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Best method for cloning drives from iMac to MacBook?

jonnysods

jonnysods

macrumors G3
Original poster
Sep 20, 2006
8,809
7,483
There & Back Again
Hello all, I have a question, but may be in the wrong area.

I use my iMac for my media business, however I will be on the road more this year, and so I was going to put all my files, apps etc over to my work's MacBook so I can get things done for my clients while I'm on the go.

Of course the thing is all my apps, files etc are lodged in the iMac, so I thought that the only way to avoid manually reinstalling stuff (and then have to move it all back to the iMac again) was to clone the user account or drive?

Is there a way that this can be done?

I'd love to hear of some solutions, thanks!
 
I've done that with Carbon Copy Cloner; boot your laptop as a firewire drive, connect to your desktop, run CCC, and clone the desktop's main drive to your laptop. Don't worry if one is larger than the other, just so long as the target drive (i.e. laptop) is large enough to hold all the info on your main HDD.

http://bombich.com/ccc
 
I third SuperDuper. One of the few programs I bought the full version of...and I think the interface is better and more simplified than Carbon Copy Cloner.
 
If you just put the iMac in target mode, you can just drag across a lot of applications. Thats what I've done in the past anyway and haven't had any real problems. It's only things like iWork/M$ Office that actually need installing.
 
Thanks guys! I'll check out Super Duper and Carbon Copy.

I'm concerned that if I just try to drag the apps over, and don't get the Library and Preference etc folders then I'm going to have to reactivate all my licenses just to get going again.
 
Wow! Carbon Copy is free!

Of course, if it's great I'll make a donation. It amazes me that people are so generous to spend all that time writing apps and then leave it up to people to pay or not. That's a great attitude!
 
jonnysods said:
Wow! Carbon Copy is free!

Of course, if it's great I'll make a donation. It amazes me that people are so generous to spend all that time writing apps and then leave it up to people to pay or not. That's a great attitude!
Click to expand...
Yep, CCC is donation ware and it works very well.

The interface has improved and is simple to use.

The only issue with Cloning, might be that that the MacBook may not boot using the Mac OS X install on the iMac due to chip set and other differences. If this is the case, then Migration Assistant would be a good way to do it.

Then while you are on the road, use CCC to clone a back up of your MacBook on a regular basis so you will have a backup of your files.
 
sushi said:
Yep, CCC is donation ware and it works very well.

The interface has improved and is simple to use.

The only issue with Cloning, might be that that the MacBook may not boot using the Mac OS X install on the iMac due to chip set and other differences. If this is the case, then Migration Assistant would be a good way to do it.

Then while you are on the road, use CCC to clone a back up of your MacBook on a regular basis so you will have a backup of your files.
Click to expand...

That's a good idea.

Phew, what a pain. Because I'm going to lose all my work files if I do a clone of the drive!

I'm building a good case to my wife for letting me buy my own portable for my business to replace our iMac. A nice new shiny 17" unibody should do the trick!
 
It seems to me like migration assistant and an ethernet cable or a firewire cable would serve your purpose just fine.
 
I would run with Migration Assistant. I had problems using my Time Machine and SuperDuper clone going from my MacBook to my MacBook Pro. They weren't critical issues but a big one was the trackpad driver being screwed up. Gestures didn't work and my Trackpad preferences for the MBP were not functioning and in fact, it froze the computer. I decided to just erase and install and use the Time Machine backup to get individual items.

I should have just used Migration Assistant looking back on it. Unless you are going to an identical model.
 
No, I'm going iMac > MacBook, then when I return from traveling, back to the iMac again.

It's hard to use the Migration assistant because my iMac is my business/family computer with two user accounts, and a 250gb drive which is almost full.

I only want to sync my business user account (and all the apps if possible so I don't have to reinstall/register. Then when I get back from trips, I can just sync up the documents I use.

There are so many options out there!!!
 
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