Cloning an OS9 hard drive

[Ben]

What is the best way to clone or have a backup strategy for an OS9 boot drive on an old world Mac?

I have a few PowerMac's with quite old hard drives and after getting them setup, I would hate to lose them due to failed hard drive.

Regards,

Ben

[applefreak]

Copy the system folder on an external mac formatted HD (SCSI or Firewire)

when done, open the system folder, drag the finder out the system folder, close the folder, drop the finder on the system folder

if you want more then one system folder ( versions of system 9.xx, 8.xx, .... etc ) on the same HD, you can do it by mooving the finder out of the system folder

only one system folder may be active ( bootable )

put each system folder in another folder so you don't put the wrong finder file in the system folder  (  add Apple extras and Utilities) 

or, to provide a better overview

set the appearance of the window view by icon on raster

sort the system folders with at the right of the respective folder, the finder file

you also can add a label color to the system folder and finder file

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applications

backup the installers, image file of the install disks, iso file of install CD's

data

backup your data

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SCSI devices

Bypass the startup and boot from the external HD (or CD) by holding down
Command-Option-Shift-Delete

This actually forces the system to NOT load the driver for the default volume, 

for scsi devices it searches the highest to lowest ID for a partition with a bootable system.

exception

[Sean2300c]

I suppose, if you just want a snapshot, you could use Disk Copy 6 to  create a hard disk image of the drive, and store it someplace safe. Then if the disk fails, you can restore it from said disk image. There might also be some backup software (Maybe Norton utilities?) that could automate the process a bit more.

Applefreak's idea of just copying it to an external hard disk also works too.