making backup non-bootable

[matt__r]

I want SuperDuper to make the target disk non-bootable after the smart-update has occurred.

Anyone have any ideas on how to do this? I assume you set it to run a script, but I have no idea how to write such a script.

[dnanian]

You want to make it non-bootable? I don't understand why you would want to do that, Matt!

[matt__r]

My setup is thus
- i run exclusively from an external hard drive which I boot from both at home and at work (uni)
- I use the internal drives for backup (at 1am my drive is mirrored to the home pc and at 1pm, the same thing happens at uni)

Problem is, the boot-from-external mechanism is not 100% reliable. Every now and then, even though the external drive is there, it can't find it and boots from the internal drive instead.

Since the two are identical, I don't normally notice the difference until I have already done an hour or so of work - a real pain!

I want both the internal drives to be non-bootable so this won't happen. If the external drive dies, I will use the mac os x install disc to open up disk utility to make the internal drive bootable, and then boot into it.

[dnanian]

If there's an OS there, though, it's very likely to be bootable -- hard to disable. Have you considered just doing a "Backup - user files" to the internal for this situation?

[matt__r]

just doing user files won't cut it. I have a very particular setup with many, many programs all over the place and important settings everywhere. Since I use an external drive it dies (via software mostly - for example if the computer tries to come back from sleep with the disk in a different state than when it went to sleep) about once every 3 months. It is a good 3 day job to get my install back into shape (try `fink install ghc` on a ppc mac and you will see what I mean...). So I need to have the full drive mirrored - then it only takes about an hour to get back up and running. That's why SuperDuper is such a good friend to me.

[dnanian]

OK. What about backing up to an image stored on the internal drive? Then it definitely won't be directly bootable, but will be when restored.

[matt__r]

yes, I think that would do the job

cheers

matt