have to send my macbook back to apple

[leor]

Baby needs to go in for a checkup, I was wondering what the best way was of cloning the drive so all my settings and my vmware install are back in case the machine comes back with a factory install.

Does time machine do that? I'm on leopard, thanks in advance!

[Norphy]

Carbon Copy Cloner will do that. It will make a bootable snapshot of your hard disk which can be cloned directly to an external disk and/or saved as a DMG image file.

[SNM]

Does time machine do that? I'm on leopard, thanks in advance!

It would be kinda useless if it didn't.

[derFunkenstein]

Even with Time Machine, CCC still has its uses. As Norphy mentions, the clone is bootable. Time Machine volumes are not.

But yeah, that's kind of hte point of Time Machine.

Neither option will back up your Windows partition if you're using VMWare with a Boot Camp partition. Both will backup HDD images though.

[leor]

Neither option will back up your Windows partition if you're using VMWare with a Boot Camp partition. Both will backup HDD images though.

see? that's important, if i listened to SNM I'd be screwed, CCC it is!

[tanker27]

Some caution when you send the machine back; make sure its in its original hardware configuration. They can refuse service if its not. Even something like aftermarket RAM they sometimes throw a hissy fit over.

Is there no "authorized" sales and service people near you? Even though they are not Apple they still honor warranties and most the time they do good work. And they over look things like the aforementioned.

[derFunkenstein]

Yeah, I actually had a AASP add aftermarket RAM for me in my Mini when they had it open to replace the logic board.

[leor]

Some caution when you send the machine back; make sure its in its original hardware configuration. They can refuse service if its not. Even something like aftermarket RAM they sometimes throw a hissy fit over.

Is there no "authorized" sales and service people near you? Even though they are not Apple they still honor warranties and most the time they do good work. And they over look things like the aforementioned.

I might just take it to the genius bar so I can actually talk to someone, that's what the nice apple lady suggested.

[tanker27]

Yeah I find them very helpful at times.

[kitsura]

Try SuperDuper it's very useful too.

[Hance]

Make sure you get all the gay midget pRon off the HDD before you send it in.

[derFunkenstein]

Try SuperDuper it's very useful too.

Certainly it is, but some of the stuff you get by paying for it is free with CCC (which has a Smart Update-like feature, for starters). The scheduler you get as part of hte purchase price is very nice though.