Cloning entire hard drive to an external hard drive

Hi,
Recently I bought 2 identical WD Scorpio Blue 1TB hard drives for my macbook pro 13 inch 2010. My aim is to replace the internal hard drive with one of the two I just purchased and use it as my system drive with Lion, Windows and Data partitions. And for the other hard drive I want to use it as a full disk back up for the internal drive (now 1TB hard drive).
After I was done with setting up both windows and mac and data transfer, when I booedt into the recovery partition from the internal drive to clone the drive to the external drive, the disk utility gave me this error (Could not validate source - error 254). I also tried using Carbon Copy Cloner but it only could clone partitions, not the entire drive. Yesterday I downloaded a copy of Clonezilla. It worked fine until it had to clone an exFAT partition (my data partition). The exFAT partition appeared as 'RAW' partition in clonezilla. As a result, the whole partition appeared to be full and clonezilla had to copy every single blocks of data in that partition and the estimated time remaining was about 30 hours. So clonezilla is out too.
Just want to ask if there is any program/application (bootable or not) which allows can do a full disk clone to an external hard drive.
Thanks.

To my knowledge there is no way to Clone the complete drive when it contains both OS X and Windows.
Would be real nice if there was.
Actually there is No way to even clone the complete drive it is just contains OS X Lion and the recovery HD partition. You have to do it in 2 steps, except if you use Time Machine. But then TM really only put a copy of the recovery HD on the TM backup drive.

Similar Messages

Can somebody please advise urgently... I backed up my entire hard-drive of my macbook pro - just prior to installing osx mountain lion. I put everything into a folder on my desktop - then backed it up onto an external drive. Once this was done - i deleted

Can somebody please advise urgently...
I backed up my entire hard-drive of my macbook pro - just prior to installing osx mountain lion.
I put everything into a folder on my desktop - then backed it up onto an external drive. Once this was done - i deleted the folder off my desktop - and following this - things started to go all weird...pages hanging, the coloured 'wheel of death' appeared for ages. So i had to employ a 'hard-boot' restart - as i had not other options.
I'm pretty sure i made copies of of files/apps/folders etc - however not so sure now as i cant even start up my laptop!!!
Can somebosy please help me urgently??!!!

Got the exact same problem, and I also did this operation many times before, from 500Gb to 750Gb, and then from 750Gb to 1 Gb. Not My HD got a little such complaining about bad sectors when in windows bootcamp, but still runs fine though.
So I bought a new 1Gb drive exactly same drive as the one thats getting sick. I did the clone thing, with super duper, CCC, DU, but no matter it will not boot when i move the new drive inside the macbook…….**** thing exuse me, but wasted so much time.
Now I get this strange feeling that something must have changed in the macbook itself. Just wondering if this could be a EFI "mac bios" prevention thing, they made just to sell more new computers, when you can't improve or fix your old one.
If so, then its pretty scary. If not then I simply can't figure out why this suddenly becomes a problem for so many people, as I see so many posts about this!!
BR Pete

How can I restore Windows 7 to Bootcamp partition - not reformat the entire hard drive?

Hello Apple (Mac) Community,
I originally posted this question over on answers.microsoft, but no help was forthcoming. Hope someone can help me with a problem that's (almost) making me nuts! I teach graphics to college students. In brief: I run Windows 7 Pro 64 on a Mac Pro tower, along with Snow Leopard (OSX). Windows is loaded on one partition of a 1TB drive. The other partition is a Mac backup. The Mac OS is on a different drive. Everything was going swimmingly with both OS, until recently. Unfortunately, the drive with Windows showed problems and I determined that the HD was either toast or needed a total reformat. My Mac data was all backed-up. Now I wanted to backup Windows so I can easily get back to the relatively happy point of my Windows 7 experience (drivers loaded, dual monitors all working, etc.). I did some online searching and the recommendation was to create a "system image" of the existing Windows 7 install by attaching an external drive, formatting that to NTFS and selecting "backup to image" in Windows. I did that and also took the opportunity to "create a backup disc" on a DVD. (Windows recommended). Next I rebooted back to Mac OS and completely reformatted the problem 1TB disc to a single partition, zero all data, just to see if it would actually reformat. It all worked! So far, so good. Next I used Bootcamp to create two partitions, one for Windows. I then restarted using the Win7 Pro (64) install disc, reformatted the Bootcamp disk to NTFS (as required) and installed Windows 7. After all that is completed and all working, I next try to use the restore from image function while booted in Windows. I'm instructed to restart from the Win install disc, which I do. Here's where things get difficult. When I try to choose restore from image, at that point the installer asks which drives to I want to exclude... but does not show partitions, only full HDs. I do not want to reformat the entire 1TB drive. I only want Windows on the 120gb Bootcamp partition (which is already formatted for Windows BTW). I spent a lot of time online reading through articles with users having the same frustration.
So here (at long last) is my question: How can I either restore Windows just to a Bootcamp partition... using "Windows System Image" or if that can't be done... can I somehow import all of the settings, etc. from the "image" (image is on external HD) into a fresh Win 7 install? So far the "backup disc" also seems useless. I can't even boot to Windows from it. BTW Apple folks: the only response on the MS side was that some "expert" simply posted links on how to install Windows and restore... not helpful with my particular problem of restoring to a partition.
Any help would be appreciated! Hopefully some help that even a Mac user / new Windows user could understand would be better! Thanks!
-melt

WinClone 3 is OS X and saves Windows image it makes for restore - that should work but you will have to try and you would need to make a new image unless it also works with a native Windows system restore image. It is now supported and has come a long way.
http://www.twocanoes.com/
Paragon Clone OS works and does disk-to-disk clone just like CCC you end up with two bootable drives. But does not work with your setup. It would let you clone and move your Windows install to an SSD or another disk drive though and be bootable.
During its clone process it checks for errors which is very helpful and lets you know - something CCC and others should adopt more of.
http://www.paragon-software.com/downloads/demo.html
I wish for our/my sake you had re-read and rewritten the long 'story' and broken it into a brief list of facts we needed.
OS X
Windows
Backup (though external is much safer) and you want bootable OS X clones as well as TimeMachine
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1553
There are a number of things to do like chkdsk and others as well as Windows DVD to do automatic system repairs and find out why.
AppleHFS - the abilty to mount and read HFS volumes can be notorious.
I would rearrange and redo your storage setup and how you use the 4-5 internal hard drive bays.

Can i copy my entire hard drive from one computer to another?

I am buying a used ibook 900gh 640ram 40gb hd using 300mh clamshell now - i would like to copy my entire hard drive from the clamshell to the new ibook OS and all so when i use it everything will look and work exactly like it does on the clamshell - can i do this easily? disc copy when booted from a CD?

Hi, not on Tiger at the moment, so I can't be certain, but...
I may be wrong, but I thought the Networked Mac only came about in Leopard's Migration assistant.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1554
Setup Assistant, included with computers that have Mac OS X 10.3.4 or later preinstalled, can transfer data (including account settings and home folders) from a previous Mac (that's using Mac OS X 10.1 or later) to your newer computer. You'll need a FireWire cable to connect the two computers together. The Assistant offers to transfer (or "migrate") data from your older computer when you turn on your new computer for the first time. Make sure the older computer's firmware is up-to-date first.
The only way I see this is going to happen is with a USB/FW external drive, and painfully Clone the Clamshell via USB 1.1 to the external drive, move the drive to the iBook and connect via FW.
More info...
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2005/05/17/tiger.html

Using Disk Utility to Clone/Duplicate entire hard drive.

I have read many post that touch on this question but none have cleared up my questions, and many have just lead to more questions on my part.
I want to use the included Disk Utility program to copy my entire hard drive to another.
Because I only plan on backing up the entire drive once or twice a year, I do not feel I need Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper. Also I would like to understand how to accomplish this with the application I already have.
Having read all the help pages and posts I can find, I understand the general concept of using the "Restore" function in DU, but have these questions still:
1. My current HD is a 250GB partitioned with one volume "Macintosh HD" I am going to install another 250GB hard drive into bay 2. Do I need to partition this drive first?
2. Do I need to format this drive?
3. Do I need to erase this drive?
4. Do I need to use the security feature to "Zero" this drive?
5. It seems to me that if I am doing a bit for bit clone the partitioning and format from the source drive would just come over in the copy...no?
6. As the source for the "Restore" do I want to select the parent 250GB disk drive, or should I select the "Macintosh HD" volume?
7. As the destination for the "Restore" (if I had to partition and format) do I want the new 250GB drive or the "Backup" volume?
8. If I have to partition and format the new drive first, I understand that I want the GUID partition table and the MAC OS Extended (journaled), can someone explain what the heck that means?

I apologize for missing that part of the intro.
For a new drive here's the modified procedure I suggest:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

Will it wipe my entire hard drive by installing lion?

will it wipe my entire hard drive by installing lion?

And backing up is so simple. Buy an external Firewire hard drive, (not expensive but get one that will boot a Mac, like LaCie) format it as GUI in Disc Utility, download Carbon Copy Cloner (free, donations accepted) (or SuperDuper although I have not used that) and schedule a bootable clone for 9 am every day. That way, if you have trouble you can clone back the backup to your internal and be back where you were at 9 am - all documents, applications, settings, pictures, movies etc. etc. Everything.
(I tried restoring from the Recovery drive an TimeMachine but many of my Mail emails did not return.)

Cloned my hard drive. now acrobat won't work. just opens for 7 seconds and then closes itself. huh?

Anybody got a clue why acrobat wont work after cloning entire computer to a new hard drive?
I 'repaired ' the installation and rebooted twice.
Acrobat just shuts down after 5-10 seconds.
I need help.
-Steve

Mavericks is free but a jump from 10.6 to 10.9 might break a lot of other software (particularly if running any PPC-only generation software) which could be costly to replace. Yes, it will have to be done someday but if the OP's computer holds out a few more years then the OP will have saved buying all the Mavericks generation software that will be broken when OS 12.2 comes out and can make the jump directly.
So says somebody who still runs a G4 with iTunes 7.5 and is not looking forward to the day it dies and has to buy the "newest and best".

How to share the entire hard drive with only one group

We want to share our entire hard drive with our staff, plus share Web folders with our customers plus the staff. We'd like our customers to have no permissions at all for the share point at the root of the drive, so it won't even be presented as a volume for them to mount.
The problem is that when we make the root of the drive a share point, we need to give read-only permissions to Everyone, or we break services. Read-only for Everyone makes our drive readable by any of our customers, which is obviously not good. This seems like it would be a common task for anyone running a server with customer folders on it. Is there a way to share the whole drive with our staff, and only our staff? Thanks.

First... You are not making your boot drive the share point are you????? Only share an entire drive if the drive is ONLY used for data (not OS).
You need to make mroe than one share point.
You can have one share point which is the Data drive and another share point which is the customer folder within.
You can have share points which exist within share points.
Jeff

Why is LV searching my entire hard drive for IBFS32.DLL?

My computer was bogged down this morning so I ran Process Monitor to find out what was going on. I found that LabVIEW 8.6 is looking for IBFS32.DLL and searching my entire hard drive. I searched with Windows Explorer and that file does not exist on my PC. Currently I have a LV project open along with several VI's. This has been going on for several hours now. Does anyone know how to resolve this?

Out of curiosity I took a look at the startup for a clean install of 8.6 that I have. I saw entries in ProcessMonitor where that specific DLL was being sought. The entries seemed to be in the neighborhood of the license manager, so it seems perfectly harmless. Perhaps you have a problem with your license manager service?

Encryption for the entire hard drive? (traveling with a MacBook Pro)

Is there a way to encrypt the entire hard drive? Maybe I am being too cautious. But I will traveling overseas for an extended period of time and I am curious to know if there is a way to secure my hard drive by encrypting it. Is there a built-in feature in the latest OS that allows me to do so? And if so, where can I get information on how to do it?
If there is a way to encrypt the entire drive, what are some trade-offs? How does it affect future software installation, software utilization (iTunes, iPhoto, Aperture 2, etc.), and so forth?
Thanks!

You can use FileVault to encrypt your data. Also, in System Preferences > Security, turn on "Use secure virtual memory". There is no reason to encrypt the system or applications.

Bios will not recognize the entire Hard Drive

I am running a MSI P7N SLI Platinum right out of the box. This is an entirely new build. For some reason when I go to install Windows XP, my entire hard drive space is not listed. My hard drive is 320GB and it will only recognize 130GB of it. How do I fix this problem. I am completely new at building a system so try and keep it simple please. I will admit that I am terrified at the idea of flashing my BIOS. I dont want to void the warranty nor do I want to destroy the board and have to buy a new one. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have listed my specs below.
Case: Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Power Supply: Thermaltake W0106RU Complies with ATX 12V 2.2 & EPS 12V version 700W Power Supply 100 - 240 V CE, CB, TUV, FCC, UL, CUL, and BSMI certified
Motherboard: MSI P7N SLI Platinum LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor
Video Card: MSI NX8800GT 512M OC GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
Memory: Corsair DDR2 XMS, 6400C5DHX (2 x 2GB) 4 GB 800mhz 5-5-5-18, 64 bit OS Quad
Hard Drive: Western Digital 320 GB SATA, 8MB Buffer, 7200RPM

Quote from: killiach on 01-April-08, 09:51:25
Oh, there is the rest of my Hard Drive. To allocate, I just right click and hit "New Partition" and follow the steps? Furthermore, do I need to make this an extended partition or primary? I am just going to use this larger partition for storing programs and games.
Also, my driver for my hard drive is 7 years old. Think I should update the driver?
"Also, my driver for my hard drive is 7 years old. Think I should update the driver?"
Nope, just install chipset drivers for your board.
"Oh, there is the rest of my Hard Drive. To allocate, I just right click and hit "New Partition" and follow the steps?"
Yes
"Furthermore, do I need to make this an extended partition or primary?"
Extended. When its done right click and format the newest partition in NTFS.

Please help me, I recently had to reset my computer and lost my entire hard

Hard drive. AFter getting the computer to work again, I reinstalled my Itunes software. I then wanted to transfer my music from my IPOD to my computer. I followed the step by step support instructions and after it told me to click "Consolidate library" nothing happened and i did not know what to do next. Now the music i had on my IPOD is gone and none of my songs are on my ITUNES. All the music i had on my IPOD were playlists. Please tell me there is a way to get my music back. I called Apple support and they told me to try here. I learned a painful lesson after losing my entire hard drive, to back stuff up. The only thing that survived was the music on my IPOD and now that's missing. I am sooo upset, please if anyone can help me recover my songs i would be so happy and appreciative. Thanks for any and all responses and help.

Thanks for reading my problem and taking the time to answer. The biggest crime of all, is that i followed APPLES SUPPORT page to the letter. It not only didn't help me, but it made my situation worse. Then i call apple to get help on a problem their own information caused, and they tell me i can pay something like $60.00, just to see if they could help. I asked the rep what happens if you can't resolve my issue, and the response was not good. SO basically they caused me to lose all my music and then ontop of that, they wanted to charge me $60.00 just to tell me that "yes your music is gone, and no we can't get it back." what a company. You are right about that long weekend with my cd's. Take care and have a great day.

AFP Mount NO OPTION to mount entire hard disk

After installing Leopard, I'm no longer able to mount using the AFP protocol the entire hard drive. Earlier, it would give me the option of mounting "Hard_Drive" or "User", but now somehow it only gives me the "User" mount option. I'm the super user/root so I don't understand.
Any ideas?

The reason seems to have been that somehow my account (I'm the only user) lost administrative access. I found the solution here. It works.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5645315&#5645315
=============
1. Shut down the computer if it is on.
2. Press the power button to start the computer.
3. Immediately press and hold the Command (Apple) key and one of the following:
the "s" key for single-user mode.
4. Type mount -uw /
5. Type passwd
6. Enter new password (this will be for the root user account)
7. Type reboot
8. Login with any of your usernames just to get the desktop up.
9. After desktop comes up choose System Preferences, then choose accounts. Unlock if you have to and using the username: root ..... password you just setup in the single user mode You now should be able to make users including the top user on the left an admin...
(just so everyone knows... I didn't realize from above post that I was supppose to unlock with the USERNAME: "root" instead of my own user name.
==========================

HT5628 Is it possible to format entire hard disk and install windows 8 only in mac mini?

Is it possible to format entire hard disk and install windows 8 only in mac mini?

You can, but it's not recommended. If you are going to use Windows all the time, at least give some GBs to OS X, because you will need it to install firmware updates.
Use Boot Camp Assistant to create a Windows partition. You can find it in /Applications/Utilities. Then, follow Apple's steps to install Windows 8 > http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/boot_camp_install-setup_10.8.pdf You must use a 64-bit version, and note that not all Mac minis support Windows 8. Check if yours is supported > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5634?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Boot Camp Assistant will ask you to download the Windows support software onto a USB drive. You will need to install it in Windows, so it's very important to download it. If not, you will have problems in Windows.
If your Mac doesn't support Windows 8, install the Windows version the site gives you

How can I move entire ITunes library to an external drive

How can I move the entire file to a new external drive & still add new downloads & use from the external G: drive?
Or can't this be done - I have the 80G Ipod & the files take up so much space that I want to move it to the new G: drive.
I thought I had it figured out but nothing would play from the G drive, so I had to restore everything back to the C: drive.
Thanks for any advice

This is actually the 5G iPod forum, not the iTunes folder.
However, To move your iTunes music...
1 Quit iTunes.
2 Move the entire iTunes folder including music to the external drive.
3 Restart iTunes holding the Shift key in Windows, Option key in Mac.
4 iTunes will ask to Create new library or Choose existing library. Select Choose existing library and select the library in the folder you just moved.
5 Move the old iTunes folder to the trash but do not empty it.
6 Restart iTunes normally and verify the songs work. If they do, empty the trash.

Cloning entire hard drive to an external hard drive

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for