Disk cloning failure

[PhillT]

I tried to clone a HDD to another HDD using Disk Utility and got an unexpected "operation failed" message.

Message reads,.........The volume on device "dev/disk5" is not of type Apple_HFS or Apple_UFS.
Could not validate source – Device not configured.
The operation couldn't be completed. (OSStatus error 6)

The source drive is a physical disk5. It has two partitions. Container disk6 on one partition, and container disk7 on the other partition.
The drive is GUID Partition Map. The two containers are both APFS.

The destination drive is a physical disk10. It has one partition, which holds Container disk11.
The drive is GUID Partition Map. The Container is APFS.

Both drives are 2TB. The destination drive is freshly formatted.

I have to admit that I find the APFS containers and volumes thing more than a little confusing, despite reading up on the subject, however, a couple of hours prior to this issue arising, I restored another HDD from a SSD, using the exact same procedure, and it worked. The drives involved in that exercise were both APFS & GUID Partition Map.

What am I missing?

 

[Bigwaff]

I tried to clone a HDD to another HDD using Disk Utility and got an unexpected "operation failed" message.

Message reads,.........The volume on device "dev/disk5" is not of type Apple_HFS or Apple_UFS.
Could not validate source – Device not configured.
The operation couldn't be completed. (OSStatus error 6)

Is your source drive a boot drive w/ macOS on it? I don't think Disk Utility will clone the Recovery Partition on the source.

 

[PhillT]

I cloned the boot drive with disk utility a week ago, no issues at all.
The source in this case has an OS on one partition.

 

[Grumpus]

In my experience, cloning drives using disk utility will always fail unless the destination drive is formatted with a single HFS+ partition. I suggest erasing the destination drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), GUID Partition Map, then right-click the resulting single partition and select Restore and go through the steps. I'm usually cloning the OS drive while booted into Recovery, but I don't think that's necessary for what you're trying to do.

 

[PhillT]

In my experience, cloning drives using disk utility will always fail unless the destination drive is formatted with a single HFS+ partition. I suggest erasing the destination drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), GUID Partition Map, then right-click the resulting single partition and select Restore and go through the steps. I'm usually cloning the OS drive while booted into Recovery, but I don't think that's necessary for what you're trying to do.

That is something I didn't know. I'll try that tomorrow.

 

[Grumpus]

I should also point out that my experiences cloning this way have been confined to Monterey. YMMV with other versions of macOS.

 

[PhillT]

Monterey is what I am using, via OCLP. (old mac)