superduper

Joe has a 2009 iMac with a bunch of emails on it, dating back to 2003. He wants to know how to open them in another email program, along with the contacts as well? Leo says it varies according to the email program you use. Leo says that since Apple Mail exports to MBox, you can open that format into just about any other email client. You can even open them in a text editor to see what's in it. Apple Mail will import them easily, and Thunderbird should be able to as well. Leo also recommends using SuperDuper to back them up. 

John has an iMac and he wants to be able to make a bootable image. For the Mac, Leo uses SuperDuper for that purpose. For free, there's also EaseUS. Here's a complete list:

Imaging options -

Clonezilla

Drive Snapshot

Jim bought a new Mac and wants to know how he can set it up like his old one. Leo says he'll need a cable and connect the two. There is a tool in MacOS that will copy everything over and make it look just like the old Mac, only faster. Leo does recommend, though, to take an external hard drive and backup data just in case. Leo recommends either SuperDuper or ChronoSync. The old mac should also have someting called "target disc mode," which can be used as an external drive, dragging them over to the new mac. But Jim will probably need a thunderbolt-firewire adapter. 

Charles wants to know the best way to set up Time Machine on his Mac with macOS Mojave. Leo says that in the new OS, there is a new APFS file system, and there have been backup issues with Time Machine and others. He may need to use an external drive formatted with the old HFS file system. That will insure that if his internal drive dies, his backup is secure. Leo also recommends not using Time Machine as his primary backup system. He should make an image backup with SuperDuper.

Mark would like to copy his macOS hard drive to a backup external drive. He did a drag and drop and it's taking forever. Is there a better way? Leo says that his favorite tool is SuperDuper. There's also Carbon Copy Cloner.

Lance upgraded to macOS Sierra and now his Time Machine isn't working. Apple Care hasn't been able to solve the problem either. He's even reinstalled the OS and Time Machine. It just hangs about 2/3 of the way through the backup. Leo says that nobody really likes Time Machine, especially when it doesn't work. No one really knows how it works, either. If Apple can't figure it out, it's a lost cause.

Mendota wants an alternative to Time Machine for backing up his computer. Leo says he's not a fan of Time Machine. He recommends SuperDuper because it can be bootable. Time Machine is a dumbed down, simpler backup solution "for the rest of us." But that ease of use is more dangerous because it's too easy to assume you've backed everything up and can restore it.

Vicki keeps getting notified about doing an upgrade to Yosemite. But being a private investigator, she's afraid to upgrade because it could break the software she uses. Leo says that's a legitimate fear. In general, if she's doing work on it, it's good to always be slow in performing major updates. She could consider doing it in between cases or while on vacation, perhaps. A major upgrade like that can break her software, or with a utility like iDVD, Apple may decide not to support it any longer and not include it in the next version of the operating system.

Dennis installed the OS X Yosemite beta on a separate hard drive, which has been working great. Now he wants to make a bootable image of his current Mavericks installation to a USB key. Leo says OS X has a boot manager built in, so he can hold down the option key while booting up and choose which operating system he wants to start up in.