[rescue] recommendation (OSX): Carbon Copy Cloner

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

I have just used this tool:

http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

to save a colocated G5 Xserve from extended downtime due to a failing 
but not totally dead (Hitachi Deskstar of course!) boot drive.

The original setup of the 3-drive Xserve was with the drives as 3 
separate drives, non-RAID, no redundancy.

By moving the data off the second disk to the third disk, I was able to 
clone the entire system onto the second disk and "bless" it to be booted 
from.  This saved my client from having to next-day FedEx me the media, 
and go through a cumbersome re-installation process.

Note:  I ran into a problem with the local NetInfo database, which was a 
good idea in the Nextstep 3.x days but appears to have been neglected by 
Apple since; see this URL for a resolution:

http://www.kombitz.com/2006/12/01/carbon-copy-cloner-trouble-cannot-login-after-cloning/

It is free for educational use, and fully functional for everyone else 
at no charge, though the author does ask for a donation.

Those who want to get fancy, or have a lot of Xserves to install, can 
use the netbooting features to have a standard OS image that gets rolled 
out to all the systems on a network.

CCC also serves as a backup program of some sort, though I have not yet 
tested that.

--Patrick