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Old 05-02-2008, 03:09 PM
julianv julianv is offline
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Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 3
Can SD copy over LAN? From a FW target disk?

I have been successfully using SuperDuper to backup a Mac Pro to an attached FireWire drive. This Mac Pro has a large second internal hard disk. I was hoping to use a partition on that disk as a backup store for my new MacBook Pro. The MBP and MP are on the same ethernet LAN. My idea was to mount the MBP as an afp volume on the desktop of the MP, and then use SuperDuper (installed on the MP) to backup the MBP to the dedicated partition on the MP's internal hard disk.

Is this possible? The popup menus in SD do not allow me to select the MBP as a source.

From reading SD documentation, it looks like I might be able to go the other way: running SuperDuper on the MBP, mounting the MP's internal HD as an afp share, and then backing up the MBP to a sparse image on the MP's HD. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can see a couple of problems with that.

(1) Disk images are more vulnerable to hardware errors. One media flaw on the HD, and the entire image (the entire backup) may be corrupted and unusable.

(2) I cannot boot from the disk image. It would have to be unpacked first, and to a space large enough to fit the contents. This negates the "instant recovery from disaster" advantage of a cloned backup.

As I write this, I'm trying another method. I started up the MBP in FireWire Target Disk mode, and attached it to the MP via FireWire 800 cable. I'm running SuperDuper on the MP, and copying the MBP to a partitition on the MP's second internal HD. This trick is still limited by problem (2). Are there any other problems with it?

I thought about going the other way, starting the MP in FireWire Target disk mode, but I don't know if that would allow me to access the second HD.

The ideal solution would be to get an external FW disk for the MBP, and I will probably do that eventually.
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