What is the BEST software for Hard Drive Backups?

[BadGoldEagle]

I'm 100% sure this has been asked on this forum at least a 1,000 times. But I can't seem to find it.

It has to generate a bootable image (for use with the SCSI2SD) that can be used to restore from that backup to a physical Hard Disk.

My SE/30's HD is getting old and sometimes it locks itself for no reason. I have a "backup" of my files on another HD but I don't think it's bootable...

 

[Cory5412]

In Classic Mac OS (9 and before) you can copy your files from one disk to another. If the disk is formatted correctly, they will be bootable when they get there.

If you want to store multiple copies on, say, a big external drive or a big file server, my personal favorite tool for that was disk copy 6.

Most backup tools from this era (think: retrospect, file archival/compression tools) were really file backup rather than imaging and system backup utilities. THe idea was that you'd install your OS, then the backup software, and then the restoration with the backup utility would restore your configurations and other software you had, or that you'd just manually reinstall your software.

 

[techknight]

I always used a mix of Disk Copy 6 and norton backup that came with norton utilities. 

 

[BadGoldEagle]

Thanks guys for your help. 

I tried using the Floppy EMU in HD mode all day on my SE/30, before realising that HD mode doesn't work on the SE/30... What a dumbass! 

I knew that but I sort of forgot about it in the middle of the action.

So what I'll do next weekend: Backup my HD using the SCSI2SD with my SE/30 and then boot up the Plus from floppy disk, attach SCSI2SD and Floppy EMU.

Select a 160mb image on the floppy EMU. Drag & Drop and done.

That should work all right.

The SCSI2SD backup will help in case my HD goes bad. Which it will at some point. And with the Floppy EMU backup, I'll be able to boot Mini vMac from my Hard Drive image.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

OK I found the PERFECT thing to backup an entire HD!!!!!!!

Here it is: ShrinkWrap.

It will create a .smi or .img or .image and write it back to any HD.

I will give it a go next weekend! This is a brilliant piece of software, it's a shame you have to install it. It would have been even better I were able to run it directly without the installer...

 

[BadGoldEagle]

Ok, so I didn't do this right away because I had a couple of issues with the SE/30...

Nearly 2 months after my last post, I can finally report that ShrinkWrap is indeed PERFECT. Worked a treat.

 

[just.in.time]

Good to know! Does it apply any compression?

 

[BadGoldEagle]

You can, but I left that setting as standard. Works great both on mini vMac and Floppy EMU (in HD mode on Classic II, since the SE/30 can't handle HD20 emu)

I recommend you create a "full" image by copying unused blocks though, because otherwise it won't work properly.

 

[thewap]

Hi, looking at BMOW website, using the  rominator II , enables the SE/30 to recognize HD20 floppy emu, and makes the SE/30  32bit clean. Anyone try that rom chip?

 

[BadGoldEagle]

Yep, it heard it works great. Enables you to run 7.6.1 as well.

This would have spared me the whole transfer thing! Took about an hour and a half to transfer a 140mb image from the SCSI2SD to the HD20 emu. That's how slow the original Apple HD20 hard drive is compared to a modern SCSI2SD. The HD20 emu doesn't get a speed boost because it is using the floppy port, not the SCSI port. 

 

[joethezombie]

Hi.  Thanks for sharing.  I'm going to give this a try.  I haven't used disk images a lot, so maybe you can help.  I have about 25 hard drives that I want to backup to SD card.  I installed ShrinkWrap.  I'm making my first backup now to an scsi2sd hanging off the external scsi port.  Seems to be working well, and quite fast might I add...

The file format type has me a bit concerned.  I used shrinkWrap, which has me a wee bit worried! Should I have selected one of the other format types?

 

[BadGoldEagle]

I always used "Disk Copy 6.x" as the image format... So I dunno. All I know is that DC6 format allows the .img to be mountable in mini vMac. You can also write the image back to a disk with either DC6 or ShrinkWrap.

With ShrinkWrap as the file format, I'm not entirely sure vMac can see it as a valid image, but you can certainly write it back to a disk using ShrinkWrap... So that's something at least.

So even though I recommend using DC6 as the file format, it still works. It really depends on what you want to do with the images afterwards...

I did a couple of backups today, and noticed something interesting: ShrinkWrap won't run on an SE. It probably requires an 020 or an 030 at least! I knew it required 7.5 to run but it won't do anything on a 68000 Mac except crash... 

Top Tip: Learn how to use the "Startup" Control panel so you don't have to reconfigure SCSI IDs on the fly!