[krs9999]

What is the best way to back up the completesoftware on a Dell Mini 10V running SL?

For the macs I use CCC to an external FW 800 drive.

For SL on the Mini 10V, should I use CCC or SD or something else and should I back up to a USB stick or a USB drive or does it matter?

If my 10V hard drive crashes, I want to be able to boot from the external (whatever it is) and then clone the back up back to the replacement drive in the 10V.

[underwhelmed]

How I made a bootable clone flash drive for my mini

[JnC]

Originally Posted by underwhelmed

How I made a bootable clone flash drive for my mini

Again, underwhelmed, thank you so much for recommending my how-to guide.
It took a small amount of effort to write it up and I'm thrilled that it's proving useful!
A recommendation from you is a recommendation worth having.

J

[krs9999]

I tried making a bootable clone using CCC and a USB external drive and so far have had no success in getting the Netbook to boot up from the USB drive rather than the internal drive.
The standard simple 'hold down the option key and select the boot drive' as done on the Mac obviously doesn't work - actually gave me a KP but that's OK.

CCC finished the cloning with a "all done and all is well" message, so that worked OK.
But now I can't get the Mini to boot from the USB external no matter what I do.
Tried to enable the two "USB" options in the Bios
Tried to select the USB option in the boot menu
Tried the external device in the boot menu
Tried the F12 option (USB doesn't even show up, only external device)
If I go to the Bios with the external USB hard drive plugged in, the Mini does recognize the hard drive if I expand the USB boot option. The external USB drive obviously also shows up on the desktop.
Tried to run Netbookbootmaker software on the clone, but that software doesn't recognize the clone.

I should say here that I made a normal Mac clone - ie the complete hard drive which right now is about 90 GB.

Unless someone has other options/ideas I can try out, I think I have to go back and start from scratch.
I would then partition the internal hard drive into a small, say 16GB partition for just the software and keep the data in a separate partition.
That way I can use a USB stick to back up the software separately from the data.

[JnC]

Your clone is not bootable you say?

Did you follow all the steps in the thread linked in post#2?

Did you read and do this? (quoted from the link to my directions):
"If this were one of my Macs, that would be it - the clone would be bootable which the last step in the copy process for SuperDuper! But, not so on the mini.
"I had read on the forum that for some folks this did work. Others said they needed to run NBI to make the drive bootable. I had to run NBI on my flash drive to make it bootable. I only installed Chameleon bootloader, but noted what was checked off by default to restore those settings after doing this. It took seconds to run NBI."

J

(I know I read elsewhere where you said you don't think you need NBI for your install. For the life of me, I can't see why not - though I admit I too was puzzled on when I actually had "run"/installed NBI following mechdrew's instructions - but I obviously had. I believe, your netbook couldn't have OS X on it without NBI.)

[krs9999]

I thought I followed the steps but my mind was somehow blocked.
I kept trying to install netbook bootmaker since I guess I was trying to make the clone bootable. not Netbook Installer - I sort of fixed it in my mind that Netbook Installer was only needed for upgrades of SL.

I'm running NBI now....I definitely didn't run it for my initial installation - maybe that's why the software issue on the netbook is dimmed out when I check it.
But as far as I can tell everything works.

After running NBI on the clone, I'll run it on the netbook hard drive as well.

The netbook for me is just an interesting toy to play with - I assume I can't destroy it no matter what I do in the software or bios - if things really get screwed up I will justr wipe the drive clean, reinstall XP and sell the unit.
But right now it's fun to play with a Mac OS on a netbook.

PS: Ahhh.... Success!!!

So - simply run CCC just like on the Mac
Then run NPI (I took the version with 2010... in the name and just left the default settings - don't use Bluetooth right now so didn't check that off)

Then before trying to boot off the external USB drive, I set both "USB" Bios settings to enabled and moved the USB option up to the top of the 'boot chain'
I could have also selected USB device for booting via F12

The only thing odd is that the progress bar when the software is loaded moves from right to left rather than left to right - at least that's the way it looks to me.
The Apple logo and the spinning wheel appeared for a short while, then I had a blue screen for the longest time but patience paid off and I eventually had booted into the external drive.

Definitely needed NBI for that.

[soho100]

Good news on getting the external to boot, very useful should anything go wrong with updates etc. you can always boot from it and clone back to the internal.
"I assume I can't destroy it no matter what I do in the software or bios"...not quite so, if you are updating or downgrading the BIOS and something goes wrong whilst the process is active, like a power cut or yanking out the USB drive, you'll end up with a dead Dell 10v.

[JnC]

Originally Posted by soho100

... if you are updating or downgrading the BIOS and something goes wrong whilst the process is active, like a power cut or yanking out the USB drive, you'll end up with a dead Dell 10v.

I can't address the yanked out USB (the dog ate my homework, the puppy yanked out the USB?), but for anything involving updates, or even while making a clone I always have my battery at 100% and also plug my AC adapter into one of the extra outlets on my UPS just in case the power does do something weird.

I do recall reading something here about doing updates - or was it backups (can't think why)? - on battery and not with the AC plugged in - but I can't recall what I read, do you have any recollection of this?

J

[Aargl]

I've just created a new thread about that subject, if any one is interrested: it's exactly the same process on any machine (including real macs ;-)
http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/begi...ng-system.html