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Cloning a Mac HD.

skinnylegs

skinnylegs

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 8, 2006
1,427
55
San Diego
This may be a really lame question but I *think* I read or heard about this somewhere.....

If I copy my *entire* Mac HD onto and external drive, wipe out my HD, reinstall the copied HD from the external drive back to my Mac will my Mac be the same as it was prior to erasing the HD? I mean....will my wallpaper and preferences and stuff be the same? More importantly, do I have to reinstall applications?

Thanks in advance!
 
Thanks for the link, Multimedia! I'll check it out.

BTW.....so I suppose my little scenario above is incorrect eh? It must be otherwise apps. like the one you linked me to wouldn't be necessary.
 
Yes You Cannot "Copy" A System HD From The Finder Successfully

skinnylegs said:
Thanks for the link, Multimedia! I'll check it out.

BTW.....so I suppose my little scenario above is incorrect eh? It must be otherwise apps. like the one you linked me to wouldn't be necessary.
Click to expand...
Yes you are correct. You cannot just "copy" a boot dirve with the finder because there are a lot of invisible files in the system that will not get copied without a utility like Carbon Copy Cloner which is the Gold Standard of apps used for that purpose. Everyone uses Carbon Copy Cloner.
 
Multimedia said:
...Carbon Copy Cloner which is the Gold Standard of apps used for that purpose. Everyone uses Carbon Copy Cloner.
Click to expand...
While I personally use CCC, SuperDuper is also very good and even better than CCC is some areas. The problem is that SD is not free. They do have a free trial though.
 
SuperDuper is awesome, but I like CCC even more. They both seem to complete identical backups, however, in my case, CCC was faster by about an hour. If I were in your shoes, paying for SuperDuper seems worthless over the free CCC unless you want the active scheduling backup features that SD offers. All I care about is speed :D
 
If you are running an intel mac, SuperDuper is UB, however, I don't think CCC is.

EDIT: appears the new beta version of CCC is in fact a UB.
 
You can also clone an entire volume or device using dd at the command line:

dd if=/path/to/device of=/path/to/image conv=sync,noerr

For example, if I want to make a block level clone of my external disk located at /dev/disk1s2 I would use

dd if=/dev/disk1s2 of=myDisk.img conv=sync,noerr

To find what /dev/disk* matches a mounted volume, use the command df.

The of= option could also point to another device to make a block-level clone of one disk onto another disk.

conv=sync,noerr forces dd to pad bad blocks with zeros and continue reading, rather than failing. This is useful if you need to recover data off of a failing disk.

There is, however, a caveat when using this method with GPT partitioned disks . GPT (GUID Partition Table) is used on EFI based Macs, and tags every disk with a Globally Unique Identifier. This GUID is used by the firmware to identify boot devices. If you make a block-level clone of a disk, it also copies the GUID. If you do not then change the GUID of the copy, the Mac may randomly decide to boot from the clone rather than the original.

If you are just creating an image for the purposes of restoring with Disk Utility, you don't really need to worry about the GUID.
 
My understanding is that SuperDuper! is free as long as all you want to do is clone your drive. But if you want a "smarter" version of SuperDuper!, you'll have to drop the $28 to get it.

Am I wrong about that?
 
epochblue said:
My understanding is that SuperDuper! is free as long as all you want to do is clone your drive. But if you want a "smarter" version of SuperDuper!, you'll have to drop the $28 to get it.

Am I wrong about that?
Click to expand...

No you are correct.

Paying for it adds a scheduling function and incremental (they call it "smart") backup.
 
yellow said:
No you are correct.

Paying for it adds a scheduling function and incremental (they call it "smart") backup.
Click to expand...
Actually, SuperDuper's Smart Copy feature isn't what I think of an incremental backup. Correct me if I'm wrong - I thought an incremental backup was a partial backup containing only the changes, and needing to be applied to the last full backup as well as all the incrementals before it to do a full restore. Smart Copy, on the other hand, is more like a modified full backup, in that it creates a restorable full backup while only altering what's changed.
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
Actually, SuperDuper's Smart Copy feature isn't what I think of an incremental backup. Correct me if I'm wrong - I thought an incremental backup was a partial backup containing only the changes, and needing to be applied to the last full backup as well as all the incrementals before it to do a full restore. Smart Copy, on the other hand, is more like a modified full backup, in that it creates a restorable full backup while only altering what's changed.
Click to expand...

Technically you're correct, but since SD isn't a backup software perse, it's a cloner. But we all call it backup software. The "smart" backup only changes the files that have been changed since it's last full clone. So, call it a partial clone, or an incremental clone. In this age of personal computing, people using secondary/tertiary/etc disks for "backup", I think the correct terminology has been lost in translation. Personally, I'll still call it an incremental backup and most people will know exactly what I mean.
 
yellow said:
Technically you're correct, but since SD isn't a backup software perse, it's a cloner. But we all call it backup software. The "smart" backup only changes the files that have been changed since it's last full clone. So, call it a partial clone, or an incremental clone. In this age of personal computing, people using secondary/tertiary/etc disks for "backup", I think the correct terminology has been lost in translation. Personally, I'll still call it an incremental backup and most people will know exactly what I mean.
Click to expand...
Agreed there :)

I use SuperDuper myself, and highly recommend it. It's the only Mac OS X cloning software I know of that preserves all metadata. :D
 
I used to be a big fan of CCC, but the last time I needed it, neither the new version nor the last version worked properly. So I tried SuperDuper. Damn slow, but it worked, and skipped the right files with no fuss.
 
GeeYouEye said:
I used to be a big fan of CCC, but the last time I needed it, neither the new version nor the last version worked properly. So I tried SuperDuper. Damn slow, but it worked, and skipped the right files with no fuss.
Click to expand...
I've been using ccc with no problems at all to back up the following:
- PowerMac G4
- PowerBook G4
- Intel iMac

What didn't work with your copy?

What computer were you trying to backup?
 
getting a mac book in two months,
Would this be a good way to backup?
Considering a 160gb internal hdd,
would it work?
Every saturday clone the hard drive to a usb one and delete the old version using ccc,
if there is a problem with the internal,(virus from windows?),boot from the external and clone back to the internal.
would it clone other partitions or ntfs partitions?
If i wanted to boot from the external,should i get usb or firewire400 hdd?
 
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