Chronosync - Bootable Backups

[Paul]

Dear All

I would be interested to hear your views and experiences about the testing out of Bootable Backups / Clones that have been made of a computers main internal hard drive.

I was interested to read on the Chronosync website regarding 'Creating a Bootable Backup' that they say to boot up from the Bootable Backup to test it out but not to run any applications.

http://www.econtechnologies.com/pages/cs/chrono_tips14.html

Quote:
"5. Give it the boot
After the backup runs, test it out. Restart the Mac and hold down the Option key. When a list of drives appears, choose the new bootable. Your system may run slightly slower since it is not running directly off the internal drive. Check it out but don't actually run any applications. When finished switch back to the internal drive. You can also switch drives in System Preferences under "Startup Disk"."

Clearly this allows you to see if your Mac will start up or not from the Bootable Backup just made which is fine.
However, if you wanted to check that applications were working alright or not how would you find out without opening them ?

Does this same apply to Bootable Backups made by SuperDuper or CCC ?

If anybody can shed any light on this I would be interested to hear from you.

Many thanks

Paul

[BobSmith]

I've had good experience with Chronosync bootable backups.  I think the point is to test your backup... no matter what method was used to produce it.  I've seen many examples where people think they've been making great backups.  Until they try to actually use one.  The time to find out that there may be a problem is BEFORE you're in a panic and truly need it.  That's especially true if you expect to boot from your backup.  I think the instructions not to launch apps is just to keep you from modifying various app preference files.  Those files may now have a newer creation date (and possibly altered settings from running on a different drive) than corresponding files on the original drive... and cause errors if you're doing further incremental backups of that drive to this same disk.  By all means test your apps with your backup method (Chronosync or otherwise) but you may also want a separate backup by the same method that is completely undisturbed.

Bob Smith

[Paul]

Hi Bob

Many thanks for your help.

Sorry for the time delay here - I thought I'd thanked you around the time of my question.

All the best

Paul