Complete backup of MBP to USB hard drive.?

Question

Hi. What's the best way to backup my entire Mac Book Pro laptop, to an external hard drive?

Ideally using Freeware software, so I don't have to download it via BT.

I need to be able to restore it entirely. Something like a disk image would be good, but any suggests are good.

Answer 1

How big is the hard-drive on your MBP? The easiest is to buy an external hard-drive slightly larger than your existing hard dive.
You can back up to CD-R or DVD-R but I prefer the hard drive method
There are a number of brands out there and relatively cheap.
We use a 200 GB My Book by Western Digital and 300 Seagate Push Button Back Up at home and an HP personal Media drive which is great for travelling with. We also use thumb drives for moving things around, Check for compatibility with Mac's OS and laptops. Figure out if your device will be stationary
or on the move. The Seagate is a great back up device but It does not travel well (IMHO) if you plan on back ups away from home.
Most back up drives will come with Limited Edition Software
or Apple may have the capabilities in it's OS.There are options for when to do backups I do it weekly. Windows has a back up utility built in but I do not usuallly use it. Mac's also have an on line tutorial on Back Ups which I've linked.
There are also on line services for back up but I have never used them.
I've listed some websites for more information including free back up utilities. The Dr Mac Website gives a good overview of strategies depending on need. For example he suggests storing one back up off site which I do at work but I do not do it at home.

Answer 2

If my options have been an exterior difficultcontinual vs multiple USB flash drives i could flow externalcontinual, better area, no swapping multiple USB flash drives so saves time to boot. the extra sensible decision is to flow documents over the community or use a crossover community cable. much extra maximum reasonably-priced, a 100GB exterior HD could be approximately $a hundred, a 2GB Flashcontinual could be approximately $10, a crossover cable could be approximately $5 moving over the community could be carried out in a million step quite than 2.

Answer 3

Best bet is to READ ALL THE KNOWN LIMITATIONS and then TRY Carbon Copy Cloner:
http://www.bombich.com/mactips/index.html

If you just want to create backups (NOT a bootable image) you might investigate psync :
http://www.dan.co.jp/cases/macosx/psync.html