Disk Utility Restore

I copied my macbook pro's hard drive to an external drive using disk utility restore. Is it normal for the copy's overall size to be smaller than the original? I thought it would be the same size? The external had no data on it. The original is 273.54 GB and the copy is 271.45 GB... Problem?

May I try to answer your question. When you copy a disk there are a number of files which are not copied such as Trash, swap files and any temporary files that may have on the old disk will not be copied to the new disk. So while the approximately 2 GB of data might at first glance seem like a lot, it is in fact not really that much. I hope that helps you to understand what is happening there.
|___________________
Allan

Similar Messages

Disk Utility: Restore no longer creates bootable images?

So I have a new hard drive for my macbook, and followed the procedure I used last time of using disk utility restore to write the current hard drive image to the new disk, with the new disk in a USB enclosure.
I have done this before, it creates a bootable copy on the new disk, swap the disks away I go.
This time however the new disk is not bootable. When starting it gets to the grey screen with the rotating white pips then dumps back to a black screen with error messages (like its trying to boot of the network).
Swapping back to the old disk boots just fine, so its a problem with the image written to the new disk by disk utility restore not being bootable.
Is this a known issue? I searched the forum with no answers, and am frustrated that its now working as I have run the image twice now at about 5 hours a go for 100GB of data so I am sure its not the copy. Straight after the copy the original disk has about 10 more files than the new disk that's just been imaged, has their been some update to disk utility in the OS X patches that means it no longer copies some key files?
Note that partition on new disk is GUID as it should be, and I don't want to re-install anything from the install media I want to use make disk utility work as designed.

I found two references that may help:
A) At http://everythingapple.blogspot.com/2007/11/use-powerpc-mac-to-create-bootable.h tml it says "PowerPC Macs use the Apple Partition Map, but this poses no problem for Intel Macs, even though Intel Macs use the GUID Partition Table. The reverse is not true however. PowerPC Macs cannot boot disks with a GUID Partition Table."
1. Open up Disk Utility and select your backup drive. Select the "Partition" tab.
2. Go to the "Options" and choose "Apple Partition Map", which is the partition type necessary for PowerPC Macs.
B) Carbon Copy Cloner - Red Dot Warning on main screen: "The target volume will not boot this computer because PowerPC Macintoshes cannot boot from USB devices."
Looks like I'll have to install the 2.5" SATA drive into my PowerPC MacMini to upgrade my system volume from 80gb to 320gb.

Disk Utility Restore - Why error -34 ?

I cloned my 700 G3 iBook's 20GB hard drive to a 30GB ext. HD with Disk Utility>Restore before sending it for repair. Now that I have gotten it back I want to restore the data to the computer's HD. I'm getting error -34 (disk full).
So what is the nature of my problem? Must the destination disk be at least as big as the source disk? (Because it is copying the entire 30GB size.) Or must I empty (erase, reformat) the destination disk? (Because it is adding the data to what is already there.)
Thanks

Michael:
You were right. Thanks. The data would have been added to what was already there.
While I had made back-up clones before, this was the first time I needed to put it back into the computer's hard drive.

How to clone disk (Disk Utility Restore, boot: kernel panic)

Hi, I've tried two times to clone my 120GB system disk (old Core2Duo Mac Mini (macmini2,1)) to a 1TB disk attached via USB cradle. Running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 which long time ago was upgraded from Leopard.
Used the Disk Utility "Restore" for cloning. Both times Disk Utility completed without errors. However when I swap the 1TB from USB cradle into mac mini (to internal SATA), the result of even a "Save Mode" boot attempt with Shift/Mod key held is always a kernel panic: "unable to find driver for this platform: \"ACPI\"
As my goal is to clone the existing system to a larger drive, a new install of OS X on the 1TB drive is out of the question. The original 120GB disk boots without problems. But the cloned attempts do not boot.
Judging from the kernel panic it is as if "Restore" doesn't actually restore, but leaves out files. Thus Disk Utility restore in SL is buggy?
Or is my cloning method wrong? Currently I just drag the 120GB system disk (the live running system) to the Source, then drag the 1TB USB disk to Destination, and allow full erase of destination, and do the priviledge elevation to root i.e. the usual password prompt. Does successful cloning need something extra...?

If I understand correctly, what you're doing is copying your 120 GB drive to the 1 TB drive, then swapping the 1 TB drive into your Mac and trying to boot from it, and it fails.
You're doing it wrong, and that's why it fails. A Finder copy (what you're doing) does not respect permissions or symbolic links, which are required to make the system boot. You need to use something that does respect that.
Get your hands on a copy of SuperDuper http://shirtpocket.com/
(free for basic use, but it's well worth the small fee of $27.95 for full access to all features); and/or
Carbon Copy Cloner http://bombich.com
and use one of those to make a bootable clone of your 120 GB drive, then you can boot from it.

Disk Utility Restore Process Input/Output Error

<Image Edited by Host>
My niece's MBP specs above. If I posted a picture of this poor machine, there'd be a lynch mob of passionate Apple fans arrive at my door wanting a public hanging...It's been dropped no less than a dozen times. (The ethernet port is stretched out of shape so badly that a standard plug will no longer fit the port!!!).
Among other physical injuries, the screen won't present an image (just flickers white lines on black background, hinge has partially detatched, suspect the ribbon that transmits the display signal has been compromised). A visit to the Apple store tells us (by plugging into a cinema display via TB) that the hard drive is still in tact and data is salvageable. Keyboard and trackpad both work fine (surprisingly).
Long story short, she's acquired a new MBA, been read the riot act about looking after it, and I have the unenviable task of salvaging her data, approx 275Gig.
My objective is to obtain:
1. A full copy of the data (existing file structures) - Complete
2. A bootable disk image of the MBP - Incomplete and troublesome
I have at my disposal:
Mid 2011 27' iMac (Intel i7) on Mav
MBPr13 (third host if needed) on Mav
A home ethernet network with enterprise grade switching
A Lacie 5BigPro 10TB NAS
A couple of 1 & 2 TB Toshiba external drives, and
Enough network adapters, USB cables and thunderbolt cables to suffice. Admin priviliges all round. All disk permissions repaired.
Current connection config is the MBP thunderbolted to the iMac. I can use TDM (if I need to interface with the MBP using the iMac display) or can boot in Target Disk Mode if I want to see the MBP disk image on the iMac.
Regarding Objective2: A bootable disk image of the MBP, I first tried to use the Restore function in Disk Utility, but that only works when booting the host in Recovery mode, whcih doesn't support TDM, so I'm flying blind...
Next try, I booted the MBP in Target Disk Mode, which allowed me to use the Restore process from the iMac's Disk Utility, select the MBP HD, and target an external drive (one of the Toshiba's) plugged in to the iMac via USB.
I've now tried this Restore 3 times, each time getting the following I/O error (at about 45 munites in to a projected 4 hour process):
Any thoughts on root cause?
And (given my screen/display limitations) am I missing a far simpler option?
Cheers, Sla

If that were the case you would not get in/out errors. These errors occur because the drive is no longer able to transfer data which is a hardware failure.
If you want to post an image to the forum then you need to open the message editor and click on the Camera icon you will find in the editor's toolbar. Then select the image you wish to post and click on the Insert button.
You can try running the Apple Hardware Test to see if it reveals anything.
Using Apple Hardware Test
Intel-based Macs- Using Apple Hardware Test

Disk Utility Restore from Sparse Image taking forever

I created a sparse image backup of my MBP C2D using SuperDuper! before sending the laptop back to Apple for repair. I wiped the drive clean before shipping. I now have the laptop back and am trying to restore the sparse image to the HD.
The sparse image file is on an HD in my G5 tower and is just over 108 GB. I booted the G5 into target disk mode and connected it to my MBP via FW800. I then booted off the Leopard install disk and launched Disk Utility to do the restore.
The sparse image mounts fine in Disk Utility and is specified as my source for the restore.
I started this restore last night before I checked out for the night and when I got up this morning, Disk Utility showed about 35-40% of the image had been restored and 14 HOURS were remaining. That seems a little excessive after it had already been running for well over 9 - 10 hours.
The sparse image mounts on the MBP just fine using target disk mode from my G5 -- so as far as can tell, my backup image itself is ok.
My question is this: is the Restore function performance of Disk Utility with sparse images really this bad or is something wrong with what I am doing? I really don't want to rebuild my laptop from scratch, but if I have to wait 34 or more hours for Disk Utility to finish a restore -- it might be quicker to rebuild it.
Any ideas out there?
Message was edited by: Randy Vose

Randy Vose wrote:
I created a sparse image backup of my MBP C2D using SuperDuper! before sending the laptop back to Apple for repair. I wiped the drive clean before shipping. I now have the laptop back and am trying to restore the sparse image to the HD.
The sparse image file is on an HD in my G5 tower and is just over 108 GB. I booted the G5 into target disk mode and connected it to my MBP via FW800. I then booted off the Leopard install disk and launched Disk Utility to do the restore.
The sparse image mounts fine in Disk Utility and is specified as my source for the restore.
I started this restore last night before I checked out for the night and when I got up this morning, Disk Utility showed about 35-40% of the image had been restored and 14 HOURS were remaining. That seems a little excessive after it had already been running for well over 9 - 10 hours.
The sparse image mounts on the MBP just fine using target disk mode from my G5 -- so as far as can tell, my backup image itself is ok.
My question is this: is the Restore function performance of Disk Utility with sparse images really this bad or is something wrong with what I am doing?
no the restore function is not this bad.
something must be wrong with your sparse image. you should have tested it before sending the computer for repairs. and why did you use a sparse image at all?! you should have made (and tested) a standard clone.

Disk Utility - Restoring a previous image

Since I first bought my Mac Mini (February of this year) I've been using the disk utility to make occasional backups (disk images) of my partitions, in case I ever need to restore a whole partition (or create a clone of an existing partition - for example, so that I could test some new software that might cause problems). I've never actually needed to restore a partition (or produce a clone from one of the backup images) until today. However, when I first bought my Mac I did test this feature and it seemed to work.
A few days ago I realised that I'd soon need to clone a partition so I backed up my Mac HFS partition which is about 90GB in size (my internal disk being 500GB). I then used Coriolis iPartition to create a new, empty Mac HFS partition of the same size, then tried to use Apple's Disk Utility to restore the newly created disk image. However when I came to try the restore, I got an error saying that the image would first need to be "image scanned" before being usable. I then tried an old image that I created when I first bought the Mac and currently, that one seems to be restoring.
AFAIK I've used the same method to create both images so why did the old one work when the new one didn't??
Message was edited by: johne53

Hmmm.... I've just realised that none of the images I've created recently will verify properly. They all get to the end of the first stage (block checksum of partition #1) and then fail with "internal error". The only one which passes the verification process is the very first one which I created a long time ago. That one seems to complete two stages of block verifications (for 2 partitions) then one "file checksum".
If I try to select a disk image and use "Open Disk Image" (from the right-click menu) I get an error saying "Unable to attach [image-name].dmg. No mountable file systems." This happens with every disk image I've created, apart from the very first one.

Disk Utility: Restore Failure-Source image needs to be scanned for restore.

Hello guys,
I have a .dmg (source image) that I have created from a DVD by myself (read-only format).
I am trying to restore it to a destination and a Restore Failure notification pops-up as follow:
"Restore Failure
Could not find any scan information. The source image needs to be imagescanned/scanned for restore"
I am quite new to Mac. Half of the time, I don't really know what I am doing - but just relying on the 'Help Menu', some research for guides on the internet and most of all read-on most of the posting here in the Apple Forum for what I want to do or might have encountered. Lastly to hopefully also speak the Mac language. For example - What's a disk image? What a .dmg? What's a source image? and etc. ~Lost~
So for this case, I am totally lost as I can't seems to understand what does the Restore Failure notification mean at all as I quote above. What does it mean by the Source image needs to be imagescanned/scanned for restore? What do I do from there? How do I scanned my source image? Is there a steps that I miss out while creating .dmg from the DVD?
Could not find any scan information? What scan information? Where do I go to asked for scan information?
I am so lost that I don't even know the right question to ask or begin with.
I know what I want to do and believe it can be done with Mac. But I just doesn't seems to understand the concept of how it really works yet but to just follow blindly throughout the guides.
So please help me if possible.
Thank you in advance.
Best Regards,
Jon Gan

Hi,
If you open Disk Utility, select the Image in the disk util sidebar, and click on Images > Scan for restore... in the menu bar, it will take care of it for you. After that you can perform a restore as you were trying to do.
They do this so that disk util can verify your data after the restore to make sure it copied exactly.

Disk Utility "restore" fails with "no such file or directory"

Some time back, perhaps a LONG time ago, I successfully used Disk Utility's "restore" function to "clone" my Mac OS X partition onto an external disk, before I upgraded the OS on my internal drive.
This weekend I tried to do it again, and failed on every attempt.
My first attempt was on my MacBook. At very end (the progress "bar" was all blue) it died saying that there was an error (2), "no such file or directory". I think the external drive probably isn't GUID, which would make it non-bootable, but I'd still think "restore" itself should work.
Okay, let's try my Power Mac G5, which is where it worked several releases ago. Same thing.
Okay, one more try... Booted into safe mode (in case background activity accounts for the missing file/directory), did the restore again, failed again.
I realize that SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner or other tools may be "better", but since this worked once it seems like it still should.
Any ideas?
Doug

Did you:
A. Repair the hard drive and permissions prior to cloning?
B. Erase the destination drive before cloning?
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
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.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now shutdown the computer for a couple of minutes and then restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger) and/or TechTool Pro (4.5.2 for Tiger) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
How to Clone Using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (journaled, if available) and click on the Erase button. This step can be skipped if the destination has already been freshly erased.
4. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
5. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the startup or source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
8. Select the destination drive on the Desktop and press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. At the bottom in the Ownership and Permissions section be sure the box labeled "Ignore Permissions on this Volume" is unchecked. Verify the settings for Ownership and Permissions as follows: Owner=system with read/write; Group=admin with read/write; Other with read-only. If they are not correct then reset them.
For added precaution you can boot into safe mode before doing the clone.

Disk utility Restore and Back up

when using Disk utility and dragging my source internal HD to the source window and then dragging my external HD to the destination window then clicking on restore.
After this completes can I then boot from the external HD? I have been using DeJuVu with no problems on a lacie ext HD. i just purchased an OWC Mercury elite and did a DeJuVu back up, but the OWC wont boot.
It mounts and shows up on the restart in sytem preferences. I contacted OWC and they recommended doing another back up. They also told me i could do the restore from disk utilities and would be able to boot from the ext.
I am now doing a restore on the imac but still wondering if this will work, if so I could do my cloning of the HD with out using DeJuVu. the only thing I would lose is the ability to do scheduling.
Thank You
Dick

I never had any problem backing up a clone using DeJuVu. I always backed up to external sata HD's and a Lacie firewire ext. Also when I used CCC this time it worked fine.
When I bought the OWC Mercury Elite is when I had a problem. After spending a day with there tech dept with no success. I came to the conclusion that only one HD could be booted from there ext 2 drive enclosure. I contacted the the next morning and talked to there senior tech and he confirmed that the enclosure when split using two drives independently that only one was bootable.
I am not sure why you can't get a complete bootable clone. What are the drives and what are you trying to clone to. Ext, internal or your single drive which you have partitioned?
I feel if your cloning you should always do it on a separate drive.
My methods are I never partition and never fill my operating system over half of the drive capacity.
Dcik

Disk utility restore problem: cannot drag internal hdd to destination field

I'm currently trying to restore a time machine backup after my boot ssd recently failed, but am having trouble restoring the backup to my secondary internal drive in the optical bay. My set up isthe following:
Failed ssd in primary hdd bay of MacBook Pro (mid 2010)
1tb secondary hdd in optical drive bay with time machine backup of failed ssd.
2tb external drive
The following is what I have done so far...
1. Booted into the secondary internal drive and restored the time machine backup onto the external USB drive.
2. Booted from the restored backup on the USB drive (this now looks like my old computer again but is very slow as its USB 2.0)
3. Partitioned the secondary internal drive in the optical bay.
4. Now I want to copy the restored volume on my USB drive to the secondary internal drive in the optical bay.
When I open disk utility's restore function I can put my original volum in the source field, however, it will not let me put either partition of my internal drive in the destination field. It has no problem putting other partitions from the USB drive in the destination field - just will not allow anything from the internal drive. Why is this?
I'm thinking it could possibly be because it is in the optical drive bay and apple has prevented copying full volumes into this bay, but then again surely this would be needed when burning DVDs at some stage. Any ideas? Many thanks in advance for any help.

I managed to complete the restore and you may have been right - I booted from the internal hdd then restored the time machine backup stored on the usb drive to a different partition on the internal hd. Seemed to work fine now running of the hd in the optical drive bay but has still crashed a couple of times which is pretty odd. Perhaps the failed ssd in the main drive bay is still causing a bit of a nuisance (it registers for the first 3 minutes after booting up then disappears). Also didnt notice the responsiveness too much when upgrading from hd to ssd, but going the other way back to hd - can definitely now tell the difference. Painfully slow at times! I need to get that ssd replaced I think. Anyway thanks for your advice!

Disk utility restore put recovery hd over mac hd after first properly copying mac hd

I am trying to make a redundant backup image of my harddrive using something OTHER than Time Machine. I booted to recovery because you image from a disk you are booted from. The restore took 2 hours, and indicated the entire time in disk utility that it was restoring "Mac HD" to a similarly sized partition on my external hard drive. When it was done, the external had a copy of my recovery drive on it. That's crazy talk.

NVM, in a attempt to duplicate, installed lion to the external drive, made a screen recording of disk utility and reran it, and this time, it performed as expected.

Disk Utility restore on a RAID is extremely slow

here is my story: i want to replace old internal 250gb hdd with 2х500gb striped raid set.
i have 2 G5 Powermacs, so i put 2х500 in one of them and build striped raid. then i booted it in target disk mode and connected via firewire to other G5. other G5 was booted from system dvd. i launched disk utility and choose restore from old 250 hd to new raid set. there are 100 gb of data on 250 hdd.
for now this process goes about 5 hours, and blue line is just on a half. is it normal when i restore a single partition on a raid, or something is wrong? why it's sooo slow?

No, changing/adding them to a Raid will lose all info.
Haven't actually tried it on a Concantated RAID, but I still suspect the Directory structure to be so different that it will wipe any info.
Only way is to backup everthing on the HD then move it back after it's setup for RAID.
RAID is really nice for the speed,but boy is it ever unreliable, of all the RAID setups I've had, the longest one went before going bonkers is 6 months, most far less. Never rovered one of them either.

Disk Utility:Restore backup option

Regarding Kappy's suggestion: (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1327363&#1327363)
To do just a full backup you can use the Restore option of Disk Utility:
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the startup volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4. Drag the startup volume to the Source entry field.
5. Select the backup volume from the leftside list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Check the box to Erase Destination
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Will this method create a bootable backup on my firewire drive?
Thanks,
Judy

Yes, it will create a bootable backup.
If your Firewire drive has not been formatted (in other words it's a new drive) then I recommend the following procedure for prepping the drive the first time:
1. Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. 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, if supported.) 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, if supported.) 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.
If you prep the drive before doing your backup, you can skip Step 6 of the backup instructions.

Disk Utility Restore Function

If I use the restore function in Disk Utility to copy me Macintosh HD drive to an external drive, can I later restore it back and have everything the same?
I am going to reinstall the OS, but am concerned that my last time machine backup may not be up to date and have everything, I can not boot into the HDD, and I know that if I restore the same image I might have the same issues as now with the OS, but that is not my concern at the moment. So, I am copying the Macintosh HD to an external drive using the restore tab and want to make sure that if I do it the other way around, will it be the same and will I have a backup of all my data (particularly my local copies of mail folder) once I restore?
If this does not work, what is the default location for my mail items so I can pull all those and preferably my preferences along with it as I have a lot of rules and other items in mail that I would like to keep.

If I use the restore function in Disk Utility to copy me Macintosh HD drive to an external drive, can I later restore it back and have everything the same?
Yes.
The Restore option of Disk Utility is for cloning one disk volume to another, also known as a full backup. Clones are 100% reversible. Note that if you use the Restore option of Disk Utility it will erase the target volume. If you are using Lion or later you must boot to the Recovery HD in order to clone the main startup volume.
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag
it to the Destination entry field.
5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
the Source entry field.
6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
To reverse the process simply swap the Source for the Destination and vice-versa.
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the arrow button below the icon.

Disk Utility Restore

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