I have two 27" iMac's running Mac OS X Version 10.6.7 with the following specs:
Hardware Overview:
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac10,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 3.06 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: IM101.00CC.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.53f10
I use one as my primary machine. It has all the software and files I use (I don't use a server at home).
I currently use the 2nd iMac just as a second display to expand the desktop of my primary machine.
Does anyone know of a way I could also use this 2nd iMac to fully mirror or replicate everything on the 1st iMac?
And this in as close to real time as possible.
I would like to do this because I run time sensitive applications for clients.
I recently had a hard drive failure and while I had everything backed up by Time Machine,
it took me a few days to get everything restored and working again.
So, I'd like to have a perfect duplicate of my first machine, which I could immediately switch to in the event of another
HD failure or similarly serious problem.
Hooking up the 2 machines via Firewire could facilitate this. Not sure where to go from there.
Someone at the Apple store near me suggested setting the drives of the two machines up as a RAID, but I don't think that would work.
Apple's coming "Cloud" would make all of this easier, because (if it works as promoted) I'd only need to replicate the few non-Apple apps
that I wouldn't have access to from the cloud. I could put all my data and files in the cloud.
Until then any thoughts or immediate solutions much appreciated.
Thx.
Best Answer
use superduper to create a clone on a external firewire harddrive, this will allow you to boot any other mac directly from the clone.
we have superduper scheduled so it smart update our clones once a day, in fact we even use this on servers for minimal downtime.