How to make a bootable clone of your Mac.

Backing up your computer is a must when so much of our lives are contained on our computers. You should have your important documents backed up on other sources but having a complete clone of your system is the best insurance to protect your data. When that terrible day comes and your Mac dies you can be back up and running with all your applications, settings and data in under 5 seconds with a bootable clone of your Mac..

1. External hard drive. Get a cheap external hard drive. Get a 500MB drive or bigger. It’s like $110 to $200. ( NOT Western Digital) I’ve had three Western Digital’s and all have failed. G-DRIVE is what I have. It’s a solid drive.

2. Partition the hard drive in two. You can partition your hard drive so that you can run time machine on one half and keep your bootable clone on the other half. You are just splitting the hard drive in 2 so there is to separate hard drives. Half is for -time machine half is for your bootable backup. Here is How to partition a hard drive on the Mac.

3. Make a Full system clone bootable backup of your Macintosh Get SuperDuper then followed the directions to make a complete fully bootable backup of your Mac. SuperDuper is by far the easiest to use software to backup your Mac. There are other programs out there some for free but SuperDuper is the most comprehensive.

When it asks you where you want to put your bootable backup put it on half of the hard drive you just partitioned and call it your backup clone.

How to use the backup in an emergency?

• Plug in your external drive. Go to System Preferences, select ‘Startup Disk’, select your external Backup, press Restart.

OR

• Plug in your Hard disk and Press Option-Command-Shift-Delete during startup. This will bypass the primary startup volume and seek a different startup volume such as the external one.

My favorite project so far is xs650chopper.com, a motorcycle blog that does over 90,000 unique visits monthly- and over half a million impressions a month. A site which I am founder & editor. The site is 90% user generated content and is monetized by selling advertising directly to businesses. The site is 100% bootstrapped and was grown organically using guerrilla marketing and search engine marketing. The business is profitable and I’m currently working to add additional income streams.

Here’s how I described the site:

” Over a quarter million XS650s in 40 different variations were produced by Yamaha between 1970 and 1985. The XS650 big twin, in America and worldwide has developed a cult following for good reason. At the heart of the XS650 is a indestructible engine. The best parallel twin ever built.. Tough durability, classic look and abundance of cheap parts make the XS650 the perfect platform to build a KILLER Chopper.”

Here are some interviews I’ve done with talented bike builders:

• xs650 cafe racer “The Hornet”
• The Fong-bros-cream XS650 chopper
• Interview with Hugh on his Rephased Yamaha xs650.

Here’s some picsof my Motorcycles.

Creating something people want is hard, creating something people will actually pay for is even harder.

“The easiest, most straightforward way to create a great product or service is to make something you want to use.” Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson-BaseCamp

When you “scratch your own itch”  It’s as simple as that.

I have more ideas than I could ever possibly pursue. The problem isn’t the idea. The problem is in executing.

Ideas are not worthless. However, Execution is where the value is created.