I want to make a complete (and bootable) clone of my OS X hard drive to an external FireWire drive.

There seem to be rather few options available. There is a great deal of weirdness to be dealt with, since the file weirdness of *nix (file permissions, symlinks, invisible files, system-created directories) and those of the Mac OS (resource forks, files locked from the finder) must both be handled politely.

Mike Bombich has a thorough guide to these OS X backup issues, and pointers to *nix utilities that can handle all of them: hfspax and ditto, which are both command-line driven. Well, except on MacOS X where you can use AppleScripts to execute shell commands. ;-)

Mike has created a GUI interface (with some fine enhancements, too) for ditto, using the AppleScript Studio. He calls this app Carbon Copy Cloner (donation-ware), and it seems to be a viable option, except it doesn't like locked files. Mike is also working on an AppleScript interface for hfspax, called Foresight (beta was to be available in January...).

Another option is called iMsafe, which is inexpensive shareware (~US$15), and registering provides full access to the scheduling features.

Dantz's Retrospect (commercialware, numerous flavors to choose from, depending on needs and depth of pockets) is also alleged to be an option, but I have received no response to my emailed inquiry, and there seem to be some, uh, issues surrounding their first release for OS X. They have already stated they are snowed under, support-wise, and responses will be slow.

Data backups are nothing to do improperly. I'm gonna give one of these a shot, and see what happens. I figure any data that does get captured is better than no backup at all...

9:22:49 PM  [] blah blah blah'd on this    

I wonder how W. Edwards Deming or Thomas Gilbert might view k-logs as a form of KM, and how they would implement it within their own visions of what should be?

Maybe McGee will toss this one out to some of his students, as a thought exercise...

4:58:58 PM  [] blah blah blah'd on this