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guybeckett
02-06-2008, 10:18 AM
I work in two locations several hundred miles apart. In each I have a g5 mac running leopard (slightly different vintages but handily both non-intel). Both do time-machine backups to internal drives.

I want the two machines to be clones of one another - so I can just work in either place with the same system set-up. I have a hard drive to transport files between the two locations.

So.. should I just clone the main drive onto the portable hard drive with superduper and then do smart backups at either end each time I move? Are there any issues with doing this? Will adobe cs3 cope with this? What about the time-machine backup disks. Do they need to be cloned as well?

Is anyone else working this way and what are their experiences of problems/solutions?

t3rockhall
02-06-2008, 10:35 AM
I do exactly the same thing between my 2 homes. No problems. Adobe InDesign asked me to reauthenticate (or something like that) on the 2nd home machine, which I did (one click) with no problem, but on return to the main house, no such question came up.:)

I'm still using 10.4.11 so I can't answer the Time Machine question.

TMay
02-06-2008, 07:54 PM
I did this for a number of years in my former job, and after trying the various options, I think there is one even better than the one you suggest. I used the same portable FW drive you are taking back and forth, but rather than clone repeatedly, etc., I just used the FW drive as the OS drive at both ends. Yes, you then have to boot twice a day (start of day in office, and when first getting home) but you never have to clone, worry about did you remember to clone/update, etc.

I found this a far better and easier solution than trying to keep all three locations (home, office and transport disk) identical. (Obviously, this won't work for lots of people with company networks at work, etc., but if your two machines are truly identical, as you say, it will.)

guybeckett
02-07-2008, 06:03 AM
Have moved location today and dropped a leopard clone (made with sd2.5) into my other machine and all is working fine (thanks for the warning about cs3 - I had to re-activate it). I have been cloning with ccc whilst superduper was being sorted and I was finding that workable but slightly more buggy (permissions especially).

Because I move from one location to another for extended periods of time I don't mind doing the clone. If I was travelling weekly or more then a different solution would be the answer. Part of the attraction of this approach is disaster backups - I have two systems, mirrored, each backing up to time machine, plus a third cloned back-up which is with me wherever I am working. Seems to solve much of the what happens if there is a fire, burglary etc

TMay
02-07-2008, 12:26 PM
Guy

Yes, to keep post shorter, I didn't mention, when I did my back/forth, I had a current daily SD clone at each end to a local backup disk. And yes, since I "moved" five or six times a week, it worked well for me, but would have been slower than your way when you stay a longer time at either place.