Jul 10, 2020 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions
Apple claims that its Mac OS is fully equipped to assist its users for day-to-day PC activities, and they seem to have proven the same over the years. Since Mac users save a lot of important data on it, it is necessary to keep all such information secure. Mac Disk Utility does exactly that with the help of its “Restore” option. This function basically teaches you how to Clone a Mac’s Drive with Disk Utility.
In this article, learn how to copy all the data and clone a Mac’s Drive (internal/external) easily. Read and know more about Mac Disk Utility, its “Restore” function, how to clone a Mac’s Drive with Disk Utility and a simple way to recover your Mac’s Drive.
Part 1: Why You Need to Clone a Mac’s Drive?
“What is the need to clone a Mac’s Drive?” This thought must have crossed your mind atlas once while using Mac. To be precise, cloning of hard drives protects your important data which is under possible risk of physical destructions, loss, etc.
Virtual Clone Drive for Mac OS X: Best alternatives Our editors hand-picked the best Mac alternatives to Virtual Clone Drive, go ahead and check them out, rate them, or add new ones you find fitting. Disk Utility Free. By Apple Inc. Aug 08, 2010 Upon realising this, I re-partitioned the hard drive to an Apple Partition Table (a setting easy found in Disk Utility, selectable before partitioning), and then made a clone of the Mac OS X hard drive again. The iMac recognised the Apple Partition Table of the new hard drive, and instantly booted into Mac OS X 10.4. If you’re wondering whether to use Time Machine or Mac Disk Utility to clone a Mac’s Drive, let us clear the confusion for you. Time Machine is a built-in application to back up and make an up-to-date copy of the data you save on the Mac. Until macOS 10.15 Catalina, Mac users knew: their startup volume was a single volume, just as it appeared! (Okay, for Fusion drive users, there are two physical drives managed by software to. Mar 12, 2020 Select Install macOS (or Install OS X) from the Utilities window, then click Continue and follow the onscreen instructions. Learn more For more information about the createinstallmedia command and the arguments that you can use with it, make sure that the macOS installer is in your Applications folder, then enter this path in Terminal.
No matter how new or of what quality your hard drive is, you cannot say for sure that it will last forever and never crash or suffer from a system failure. Old hard drive or one suffering from mechanical, firmware or electrical error can permanently destroy your data, such as photos, documents, videos, music, and other files. Also, if important personal documents and business files are misplaced in the process, retrieving them is next to impossible.
Therefore, to prevent these and many more situations that may arise due to data loss, we recommend that you always know how to Clone a Mac’s Drive using Disk Utility. Mac Disk Utility and its “Restore” functions can keep your data, important information and files secure by literally copying it from your Mac Drive.
Difference Between Time Machine Backup and Cloning Hard Drive
If you’re wondering whether to use Time Machine or Mac Disk Utility to clone a Mac’s Drive, let us clear the confusion for you. Time Machine is a built-in application to back up and make an up-to-date copy of the data you save on the Mac. Its unique feature is that it makes real-time backups to recover files easily whenever needed. When set-up for the first time, Time Machine performs a full backup of the Mac and its contents. Time Machine keeps, hourly, daily and monthly backups all categorized separately.
If Time Machine can do so much, then why consider using Mac Disk Utility?
To start the discussion, Mac Disk Utility is free and also comes built-in with every Mac OS version. It has various new features that makes it more suitable than the Time Machine. Say for example, its “Restore” option does something what is called block copy and make the entire cloning process swifter. It is also capable of making an almost cut to cut exact copy of the contents of the Drive. No important files, documents or data is left behind using Mac Disk Utility. It works in blocks and does not involve file to file transfer.
Some changes have been introduced in the Mac Disk Utility toolkit which makes more accurate cloning and copying data from the Drive.
Part 2: How to Clone Mac’s Drive using Disk Utility?
Curious to know how to clone a Mac’s Drive with Disk Utility? Follow these simple steps and you’re good to go:
Related: If need be, learn how to use Disk Utility to resize Mac volume.
Clone Mac Drive To Ssd
- Open Mac Disk Utility on your Mac from Utilities or Applications.
- Click “Erase” from the top of the Disk Utility interface.
- Now chose a media on left panel to make it your backup drive.
- At the drop down list which has “Format” options, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Then hit “Erase” again and wait for the drive to remount on Mac.
- Then at Mac Disk Utility interface, click “Restore”.
- Now comes the tricky bit. Select the target drive, drag it and drop it at the “Source” field.
- Now drag and drop the destination Disk/Drive and leave it at the “Destination” field.
- Hit “Restore” once and for all. The contents of the drive will be copied and saved on the destination drive.
Part 3: How to Recover Mac’s Drive Data?
What does one do if some data is lost during cloning the mac’s Drive? Don’t worry. The loss isn’t permanent and the destroyed data can be recovered with the help of Recoverit for Mac. It is a recovery tool for MacBook, iMac, Hard Drives, Flash Drives, Memory Cards, phones, cameras and camcorders. It can instantly retrieve the lost contents from the Mac Drive and provide reliable data recovery solutions. It can recover documents, images, videos, audio files, emails and archives files.
The steps given below will help you use Recoverit for Mac to recover Mac’s Drive:
- Download, install and launch Recoverit hard drive recovery software. Now choose the target drive where the data gets lost, and click 'Start' to recover lost data.
- And then the data recovery tool will set in motion an all-around scan to search the lost files.
- Finally, you can preview the whole scanned results, select the ones which need to be restored, click “Recover” as shown below and save the recovered data in another drive/disk to keep it secure for future.
Conclusion
Bottom-line, we have attempted to answer a commonly asked question on online forums, i.e., how to clone a Mac’s Drive with Disk Utility. We hope you will find this red useful and now be able to clone your Mac’s drive and keeps its contents safe.
Also, the Recoverit drive data recovery toolkit is a safe, effective and trustworthy medium to retrieve your lost documents and file. So go ahead and follow the instructions in this guide to clone a Mac’s drive or recover hard drive data deleted accidentally during its process.
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Cloning Your Data to a New Hard Drive in macOS
Our primary recommendation for transferring files from an old Mac OS X or macOS drive is performing a clean install of OS X (10.11.6 and under) or macOS (10.12.0 and higher) and migrate your data using Migration Assistant. For instructions please click here. Cloning is a viable option if installing a fresh copy of the OS and migrating your data is not an option.
Cloning is a destructive process that will erase the recipient drive, leaving the source drive intact.
The instructions below are for cloning from the original drive externally to a new drive inside a computer. In certain circumstances connecting the original drive externally is not an option. In those cases using an external hard drive as an intermediate is recommended. This process would consist of cloning the original drive while still inside the computer to a separate external hard drive, then installing the new drive and cloning the external hard drive to that new drive.
Cloning is a destructive process that will erase the recipient drive, leaving the source drive intact.
The instructions below are for cloning from the original drive externally to a new drive inside a computer. In certain circumstances connecting the original drive externally is not an option. In those cases using an external hard drive as an intermediate is recommended. This process would consist of cloning the original drive while still inside the computer to a separate external hard drive, then installing the new drive and cloning the external hard drive to that new drive.
Booting into the recovery partition or OS install media
After you install the new hard drive, you will need to boot to the recovery partition on the original drive if OS 10.7 or later is installed. If OS 10.6.8 or earlier is installed, you can use the original OS install discs that came with the computer. Power on the Mac while holding down the 'Option' key. This will display a boot menu that looks like the picture below. Click the drive icon that says 'Recovery' (OS 10.7 and later) or 'Mac OS X install' (OS 10.6.8 and earlier).
The number of drives listed will depend on the number of
bootable drives in your system.
bootable drives in your system.
Format your new drive
Once booted into the Recovery partition or installer disc, select your desired language. Next, open Disk Utility by navigating to the Utilities menu in the upper-left corner of the screen, then select Disk Utility from the drop down menu. Once in Disk Utility our detailed instructions for the formatting process can be followed: www.macsales.com/tech_center/formatting.cfm
Apple's Disk Utility (10.3.x to 10.12)
WARNING: When using the restore process, the files on the destination volume will be erased! Before you restore a volume, be sure to copy any files on the destination volume that you want to save, to a different storage device or cloud account. - Select the new volume (indented icon) and click on the 'Restore' tab.
- Drag the old volume to the Source field.
- Drag the new hard drive to the 'Destination' field.
- Click the check box for 'Erasing destination.'
- Click 'Restore' at the bottom to begin the process of copying your data to the destination.
Clone Your Hard Drive Mac Os X
You can also restore one volume from another volume. When you restore from one volume to another volume, it makes an exact copy of the original. For example, you can restore from your startup volume to an external volume to use as a backup.Clone Windows Hard Drive Mac Os X
- Select the new drive volume in the sidebar then click the Restore button or choose Edit > Restore. This is the volume that is erased and becomes the exact copy.
- Click the 'Restore from' drop down menu, then choose the volume you want to clone the data from.
- Click Restore. Once the data has been cloned, Disk Utility indicators will show the status as being 'complete'. Click the 'Done' button.