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Formatting your hard drive for use with Carbon Copy Cloner |
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Mac OS X is installed on an HFS+ filesystem. The HFS+ filesystem defines many types of metadata that describe non-data attributes of your files. Creation date, access control lists, permissions and ownership, Finder flags, and extended attributes are among the various metadata types defined in the HFS+ standard. To adequately back up all of your files and their associated metadata, CCC requires that your backup volume is also formatted as HFS+.
When you purchase a new hard drive, or if you have a hard drive that you use with a Windows computer, that hard drive is often pre-formatted as FAT32. While the hard drive's volume may mount just fine in the Finder, and you are able to access files on the volume, CCC won't let you back up directly to the FAT32 volume because some filesystem metadata would not be transferred. Most notably, you'll lose ownership and permission metadata as well as any Access Control List settings. These types of metadata are very important for maintaining the security of your data and your Mac's operating system.
Additionally, Macintoshes can only boot from hard drives partitioned with either the Apple Partition Map (APM) scheme (PowerPC-based Macs) or the GUID Partition Table (GPT) scheme (Intel-based Macs). The hard drive icons that you see in the Finder are volumes. The partition scheme of a hard drive describes how volumes are physically defined on the hard disk. Every hard drive has exactly one partition scheme and at least one volume. When you "partition" a hard drive, you simply create multiple volumes on that hard drive.
Follow these steps to format your hard drive as an HFS+ volume:
- Launch Disk Utility
- Click on the hard drive device in the list on the left (the volumes have names that you see in the Finder, like "Macintosh HD" whereas the hard drive device has a name that includes the size of the hard drive and a vendor name or serial number, like "111.8 GB ST9129876A")
- Click on the Partition tab
- Choose "1 Partition" from the "Volume Scheme" popup menu (or more if desired).
- Click on the "Options" button at the bottom of the partitions table and choose a partition scheme appropriate for the way you intend to use the hard drive (APM for PowerPC Macs, GPT for Intel-based Macs), then click the "OK" button:
- Provide a name for your volume that will allow you to easily identify it as a backup volume.
- Specify "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" as the volume format.
- Click on the "Apply" button
Your new hard drive is now ready to go!
What if I already have a lot of data on the hard drive that I want to use for backup?
If your backup hard drive already has data on it that does not exist on the source volume, there are a few different approaches to protecting that data:
Add a new partition to the hard drive
If the hard drive is partitioned with the GPT partition scheme, you can use Disk Utility to resize existing volumes (those volumes must be formatted with a filesystem that supports resizing, such as HFS+) and to add new partitions. These actions can be done non-destructively, as long as the hard drive is partitioned with the GPT partition scheme.
Leverage CCC's "Protect root-level items on the target" feature
If your hard drive is partitioned and formatted correctly and does not already have a version of Mac OS X installed upon it, you can use that hard drive for back up without losing the existing contents. This subject is covered in the "Options to the Incremental backup of selected items method" section of the documentation.
Back up to a disk image
If you simply cannot reformat or repartition your backup hard drive, you can use CCC to back up your data to a disk image. This subject is covered in the " Backing up to a disk image" section of the documentation.
Back up to a folder
If you're backing up user data (e.g. not the OS), you can use CCC to back up your data to a subfolder on the target volume. This subject is covered in the "Clone to a subfolder on the target volume" section of the documentation.
PLEASE NOTE: We strongly recommend that you find the means to dedicate a volume to the task of backing up your irreplaceable data. If you have data on your backup volume that exists nowhere else, it is not backed up! Whenever you target a volume for use with Carbon Copy Cloner, there is a risk that some files will be removed for one legitimate reason or another. CCC offers options and warnings to protect your data from loss, but nothing can protect your data from a misuse of CCC or a misunderstanding of the functionality that it provides.