Request for a 10.14/10.15 post-install Laptop Bootable USB CCC Clone Drive guide

[jj662]

I have been digging like my pug in the backyard through various postings and it seems like the bones are buried here and there, with some of them not really correct because they are for desktops with two or more SSD drives inside them. It's just odd I am not finding the right bone yet.

It would be nice to have a Mojave/Catalina post-installation guide for cloning a hackbook/laptop to an external drive using CCC with describing how to best handle steps from start to finish:

• USB 3.0 (or thunderbolt) external drive commissioning covering proper initiation using Disk Utility
• EFI mounting and configuration
• Clover Bootloader specifically for USB clone post installation backup
• Clover Configurator to clone the EFI from System drive to EFI Clone drive
• CCC5 (or SuperDuper, etc) use for cloning original System drive
• Booting testing
• Periodic updates to the hackbook Clone

Please point me at a posting if you know where it's at or if I am making this WAY too complicated at this point.

Don't get me wrong, I am VERY appreciative for all the help!

I would not be writing this on my hackbook without all the help to date.

 

[Las_Vegas]

Really, a CCC or Superduper clone to a GPT Formatted external drive should boot as an option in Clover. While its not required, you would have to manually copy the EFI folder from the boot drive to the external drive from Terminal:

diskutil list
sudo mkdir /Volumes/EFI
sudo mount_msdos /dev/diskXs1 /Volumes/EFI
sudo mkdir /Volumes/EFI\ 1
sudo mount_msdos /dev/diskYs1 /Volumes/EFI\ 1
sudo cp -r /Volumes/EFI/EFI /Volumes/EFI\ 1/

Where 'X' and 'Y' represent the respective drive numbers from the 'diskutil list' command.

If you wish to also clone the Recovery partition, I recommend using Paragons, 'Hard Disk Manager' to shrink your Mac OS partition and copy the Recovery partition from your boot drive to your external. This could also be done from Terminal, but I wouldn't recommend it...

To test your EFI copy, use the Boot Menu command (usually 'f9') from your computer's Post screen to select the USB, or configure your computer to boot from USB first.

LasVegas

EDIT: I just noticed @wombat94 has already posted a script to automate this process here.

 

[jj662]

Yep, the working Mojave hackbook System drive's EFI was mounted using Clover Configurator along with mounting the hidden external USB EFI.

I copied the files from the System EFI (working Mojave 10.14.6) to the external USB EFI with:

• Finder, then I used
• Clover Configurator to Clone the EFI System to the external USB EFI,
• and just now under a suggestion from someone else in a different post, I initiated the external USB EFI using the latest Clover Bootloader.

I also selected F12 (that's how to get the boot drive changed on Lenovo) and selected the USB drive for booting. The USB drive is an older spinning 350GB Maxtor passport like drive.

In all cases I see in Clover both my System hackbook drive, as well as my external USB Clone. When selecting the external USB Clone, the screen changes from the bootloader, to that familiar APPLE LOGO we all love, but there it just sticks and isn't any progress bar. It just sits there for minutes and minutes, nothing happens, no slider goes from left to right.

Blaming the USB, I even went to a second USB external drive (a 1TB spinning Buffalo drive that was laying around) reformatting it for APFS (Disk Utility GUID to create the hidden EFI by default)

Was I supposed to do a specific build of the EFI partition when setting up GUID and APFS during formatting of the drive? It is created using FAT32 and is about 300MB in size. Certainly enough for the EFI hackbook file folders from my working laptop. I just had it assign the entire external drive as APFS, however I just saw something on a website from a couple of years ago on High Sierra saying that I should not have had Disk Utility create the entire drive as APFS, that I should have held some other bits aside? Perhaps we have all moved on since then and this info is old. I was able to get into the 300MB FAT32 EFI that was created on both external USB drives without any issues.

So I am still stuck at the APPLE LOGO screen without a progress bar when booting to either of my Cloned USB External drives that are identical to my System SSD in the Hackbook.