Comments on: Exactly cloning a MacBook Pro's HD

Question: Exactly cloning a MacBook Pro's HD

lorimer — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 18:52:37 -0800

I need to make an exact clone of a MacBook Pro drive onto an external (fw) drive, which will then be used as the MBP's internal drive.

[Asking for a friend, thanks!]
So Carbon Copy Cloner has been highly recommended in other posts here. CCC's main page says it's not Intel compatible (runs under Rosetta) and they include a warning about using PPC-created drives with Intel systems -- but as far as I understand, it would still be safe for my process. If people here can confirm that CCC is the right solution, I'll just go with that.

The current internal drive (factory supplied) is 80GB. The replacement I got is a 160GB, 5400rpm Toshiba (the biggest capacity I could get on newegg).

Currently I've got the 160GB drive in a firewire enclosure. The only thing I've done with it is use Disk Utility to format it & verify it (using my current MBP). When I'm done with this cloning process I'll just switch them physically, so I have a 160GB internal and an 80GB external drive.

Yes, I want to clone my existing drive (rather than do a fresh OS install on the new one and have to redo all the extra stuff I've done). Thanks!

By: lalochezia

lalochezia — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 18:54:19 -0800

SuperDuper!

By: trevyn

trevyn — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 19:05:46 -0800

Yes, CCC will work fine in your situation; it basically acts as a front-end to preinstalled file copy utilities, and the PPC/Intel thing does not affect you, as you pointed out.

SuperDuper apparently copies some metadata more accurately, but this doesn't really matter unless you know it matters. I do want to point out that SD can be used without payment for simple whole-drive clones like yours.

By: Armitage Shanks

Armitage Shanks — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 19:07:59 -0800

SuperDuper.

By: Admiral Haddock

Admiral Haddock — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 19:40:19 -0800

Yes, Super Duper. I did this little procedure with my stock 80 gig MacBook drive to the same 160 gig Toshiba, with no problems other than the clone stalled the first time after about two or three hours, and I had to do it again. Worked like a charm the second time. The 80 gig is now in the external housing as a backup drive.

By: lorimer

lorimer — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 20:45:54 -0800

Huh... if "SuperDuper apparently copies some metadata more accurately" than CCC, that tells me that neither produces an exact clone.

What's more, SuperDuper's advertised screen shot says the cloning process will copy all files "except the temporary and system-specific files Apple recommends excluding." -- I mean, sure, discard temp files, but system files? Or by system-specific does it mean *hardware* specific??

Maybe it is useful to just trust other people's experiences (especially Admiral Haddock's!).

By: birdherder

birdherder — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 21:31:41 -0800

I use CCC without any problems on my MBP. If it did mess up some metadata, I've yet to discover it.

By: lorimer

lorimer — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 03:18:10 -0800

Report from the front: SuperDuper took 75 mins to clone c. 35GB, then when the MBP was booted from the external drive it looked/worked precisely the same. Thanks folks!

By: Orb2069

Orb2069 — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 07:01:53 -0800

I just (this weekend) copied the HD in my (G3/700, Dual USB) laptop by mounting the new HD in my G3 tower with an adaptor, attaching the laptop in Target mode via firewire and just using the system disk utility to transfer the OS X and OS 9 partitions. Put the new hard drive in and started it up right where it crashed the night before, right down to the firefox session.

Not so sure CCC/SuperDuper is all that necessary.

By: 31d1

31d1 — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 07:55:21 -0800

if you are comfortable with (one) command line, maybe use asr. It works great - not incremental - but creates a perfect bootable backup. it will write over the whole volume you point it at so its best if you set up a partition on the external drive the same size as the source drive.

man asr

and then

asr restore --source / --target /Volumes/[mounted drive ] --erase

takes about 3 hours and 10 mins to clone my 80 gig drive, and even if you set --verbose it doesnt say much, but it works like a champ, takes care of resource forks and stuff.

and then the same command with source and target reversed will put everything back.