Bootable clone

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joel hamilton
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Bootable clone

Post by joel hamilton » Thu Apr 22, 2010 2:02 pm

Just because I never mention it...
One of the absolute BEST ways to ensure a zero downtime situation with a protools rig, or any DAW setup, is to get a small FW800 (or whatever you need for your computer) drive, like a 160 gig, 7500 rpm, nice one, but not TOO nice... like the lower end OWC drives.... anyway,
get one of those, and use something like superduper or carbon copy cloner to make a bootable clone of your currently working internal system drive.
if that drive craps out, or even if you are having weird issues like corrupted prefs or permissions or ANYTHING, you just plug in the clone and not only are you up and running again immediately, you can then use the utility programs on that bootable drive to diagnose and/or repair the internal drive. Worst case scenario, you could let the cloner overwrite what is on the internal drive with the exact, albeit working, clone on the outboard drive that you have now started up from and worked off of to finish out your day.
Really, because you even have the same plugins and everything living on the clone, and there is usually no issue these days because the "anchored bit" security schemes are all but gone due to the ilok, so you are rocking as quickly as you can restart, hold down the "option" key [mac] and choose the clone on the FW drive as your startup, then unmount the internal drive and keep recording.
Anyway,
its worth mentioning.
Happy recording.
If I had actually listened to my own advice last week in africa, I would not have lost a day of recording because of a crapped out internal drive on my laptop due to 987 degree heat, rain, dust, humidity, and constant use in a HUT and otherwise.
I didnt have the clone with me.
duh.
but at a studio, you have the space to keep the clone on the shelf and breathe a little easier.

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vvv
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Post by vvv » Fri Apr 23, 2010 7:09 am

Great idear. 8)
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Catfish
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Post by Catfish » Fri Apr 23, 2010 9:47 am

As always, sound advice.........

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ott0bot
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Post by ott0bot » Fri Apr 23, 2010 3:19 pm

noted, good sir, noted indeed.

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Marc Alan Goodman
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Post by Marc Alan Goodman » Sat Apr 24, 2010 11:00 am

Couldn't live without mine. Or i could, but I would have to live in fear.

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ott0bot
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Post by ott0bot » Mon Apr 26, 2010 1:58 pm

I just partitioned an external drive and downloaded Carbon Copy Cloner and got is set up yesterday. Also a dash of Applejack, and a final cleanup with OynX. My iMac is running better than ever.

Thanks for reminding me to do this. Doing a session soon, and would hate to waste time like this if a crash happens.[/url]

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kingmetal
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Post by kingmetal » Thu Apr 29, 2010 2:17 pm

Is the image backed up incrementally or does it have to do a full-reimage every time? I wish Time Machine or Windows Home Server backups were bootable -- as it stands, a full restore from WHS would probably take about an hour on my new system which would be enough to totally kill the vibe of a session (or the session entirely, since I tend to do 3 hour sessions) but I know that the backup is at most 24 hours old since WHS wakes my machine up (from a full power-off) and backs it up every day while I'm at work.

To keep my system zero downtime I've got a laptop with the same software loadout as my desktop and I'm moving all my session files over to a server store. Just swap some cables and my laptop becomes my desktop and I should be good to go -- the Zoom H4n comes in when all else fails.

The first session I had with one of my artists this year went like this: 3 days before the session my PSU exploded in my desktop

18 hours before the session the hard drive in my laptop died. First session I've ever called off due to technical issues...
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Brett Siler
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Post by Brett Siler » Sat May 01, 2010 4:07 pm

Sticky please!

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Mr PC
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Post by Mr PC » Sat May 01, 2010 5:29 pm

I use a backup program called Data Backup and I found that I am able to incrementally back up my HD clone drive, and it is still bootable.

At first I thought that I would have to back up the whole deal every time to get a bootable backup, but happily with Data Backup (and others, I'm sure) that is not the case.

I love backing up my iMac's drive knowing that I'm covered if something bad happens.

I got into the cloning thing because of the hassle involved when my earlier iMac died.

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Post by ctmsound » Sun May 02, 2010 4:54 pm

Doesn't Apple's disk utility offer this? Under the "restore" option. Clones whatever drive you have selected. Now, if you could schedule it like bootcamp, that'd be ideal.

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Marc Alan Goodman
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Post by Marc Alan Goodman » Wed May 05, 2010 12:01 pm

Yip, full version of superduper will run incrementally too

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ott0bot
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Post by ott0bot » Wed May 05, 2010 1:52 pm

Marc Alan Goodman wrote:Yip, full version of superduper will run incrementally too
Carbon Copy does this too! Haven't set it up that way yet, but I plan too.

Andy Peters
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Post by Andy Peters » Thu May 06, 2010 12:15 am

ctmsound wrote:Doesn't Apple's disk utility offer this? Under the "restore" option. Clones whatever drive you have selected. Now, if you could schedule it like bootcamp, that'd be ideal.
If you use Time Machine as your backup, you can restore from your Time Machine disk to a new Mac.

I'm not sure you really want to have any kind of incremental backup tool running while you're using your DAW, but let it do its thing during downtime. (You probably don't want to use Time Machine to back up your audio work drives, either. ) So when the inevitable disk crash happens, you'll have an image of your machine ready to be restored.

Why this doesn't exist for Windows is beyond me.

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