavior.

In general, you can resist the urge to load up a Mac with firewall and anti-malware/virus applications. In my many years of using MacOS I've personally never needed any of it. There may be some debate on this but that's been my experience.

I have used Little Snitch before and liked it; it might be similar to HandsOff.

 

[manly]

Like TheStu said, just use Time Machine with an external HD. For a college student, I'd suggest a portable drive with sufficient storage for the backup and for general use. I.e. assuming a 500GB internal hard drive, a 1TB portable drive is cost-effective and should have plenty of room. You wouldn't even need a separate power supply/brick (at worst, a Y-cable for USB power).

I don't see any major benefit of also creating a disk image of the OS X volume unless you're storing that back at the house. You could stash documents "in the cloud" for some added redundancy and everywhere access.