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Cloning boot SSD

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Whitefalcon70

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 8, 2017
2
0
Hi all, first post here!
I currently have a 850 EVO SSD as my boot drive in my Mac Pro 5,1. It is plugged into a drive bay. I’d like to upgrade to a blade drive on a PCIE adaptor.
Can I clone my boot drive (El Capitan) so I don’t have to re-install eveything from scratch?
Any advice would be great!
Thanks
 
Whitefalcon70 said:
Hi all, first post here!
I currently have a 850 EVO SSD as my boot drive in my Mac Pro 5,1. It is plugged into a drive bay. I’d like to upgrade to a blade drive on a PCIE adaptor.
Can I clone my boot drive (El Capitan) so I don’t have to re-install eveything from scratch?
Any advice would be great!
Thanks
Click to expand...
Yes, you can. After installing the new PCI drive and initializing the SSD, download Carbon Copy Cloner and clone the SSD in the drive bay to the PCI based SSD. CCC should also pop up a window and offer to clone the recovery partition, something no other utility does (AFAIK). You can use CCC in demonstration mode for 30 days, but personally I consider it well worth the price! https://bombich.com/
 
I'll third that recommendation. I use CC Cloner to clone my SSD every night to a small volume on a mounted HDD. I also use it to back up my files onto a removable USB HD which I store off-site.
 
DPUser said:
Anybody using SuperDuper these days? It's been working fine for me.
Click to expand...

Yes! I use SuperDuper every day to perform scheduled backups of my main Sierra drive. It's like set it and forget it. It keeps an exact (bootable) backup volume of my main drive. If I need to clone a drive I like to use CCC because it will also clones the Recovery Partition. But for everyday backups SuperDuper works awesome with a scheduled backup.
 
pixelatedscraps said:
I second CCC, it’s awesome and saves so much time.
Click to expand...
CCC is the only way to go! Have been using it for years. I use TimeMachine, but also clone. It can clone incrementally. It also manages the Recovery Partition. I keep my clones updated every few days.
Recovery from clones is MUCH faster than TimeMachine.
 
like others said yes you can I've been using carbon copy cloner since it came out in 2002 saves me lots of time.
Back in the Os9 days you could just format the drive a copy the system over real simple. but if you were using non apple hard drives in the pre new world rom boxes you had to use hard drive toolkit to format them those were the days hehe
 
Last edited:
For 2.5 SSD to PCIE adaptor, any recommendation for the adaptor? I found that OCW has one the claimed compatible to cMP without any driver needed. However it is much more expensive. If I just buy a random cheap adaptor, will it work on CMP 5,1?
 
Carbon Copy Cloner is absolutely a life saver and highly recommended.

I have Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 and Apricorn Velocity Duo X2 cards for SSDs in my 5,1 at the moment. If you can still find them being sold anywhere, they work well. Aside from the OWC Accelsior, the Sonnet Tempo was another card some have recommended. Think it's overpriced at many retailers, however.
 
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I'm not sure if anyone has tried this yet, but for a standalone solution, I've used a hardware sata drive duplicator when upgrading my wife's storage. They're not that expensive and the time saved alone can be worth the price of the device. Plus it works as an external usb 3.0 drive mount when connected to a computer.

Another method that's completely free is clonezilla live cd. You can just attach the new drive and quickly clone the entire drive. It supports usb and firewire too so you don't even have to open the case.

These solutions are great for one time operations, but for regular backups, I think the ones posted above are far superior.
 
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