Comments on: HOWTO – Clone your Mac OS X hard drive

By: Mario

Mario — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 21:39:40 +0000

Thanks for these tips. You helped me

By: Adrian Hoe

Adrian Hoe — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:13:45 +0000

Jeremy,

I am sorry because for some reasons I am still using Leopard. This could be a bug of some sort. Perhaps you should try Apple’s forum.

If you have found a solution, please share it here.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 10:32:33 +0000

It’s the Snow Leopard 10.6.2.

By: Adrian Hoe

Adrian Hoe — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:46:25 +0000

Hi Jeremy,

This is strange. Which version is your OS?

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:06:43 +0000

Hi Adrian
My problem is slightly different. I got my hard disk upgraded to a 500GB from a 120GB, and got my previous OS cloned over. However, the OS doesn’t recognise that I’ve got 500GB, and only recognises 120GB. Disk Utility does recognise it, but I am unable to partition it or do anything with the other free space, getting “MediaKit reports partition (map) too small” as the response. Thanks for any advice you can give!

By: Adonis

Adonis — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:52:51 +0000

Actually the Restore function of Disk Utility (as Mary mentioned) uses asr under the hood. Thus you can simply use that. (It also has the erase option which as pointed out will automatically bless a copied volume/image. The only “gotcha” is that you CANNOT copy/restore, with asr or Disk Utility, an entire drive, but only a volume at a time).

By: orbosphere

orbosphere — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:00:29 +0000

Thanks a ton, this got me out of a jam twice now.

By: Mary

Mary — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:25:26 +0000

Why don’t you just use Restore from Disk Utility? It’s built right into the OS and doesn’t require getting a text string typed in correctly to work?

By: Tan Yock Pon

Tan Yock Pon — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 13:29:40 +0000

Adrian,
Does that mean I can use your cloned USB Hard Disk on the PC also?I am getting to know Hackintosh.Are you free to help my school, SJKC TING HWA 3351432 to start a Homepage.We will be able to pay some coffee money.I lost your number,sensei.
Tan Yock Pon 15-02-2009

By: Adrian Hoe

Adrian Hoe — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:33:04 +0000

Hauns,

There are a number of reason to clone your hard disk. First reason will be the upgrading of your hard disk. By cloning your hard disk, you get an exact replica of your old bootable Mac volume and all the applications and data onto your new hard disk.

Second reason is you want to have entire hard disk backup; your bootable volume, applications and data. So when your hard disk fails, just plugin the new one and off you go.

The list goes on as far as your creativity can go.

By: hauns

hauns — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:32:38 +0000

great tip.

however, what is wrong using disk utility.app’s restore functionality? is it because for disk utility route one needs to boot from a system disk and for this method you can work off the local disk (that needs to be cloned)?

By: Joshua

Joshua — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:00:53 +0000

Filenames with spaces may also be enclosed in single quote marks on the command line. For example,

% sudo asr –source ‘/Volumes/OSX BOOT VOLUME NAME/’ –target ‘/Volumes/TARGET VOLUME NAME/’

Hopefully that displays correctly in all languages !

By: Ben Ford

Ben Ford — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:53:00 +0000

From the manpage:

–updatebless When performing a non-erase restore,
–updatebless will update the appropriate
information required for the restored volume to
boot if the source image is bootable (equiva-
lent to sudo bless –mount –setBoot).

By: Adrian Hoe

Adrian Hoe — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 04:27:19 +0000

Thank you Tokyo Mac.

By: Tokyo Mac

Tokyo Mac — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 01:21:46 +0000

sorry, I am in Japan .. the keyboard “backslash” appears as a yen symbol online – please edit this comment !

By: Tokyo Mac

Tokyo Mac — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 01:19:50 +0000

Very useful, thankyou. As fyi to others, my source and target volumes have spaces in the name, which I have to “escape” with the backslash. I.e.,

% sudo asr --source /Volumes/OSX\ BOOT\ VOLUME\ NAME/ --target /Volumes/TARGET\ VOLUME\ NAME/

( MacOS 10.5.4, Power PC )

By: Ranjit

Ranjit — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 01:17:42 +0000

Hi,

Thanks for the tips. Nice blog too.

By: dragon

dragon — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:54:39 +0000

Thanks bro, you saved my day. I don’t have to search the web for how to clone my hard disk.

I bought a new 250GB drive to upgrade my new MacBook. Yes, I upgraded to a new MacBook 2.4GHz. I wanted to clone my “old” hard disk so that I could install Tiger on the old hard disk and had Leopard on my new hard disk. I wanted to be able to boot from my old hard disk (Tiger) from USB. And this has saved me a lot of time. This method also lets me test the newly cloned hard disk before I swapped the hard drive.

龙

By: Jonathan Collins

Jonathan Collins — Sun, 25 May 2008 10:55:12 +0000

Adrian, thanks for tips. I am a brand new Mac user (couple of days old) and your blog has provided a lot of useful information about using a Mac.

Jon C.