Multiple Bootable Clones

[clcgit]

Greetings,

I've been using SuperDuper! for a while and am very impressed by just how easy and reliable it has proven for my backups.

I have, however, been running into issues (perhaps not with SuperDuper! itself) when trying to create bootable clones of my two Macs (one Intel and another a G4). This is what I've done:

1. I create two partitions (HFS+ Journaled, Apple Partition Map, on a 1TB LaCie)
2. I ask SuperDuper! to create bootable clones into each of these partitions

But when I attempt to boot from these partitions (by holding the option key), only the most recently backed up partition shows up. I can still see the data in the other partition that did not show up on the boot menu (so stuff is backed up properly; just not bootable.)

I've tried this on an Oxford Semiconductor-based enclosure with WD drives and get the same error.

As of now, I only create sparse images, but it would be awesome to get multiple bootable clones working. What am I doing wrong?

Thank you for your work!

[dnanian]

Well, Intel Macs really only support boot with GUID partition schemes. Power PC Macs use APM...

[clcgit]

Hmmm... I'm imagining that PPC Macs don't support GUID?

I'm just confused as to why only the last backed up Mac (PPC or Intel) shows up.

Also, assuming I had two intel Macs, could this "multiple bootable partitions" idea work with GUID and the correct hard drive?

Thank you for your help

[dnanian]

Right: PPC Macs don't support GUID, and Intel Macs don't 'officially', and this may be one of the reasons why.

Does the other partition show up as a possibility in the startup disk preference pane?

[clcgit]

The "Startup Disk" pane pretty much shows the same behaviour as holding down the option key at boot: it only shows the last backed up partition (Intel or PPC).

Now that I think of it, I can try making two bootable partitions of the same Intel mac using GUID to see if they both show up. If yes, I can repeat the experiment with my PPC mac and APT. If successful, I'll yell at Apple for 5 seconds, get two hard drives for two macs and get done with this

Or is there a better way to go?

[dnanian]

I have no idea why the startup disk preference pane would only show one partition in that case. But I've certainly had many bootable partitions on one drive...

[clcgit]

Yeah, I've been stumped by this for a while. If I figure out my issue, I'll update this thread.

Thanks!

[clcgit]

As a late follow-up, I had an external enclosure (Oxford Semiconductor) with two drives in it which I configured as a software RAID.

I then removed the RAID config and used SuperDuper! to create multiple bootable clones on a single disk (leaving the other disk unused.) Worked perfectly and showed up all bootable partitions. Still can't explain what went wrong with the LaCie drive, but I'm happy with this for now