Backing up to a bootable CD

[Lovell]

Hey guys, A recent inquery has come to me that I am not quite sure how to answer. Maybe any of you guys can tell me if you have tried this.

 

I am trying to create a bootable backup of an OS X system to a DVD disc so that I have a faster way of restoring backup to a machine that is completely hosed. Has anyone ever thought of this? or has anyone tried this? I guess my ending question could be if no one has tried this, does anyone know or can anyone tell me if Retrospect can successfully backup the necessary boot files if I were to backup them up to a removable hard disk to boot from?

 

Thanks for the assistance.

 

L

[mcswgn]

You can't just write an image to a read only disk and get it to boot. Too many things in a default configuration expect to be able to write to the disk. (E.g., log files, swap space, etc.) It *is* possible to create bootable CDs, however. First of all, Retrospect 5.1 comes on a bootable CD, so that might take care of everything you need. If you want to create your own customized CD (I don't know if this would also work for a DVD), download BootCD. You can find it on versiontracker.com. It will create a bootable CD customized for your system (booting with an active network, which is very nice). You can add your own apps to the image before burning, but sometimes this can take a bit of trial and error. The utility gets around the need for a writable disk by creating a RAM disk on which anything that needs to be writable gets placed. This is why putting your own apps on can sometimes take trial and error. Apps frequently write to places you weren't expecting and so on the first few attempts not enough gets put on the RAM disk. Standard apps like Disk Utility work fine by just dragging them over, though.

 

If you want to use a hard disk, like a firewire disk, then Retrospect can certainly duplicate the necessary system files to the external disk.