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Drive cloning

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mmdmurphy

mmdmurphy

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Jul 17, 2016
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What's the best way to clone a drive - INCLUDING Clover and all the configs I've set?

I learned how NOT to, I cloned with SuperDuper! and system wouldn't boot to the clone. I'd like to make more of an exact copy so that the bootloader, etc. comes over. Suggestions? I'd be glad to RTFM if someone can point me to it.
 
mmdmurphy said:
What's the best way to clone a drive - INCLUDING Clover and all the configs I've set?

I learned how NOT to, I cloned with SuperDuper! and system wouldn't boot to the clone. I'd like to make more of an exact copy so that the bootloader, etc. comes over. Suggestions? I'd be glad to RTFM if someone can point me to it.
Click to expand...

There is no cloning solution that you run as an OSX app that automically copies EFI partition. You have to manually copy the EFI folder from your original to your clone. It's very simple to do. Read any official OS X update thread and the mods detail the process.

If you don't care about backing up your EFI partition, you continue to boot from your original drive, but just select your clone drive at Clover boot if you want to boot into your clone. The Clover boot drive does not have to be on the physical drive that you want to boot to. Clover can live on any drive in your system and it will always display all bootable drives regardless of which drive it is installed on. For example, I boot to a RAID 0 array so I added a small m.2 SSD drive to my system and use that as my permanent Clover boot drive.

Edit - corrected
 
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mmdmurphy said:
What's the best way to clone a drive - INCLUDING Clover and all the configs I've set?

I learned how NOT to, I cloned with SuperDuper! and system wouldn't boot to the clone. I'd like to make more of an exact copy so that the bootloader, etc. comes over. Suggestions? I'd be glad to RTFM if someone can point me to it.
Click to expand...
The easiest way to clone a drive is to boot a Live Linux DVD and use terminal

Code: 
dd if=/dev/ad0 of=/dev/ad1 bs=1M conv=noerror

will copy exactly hard drive ad0 to hard drive ad1. This is essentially what Clonezilla does.

note if ad0 is 500GB and ad1 is 1TB you will have 500GB of free space on the drive.
 
Note: You also have the option to backup and restore individual partitions with Clonezilla. Clonezilla is a little more elegant then straight dd. With straight dd you don't have any progress indicator (unless there's a switch you can add?), you'll also manually have to run the file system integrity check prior to running it. With Clonezilla you'll have the option to run the file system check prior to it starting the backup as well as telling it to check the integrity of the backup when completed all in one full swoop. Just easier for the enduser to work with in my opinion. :)
 
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How to clone an OSX disk:

1] Create a Clonezilla CD or USB stick.
2] Make sda0 the source disk in the PC (typically SATA 0)
3] Make sdb0 the target disk (typically SATA 1)
4] Boot into the Clonezilla CD or USB
5] Do a disk to disk physical copy. (basically what Linux 'dd if= of=' command does)
6] After it has finished copying the disk, at the appropriate Clonezilla prompt select the shutdown option.
7] Pull the AC cord, remove the old disk (and store it securely), move the sdb0 disk to the sda0 position.
8] Insert the UniBeast/MultiBeast USB stick originally used to install OSX
9] Insert AC cord, power up PC, hit the keyboard F-Key to allow boot selection, boot into the USB stick.
10] Log into OSX as usual, run MultiBeast, go to the Bootloader tab, select the bootloader type, hit the Build button, hit the Install button.
11] Shutdown the PC, pull the USB stick, store the USB stick in a secure container and location. (Treat it like gold; which it is.)
12] Power up the PC and boot as usual.

If your PC is the type that sometimes boots up after shutting down, then be safe, pull the AC cord, remove the USB, connect the AC cord, boot as usual.

Do NOT over-write the old OSX drive for at least 30 days, preferably not before 3 months. After 3 months you may want to turn it into a Time Machine drive.
 
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Going Bald said:
note if ad0 is 500GB and ad1 is 1TB you will have 500GB of free space on the drive.
Click to expand...

Does the Disk Utility partition tab allow re-sizing the partition by extending the bottom 'window shade'? If not, if one installs the HFS+ r/w utility into Windows, can Windows Administrator Tasks, Computer Management, Storage, allow re-sizing the partition so that it uses the rest of the drive?

[edit]
And the answer is that El Cap & Sierra cannot resize a disk, but 10.5.8< probably can. (I didn't want to remove the disk, walk it over to my G5, install it in a caddy, and try to re-size it.)

Although.. https://www.lifewire.com/resize-mac-disk-utility-volume-os-x-el-capital-later-3573395 says
Only drives formatted using the GUID Partition Map can be resized without losing data.
Click to expand...

I tried GParted and it couldn't "really" do it, but KParted allowed me to re-size the disk to two partitions.
 
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In-N-Out said:
Not true. You can use Clonezilla for this task. https://sourceforge.net/projects/clonezilla/
Click to expand...

This 100%.

Clonezilla will copy everything, bit by bit, including the EFI partitions.

What I do is I have my macOS drive (mini PCIe SSD) and a regular Samsung SSD of the same size (they HAVE to match sizes)...so in my case 512GB.

I made a Clonezilla USB stick and taped it inside my case.

I clone my main macOS SSD to my Samsung SSD every few months to make sure I have a "safe" SSD in case anything goes wrong. It takes but about 15 mins to clone about 400GB SSD.

I keep the cloned SSDs SATA power cable off so I can connect it back and boot off of it in case of emergency. Easy when the panel slides right off.

I also have a Time Machine setup with an internal 2TB HDD to keep the main drive backed up with the latest data.

Best solution I've found.

Safety note about Clonezilla:
If your "clone" drive is smaller than your master drive, you will run into issues. I was never able to clone to a smaller drive, even if the source data was smaller. I just made sure both drives are exactly the same size. There's an option in Clonezilla to restore to a different sized drive but it never worked for me.

Also make sure that you pick the correct drives when you're cloning or you will lose all data on your source drive. Write down the serial numbers of your SSDs if they are identical in terms of the model, so you know exactly which is the source and which is the clone drive.

Also make sure to run "First Aid" on your source macOS drive before doing any cloning to repair issues. DON'T use the repair in Clonezilla.
 
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There is a low cost hardware solution that I have used off and on for years.

A SATA driver duplicator. The target drive has to be equal to or greater then the source drive. This is a single button press and wait for completion. You can go from 3.5" drives to 2.5" or the other way around. SSDs can also be duplicated.

The down side of this solution for some is that you have to handle the drives.

The system that I have is: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ry_dual_drive_dock-_-9SIA3X52592453-_-Product

Good modding,
neil
 
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