Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

ohla313

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 24, 2010
778
0
I am trying to clone my MBA SSD to an external drive that already has another partition on it. The OS on the external and the MBA SSD is Lion. I am running Mountain Lion on the computer I am using CCC on.

How do I go about cloning the MBA SSD to the external drive while also keeping the Lion partition I already have on the external? I would like to just add the MBA SSD to the external drive without deleting the current partition.

Thanks!
 
"How do I go about cloning the MBA SSD to the external drive while also keeping the Lion partition I already have on the external?"

No special considerations needed.

Just use CCC to create a full backup on the partition in question.

You can have more than one OS on a given drive, so long as each version resides on its own partition.

When you boot from the external, hold down the option key at startup, and KEEP HOLDING IT DOWN until the startup manager appears. Then select the partition you want to boot from.

It's that easy.
 
I am trying to clone my MBA SSD to an external drive that already has another partition on it. The OS on the external and the MBA SSD is Lion. I am running Mountain Lion on the computer I am using CCC on.

How do I go about cloning the MBA SSD to the external drive while also keeping the Lion partition I already have on the external? I would like to just add the MBA SSD to the external drive without deleting the current partition.

Thanks!

You need to use Disk Util to shrink the existing partition on the external then add a second partition to that drive. Now use CCC to clone from the internal to the second partition on the external.

This will help you.
 
I figured it out on my own. I had an extra external drive so I cloned the one on the first external to that, then I created two partitions and cloned both OS to their own partition. It was a bit backwards but at least it worked.

But does anyone know how I can upgrade to Mountain Lion via USB?
 
But does anyone know how I can upgrade to Mountain Lion via USB?

Do you mean using a USB key versus downloading from the App Store? You download ML from the App Store and quit the installer, then use this free app to make a USB key installer. But you still need to do that initial OS DL from the App Store.
 
Do you mean using a USB key versus downloading from the App Store? You download ML from the App Store and quit the installer, then use this free app to make a USB key installer. But you still need to do that initial OS DL from the App Store.

I am using my MBA and have the Lion drive connected via USB and want to upgrade the Lion drive to ML without booting into the drive. Do I just plug in my USB installer and upgrade the external drive?
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.