uh , 10:25 HST • 09 .05 . 28
1 ) true , i guess . just don't drop n e thing ,
2 ) yes, i do that . Apple® let's you clone up to five ( 5 ) macines or devices including iPod touchs® andiPhones® and H D 's
3 ) yup , i do that
4 ) yes i guess ( Master clone machine :)
5 ) well , yeah ,but get this : you can just use the Airport or alt : 802.11 a - n wirless wi fi connection for backing up
How's that stirke you ? Low and hard ¿
l o l , h t h John
∞ mac tech support tribe

I like your last suggestion the best, the one about cloning to an external at one site then cloning back to the other machine when he gets to the other site. I'd look at the program "Super Duper", since it has some nice cloning features and, according to a test I saw a couple years ago, was the most accurate in maintaining some of the more esoteric file attributes that Apple has used over the years so he'll be less likely to run into strange problems.

I don't think it matters what brand of drive he gets, as long as it's a known brand with a reasonable warranty. All drives these days park the heads when they're off so as long as the drive doesn't take any major shocks, such as a drop onto hard ground, traveling shouldn't be an issue.

I would, however, be careful about running an OS cloned from one system on a different system if it's not the same model Mac, since the hardware differences could cause issues with drivers and the like. I'd try to clone just the user data and any non-standard apps and run on the OS that's native to each platform, and I'd try to make that OS at least be the same version on each Mac (e.g. Leopard). Since the external drive will pretty much only be needed while moving from one system to the other, I'd also be tempted to use it as the Time Machine drive on each system. If you get a big enough drive it'd probably even hold a full backup from each system unless he has a ton of data.

As for performance, an external firewire drive can actually perform better than the internal drive in a laptop, so that shouldn't be much of a problem. Note that even though USB 2.0 seems faster if you look at the specs (480 Mbits/sec vs. 400 Mbits/sec), in reality firewire is noticeably faster because it's much more efficient, so I'd get a firewire drive if possible (the new unibody MacBooks don't have firewire ports any more). As I mentioned before, I would try to avoid trying to boot both systems off the external drive, but if you do try to do this do a clean install with the retail Mac OS X disk rather than the install disk that came with either Mac, since the disks that come with the computers are specific to that model and may not contain all the drivers that might be need by the other Mac.

HTH - Good luck!



Dana