Using SuperDuper, I'm able to back up my iMac to my MSS as an image file. I can then restore the image or individual files to my iMac.

The backups go to a folder I've set up on my MSS.

With SuperDuper, I have automated the process to run every evening. SuperDuper mounts the MSS and the correct folder and creates the backup image in the folder on the MSS.

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MSS 485 w 2.5 Terabytes, iMac I7, and Macbook Pro 2.4 Mhz.

Hakr, some screenshots documenting the process would be nice, even better if you'd be willing to create a Wiki entry.

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Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
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I'll see if I can assist the OP a bit in filling out his explanation... If I have time over the next few days, I'll see if I can turn this into a Wiki article on Mac backups. The HP backup approach for Mac users is... interesting, and a tool like SuperDuper may turn out to be a very valuable addition to the MSS/Mac user.

SuperDuper is one of two commonly used Mac backup and disk imaging tools. You'll find it here: http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/ ... ption.html

The other commonly used backup tool is Carbon Copy Cloner http://www.bombich.com/ccc which is free, and also excellent.

The free version is excellent, and is fully-functional for creating bootable backup disks and disk images. If you pay their $28 fee, you can make incremental 'Smart' backups, where the software only updates changed files on the backup, rather than copying every file. This is much faster after the initial backup.

SuperDuper has two options - you can clone your startup disk (or any other disk, for that matter), directly to another disk, as a bootable copy. This means that you can start up your Mac from the second disk, and it will run exactly as if you started from your original disk. Bootable backups are a truly outstanding backup approach, for obvious reasons. If you have a bootable backup on a USB hard drive, you can plug in the USB drive to another Mac, select that drive as your startup disk, and then you are running as if from the original disk at the time of backup. The only downside of this is that it requires a directly attached USB or Firewire(1394) drive with a free partition of appropriate size.

The other option is to clone your disk to a disk image on a hard drive, attached either via USB, Firewire, or on the network. The OP apparently chose his MSS as the destination and used SuperDuper to to create a disk image, and back up his Mac to that image. The advantage of this approach is that you just use the space you need on the MSS, don't need a separate partition, and it's obviously on the MSS. You can still create a bootable drive from this disk image, if you need one.

All this is relevant, because Apple's Time Machine backup service, while excellent, and in fact much better at hourly/daily incremental backups than SuperDuper or CCC could be, doesn't provide a bootable backup, making it difficult if you have a total system crash - their concept is that you re-install a clean system, and use Time Machine to restore your data onto the clean system... While this works, it's not exactly a rapid solution, and there's a good chance that not quite everything will be back where you want/need it when you're done, which is a huge hassle. I'm only an hour or so into HP's implementation of Mac backup on the MSS, and while it seems to work well overall, it also appears to store your Time Machine data in an inaccessible data file on the MSS' Mac folder. This is in stark contrast to the Apple Time Capsule network backup hardware, where the data is stored in an accessible disk image format, where a user can physically go in and grab a single file, folder, or whatever, and copy it if needed. I assume this is a product of the needs of WHS, but it means that Mac users are extremely dependent on WHS/MSS/HP's restore implementation handling a restore correctly to get lost data back. I'd advise caution and the use of SuperDuper/CCC to create bootable backups or images until we have some time to work with the WHS/MSS/HP restore, and see how it handles a wide variety of situations. Backup isn't the place to test out v1.0 software.

Deanster's explanation is spot-on and describes what I do with SuperDuper and my MSS. I create an image.


A classic description from Deanster:

"This is in stark contrast to the Apple Time Capsule network backup hardware, where the data is stored in a
accessible disk image format, where a user can physically go in and grab a single file, folder, or whatever, and copy it if needed. I assume this is a product of the needs of WHS, but it means that Mac users are extremely dependent on WHS/MSS/HP's restore implementation handling a restore correctly to get lost data back."

I first bought my MSS to backup a VISTA desktop and two XP laptops. Worked fine for that. But a year ago, I sold my XP laptop and on a whim bought an Apple Macbook Pro. I was not at that time able to figure out how to back the Apple up to my MSS, so I bought a firewire external HD and SuperDuper and backed the Macbook Pro to that device.

About a month ago, I dumped my VISTA desktop and bought a Mac desktop and had the need to "experiment" with SuperDuper a bit. Lo and behold, I stumbled upon the ability to backup my desktop Mac as a spare image on the MSS.

Now, just to add to the confusion: I run VISTA via bootcamp on both my Macbook and Desktop Macs. I back those VISTA setups directly onto my MSS in the usual way, and the two MAC setups onto my MSS via Bootcamp as sparse images. I only do a VISTA backup when I am using either machine in VISTA mode.

I see HP is advertising its MSS to Apple users now. I think it a bit disingenuous.

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MSS 485 w 2.5 Terabytes, iMac I7, and Macbook Pro 2.4 Mhz.

Can anyone give some more info on this?

"I get Failed to mount macbook"

When I view the log it says hdiutil: create failed - No such file or directory

I have created a folder on the MSS called Mac. I also made sure i created a user on the MSS with the same credentials that are on the mac. The settings i am using are as follows "Copy Macintosh HD" to "macbook" (disk image)

Anybody know what I am doing wrong? It is probably something very easy to fix I hope. Also note I am very new to Mac, only been using one for about a week.

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Scott
EX470
2.05 TB

In the finder press command+k, then type smb://server where server is your MSS name. You will be presented with the list of shares on your MSS select the one you want and log in with your MSS credentials.

Hmmm so what you are saying is i need to login with the MSS credentials of the user i setup for the MAC? Maybe that would explain why it is failing? Because i have already setup the server connection but i used different login credentials. I will try that then post my log if it doesn't work. thanks for the reply.

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Scott
EX470
2.05 TB

I attached the log file. It still fails? Anyone else have better instructions?

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Scott
EX470
2.05 TB

You need to mount the MSS share in the FINDER before you start the SuperDuper operation. SuperDuper does not do the login for you (AFAIK).

I already had the MSS mounted. So I removed it and tried again and it still fails? Does it have anything to do with that i don't have a new MSS I have a EX470?

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Scott
EX470
2.05 TB

Hm, I am puzzled. I have a 475, which is the same as 470 just came initially with two drives. Here some other things to try:

Have you tried to write and read from the share just from the finder not from SuperDuper?

Have you tried SuperDuper with another external hard drive hooked directly to your Mac?

If the above things work than you might try contacting SuperDuper tech support and send them your log files.

From the Mac i created a file and a folder. I was able to rename the folder and the file, also i was able to open the file and read it. I then deleted both the folder and file with no issues.

I then started super duper and choose "Time Machine Backup" (external drive) to back it up to. It started to do the backup and worked fine, no issues. I already had time machine setup but just wanted to be able to backup to the server so i can use the external drive for something else.

Thanks for all the help. I will try and contact super duper and send them my log files and see what they say.

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Scott
EX470
2.05 TB

This one is definitely odd. Let us know if you find a solution. Good luck!

OK this is a little odd??? So i removed the user i had created on the MSS. Disconnected the MSS share on the mac.

User name on Mac - Scott
So I created another user on the MSS with the same user name and password and gave the user full permissions to everything. So it would match on the Mac and the server. I also created a shared folder called mac (this i had already created before and i did not remove it). Now what is odd is that i had already done this and SuperDuper would not work?

I Then mounted the mac shared folder on the mac by going to GO - Connect to Server. smb://myservername - then it asks me for a username and password, so i use the exact same one that i created on the MSS (which matches the one on the mac also). Which makes perfect sense for read/write permissions. It then asks me what folder to mount and i chose mac. (again i had already done this before and super duper would not work)

I then launched SuperDuper and chose Copy "Macintosh HD" to "macbook" (I chose disk image and named it macbook also making sure it was pointing the mac shared folder on the MSS) So SuperDuper started an i expected it to fail at "Mounted macbook" so i can send the log files to SuperDuper.

Well it when past "Mounted macbook" and continued on I am now waiting for it to finish. I will post another thread once it is finished with some screen shots and hopefully it will help someone else. Again thanks for all the help revengineer

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Scott
EX470
2.05 TB

Well, magic seems to have happened... No clue what was wrong before, maybe permissions got screwed up. Anyway, glad it's now working for you.