Best bet is to have more than one hard drive. You backup the volume containing your main operating system onto a separate hard drive. If the main hard drive bombs, you simply choose the system on the "backup" hard drive, and you are back in business.
A second (or third or fourth, etc) volume for backup is next best. Most startup problems arise from hosed systems, ie, software, not hardware failures. So if your main system goes south, simply choose to startup from a backup volume (on the same hard drive as your main system that failed).
Partitioning a hard drive into more than one volume is something best done before the hard drive is put into use. But I believe someone offers software that purportedly partitions a drive while preserving existing files and system integrity. I have no experience with such software, and would not trust it without having a known working and up to date backup available--just in case.
CDs, or DVDs, can be used to backup stuff that you don't want to lose, but will not serve for booting up and being back in full operation. But data CDs holding your documents and applications can be used to restore these items back to hard disk AFTER you have regained a working system on your hard drive.
Some flavors of Retrospect or other backup utilities may create bootable restore sets of CDs or DVDs but I am not familiar enough to say.
Various emergency boot CDs should be kept on hand for restoring a working system to hard disk. These include full retail OS X install sets (launch Disk Utilities to attempt repair of damaged system), TechTool Pro 4.x, DiskWarrior 3.x, or custom emergency CDs you assemble for the purpose--make sure you can successfully boot from them before you need them.
Hope you find this discussion helpful.
On Dec 17, 2004, at 8:39 AM, Chuck & Kim Blair wrote:
I want to back up my computer so much, but I don't know how. Is there anyway to do it on CDs? If so, how?
I have an old 1400 laptop I could use to back my computer up, though the
hard drive is not very big. How do I do it?
I've backed up certain data onto CD's but not the stuff that changes daily.
I'd love to know if my computer goes down, I'll be able to get it up and
running the same day.
Regards,
Wayne Clodfelter [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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