Hackintosh Backup & Restore?

My setup is this:

Desktop with two drives, one Windows 7 & one Hackintosh. They don't have the bootloader setup to select which drive on boot, it's just currently setup so that I use the f8 key on boot to select the boot device I want.

I also have a WHS to store an image on and I have a Macbook I can use if needed.

What I would like to do is be able to create and image that can be stored on the server. Once this is done, how could I possibly get this image back onto the source drive? I may be able to remove the drive from the computer and place it in an external dock and use the Macbook to image the drive via the backup on the server, but this is not an ideal solution as I have to remove the drive cage from the front of the computer and then remove the drive from the cage.

Does anyone have any other solutions? Should I keep a small bootable external drive that I can copy my OS X install disk to and boot from that and restore the image that way?

Also, what software should I be using to create and restore the image? I'm scared to update the OS X install because of the pain I had to go through to get the Nvidia GTX 295 card working and all the software and files currently installed on the drive. They're all backed up, but I could see it taking me a week or two to get everything installed and restored again and I can't afford that down time.

I copied my Snow Leopard install DVD onto an 8GB USB pen drive which I can boot from and install from scratch. Google will show you how to do this.

I use Time Machine to backup to an external USB hard drive. I restore to a clean OS X install. Hint: create a normal 'user' account for your daily work. The first account you create (the admin account) should be used only for admin work. I.e. my admin account is called 'macbook' and my normal account is 'ebann'. I backup only my ebann account.

You can use Super Duper to clone the entire hard disk to an external hard drive. Restoring is a simple process.

In your case, you can do a clean install with all the drivers and software installed and Super Duper it. Then use Time Machine to restore your user account. Time Machine does incremental backups. You can use Apple's Time Capsule for wireless Time Machine backup.

Village_Idiot wrote in post #11665170
My setup is this:

Desktop with two drives, one Windows 7 & one Hackintosh. They don't have the bootloader setup to select which drive on boot, it's just currently setup so that I use the f8 key on boot to select the boot device I want.

I also have a WHS to store an image on and I have a Macbook I can use if needed.

What I would like to do is be able to create and image that can be stored on the server. Once this is done, how could I possibly get this image back onto the source drive? I may be able to remove the drive from the computer and place it in an external dock and use the Macbook to image the drive via the backup on the server, but this is not an ideal solution as I have to remove the drive cage from the front of the computer and then remove the drive from the cage.

Does anyone have any other solutions? Should I keep a small bootable external drive that I can copy my OS X install disk to and boot from that and restore the image that way?

Also, what software should I be using to create and restore the image? I'm scared to update the OS X install because of the pain I had to go through to get the Nvidia GTX 295 card working and all the software and files currently installed on the drive. They're all backed up, but I could see it taking me a week or two to get everything installed and restored again and I can't afford that down time.

There are many ways to go about this; the simplest way would have been to install on a smaller partition, then you would be able to make an image on a small external HDD for later and your data drives could be backed up to the WHS along with Windows 7. Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! are both excellent options for regular backups and can make bootable images - but since you don't have a OS X server then you're stuck with having to either create images that would require a second OS X machine to recreate an OS drive or you use an external drive and either clone your OS or use Time Machine.

MaxxuM wrote in post #11666448
There are many ways to go about this; the simplest way would have been to install on a smaller partition, then you would be able to make an image on a small external HDD for later and your data drives could be backed up to the WHS along with Windows 7. Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! are both excellent options for regular backups and can make bootable images - but since you don't have a OS X server then you're stuck with having to either create images that would require a second OS X machine to recreate an OS drive or you use an external drive and either clone your OS or use Time Machine.

I have Super Duper, but it won't clone to the WHS network share. Supposedly HP built Time Machine compatibility into their WHS install. I don't see a clear cut way to do what I'm looking for in their console.

The problem is, even after moving all data over to the server, even the working images, I'm still showing about 265GB used on a 500GB drive with OS and programs. I think I'm going to try and install Onyx and see what other files are hiding on there. 265GB is way too much for an OS install and programs.

I'm not sure what you're seeing here. Are you saying that when you try to create a stand alone image you cannot create it on the WHS drive? I have no experience with WHS, my certs are in Windows Server platforms. On Windows Servers, you must activate Mac support per share/partition. Are you using SMB to create your drive mappings? Is the drive you are imaging to using FAT32 or NTFS? I'm not sure if WHS cares either way, but Windows Server does.

This missing/filled space. Is it on the OS X drive or WHS? Are you looking at it via OS X, Windows 7 or WHS? Some OS X partition types are virtually invisible to Windows unless you manage your partitions from the command line or from your computers properties. Whatever you do, don't erase anything until you know exactly what it is and you have backed it up.

MaxxuM wrote in post #11667954
I'm not sure what you're seeing here. Are you saying that when you try to create a stand alone image you cannot create it on the WHS drive? I have no experience with WHS, my certs are in Windows Server platforms. On Windows Servers, you must activate Mac support per share/partition. Are you using SMB to create your drive mappings? Is the drive you are imaging to using FAT32 or NTFS? I'm not sure if WHS cares either way, but Windows Server does.

This missing/filled space. Is it on the OS X drive or WHS? Are you looking at it via OS X, Windows 7 or WHS? Some OS X partition types are virtually invisible to Windows unless you manage your partitions from the command line or from your computers properties. Whatever you do, don't erase anything until you know exactly what it is and you have backed it up.

Definitely this. I think I may just go with a new HDD to clone to for now. At least that way I can try an OS X update. I need one anyways, I just had an external die on me. It was for transferring files between PCs and unimportant stuff though, so no big loss.