Bootable partition without User files

[patgilmour]

Hi,

I want to use SuperDuper to back up my laptop to an external hard drive.
However, I do not want to back up my User folders as these are backed up elsewhere. I only want to back up my System and, in particular, my Applications (including their Library files) as reinstalling them all takes a really long time.

So I thought maybe I should use a "Sandbox - shared users" back up for this purpose. Is this the correct option?

One other question, if I do use "Sandbox - shared users", can I add my Users/me/Library folder to the back up as a lot of application important data is stored in there and i would like to keep it in the same back up location as the System/Applications?

Thanks in advance,

Pat

[dnanian]

You can't really have a truly bootable partition if your user files aren't there, Pat. A Sandbox can sort of do this, but it assumes that the original drive is there and OK.

I really think it's going to be a lot easier to do a full back up -- is there a technical reason that you don't want to just copy it all?

[patgilmour]

Thanks for the speedy answer.

A full backup is what I use now. I'm just trying to simplify things as much as possible in my set-up. I have two Macs and try to keep the Documents synced (using Chronosync) then I have Backups to do of my imga editing file, etc, etc. It just feels like a bit of a mess having three identical Documents folders sitting on my disks (as well as a waste of disk space)...

What about a full Backup with a script to ignore certain folders from my Users folder like my Music and Documents folders? Is that a reliable System/Application backup? That way I could avoid tri-duplicating massive amounts of data.

Thanks,

pat

[dnanian]

Honestly, it's never a waste of disk space. But you can certainly use the steps in the User's Guide to exclude large folders that you don't want duplicates of...

[patgilmour]

Many thanks - I'll look into it.