How to make a bootable external drive?, Using Deja Vu, but it won't work Options

[itriedeverything...]

Can anyone help me with Deja Vu?
I am using Mac OS 10.3.9. Toast Titanium 7.
I just made my first backup using Deja Vu which came with Toast 7.

1) I selected a external firewire drive as my destination. I selected my entire OSX internal drive as source. It wiped out everything that was on my destination disk! No warning. I had other data on the firewire drive that I selected as my backup disk. Is there any chance it hid it somewhere?

2) I was trying to make a bootable external drive. I backed up my entire OSX drive. But I cannot boot from this external drive no matter what I try.
I tried holding Option key. The disk does not show up. I tried Control Option Shift Delete. It still boots from my internal drive. I used system prefs and selected the external as my start up. It still boots from the main internal drive. I have the external plugged directly into the firewire port on the back of my G4 machine.

Am I wrong about Deja Vu making an external bootable drive?
If not, any ideas how to make this work?
Thanks
george

[miketall]

Am I wrong about Deja Vu making an external bootable drive?
If not, any ideas how to make this work?

Hi George,

Maybe some of the Roxio experts can add to this, but I am unaware that Deja Vu can do BOOTABLE backups. There are a lot of system files that need to be copied for a BOOTABLE drive. Typical backups do not copy these files.

Also, you'll want to periodically update that BOOTABLE backup drive. To do a complete drive backup can take hours. You'll want something that is able to just update files that need upudating. There are a few programs that do a really good job of this on the cheap.

I use SilverKeeper v1.1.4 from LaCie for FREE. It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, but it gets the job done fine for me. You can even set it up to run backups automatically. I have about 60GB of drive space used. That took a few hours to copy over. Since then, my weekly backups have taken about 20 minutes. You can even set directories not to copy. For example, I don't copy over my TV video recordings. If I lose them, no big deal, and they take up such a huge amount of drive space.

A lot of people use Carbon Copy Cloner (aka CCC) for $5. I had issues with this originally because it required I download other files to get it working. Just too much for simple me. However, there seem to have been a few updates to it, and it gets great reviews.

Also, I have heard some really good stuff about Super Duper for $28. It seems to have the most complete set of options, with a very simple user setup.

One thing about FireWire bootable backups. I use a laptop and have had to connect the drive directly the computer FireWire port for bootup to work. I can do my backups through my FireWire hub, but if an emergency or test bootup is needed, I have always had to plug the drive directly in to the FireWire port.

Regards,
Mike

This post has been edited by miketall: Apr 20 2006, 02:52 PM

[mike457]

I use Super Duper and recommend it highly. I did use Carbon Copy Cloner, but they were uncertain of their ability to support 10.4. With Super Duper, once you do the original time-consuming back up, you can do a simple backup that will bring your external drive up-to-date with the internal quickly. I do mine once a week, and the weekly backups take little time. The programme is easy to set up and painless to use, well worth the money.

[John at Roxio]

I know this isnt really what you are looking for, but I would just install OS X on the external drive and use Deja Vu to backup my files and applications.

[dangilbert]

Not exactly on topic, but I would like to create a bootable CD to run Norton Speed Disk and Disk Doctor. I have no idea which OS 10.3.9 files I need to boot and run Norton. Wish Roxio would help out here in a future version.

Two Roxio Knowlegebase articles (ET5000052 for Toast 5 & ET6000034 for Toast 6) state: "Toast does not have a function where you can create a bootable OS X CD but there are several 3rd party utilities on the web that can create a bootable CD image that Toast can burn." Has anyone tried any of these utilities and have a recommendation?

[debit72]

Not exactly on topic, but I would like to create a bootable CD to run Norton Speed Disk and Disk Doctor. I have no idea which OS 10.3.9 files I need to boot and run Norton. Wish Roxio would help out here in a future version.

Two Roxio Knowlegebase articles (ET5000052 for Toast 5 & ET6000034 for Toast 6) state: "Toast does not have a function where you can create a bootable OS X CD but there are several 3rd party utilities on the web that can create a bootable CD image that Toast can burn." Has anyone tried any of these utilities and have a recommendation?

BootCD (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/15196) can do this in Panther and Jaguar, but not in Tiger. From what I've read on Apple discussion forums, there is no way to make a bootable removable disk for Tiger. But it looks like you're running Panther, so you may be able to use BootCD.

[dangilbert]

Thanks for taking the time to share your expertise. Cheers, Dan

[debit72]

Thanks for taking the time to share your expertise. Cheers, Dan

No problem. Although, I vastly prefer Micromat's Techtool Pro for disk maintenance and repair. IMHO, much better than Norton, and comes with a boot disk.