Use Disk Utility "Restore" to clone system Drive

I have always recommended that everyone use the Restore function under Disk Utility to clone their drive before each update, just incase one needs to quickly fall back to a working release.
Well I decided to test my cloned drive, and to make a long story short, be sure that you boot from a different drive than the one you want to clone. A clone made from the current/active startup drive does NOT boot (well mine would not boot).
So, boot from a backup drive/partition, one that is Panther works best as you do not have to worry about spotlight, or dashboard, or any of the other "cool" Tiger auto running programs getting in the way, then go into Disk Utility, and Restore, and clone your main startup drive. It creates a drive that will actually boot.
Maybe this was obvious to everyone, but I had been making my backup clone drive for the past year right from my main active startup drive. I never received an error that indicated there would be any problem with the cloned drive. Thank goodness that I NEVER had to use the backup.
Now I sleep peacefully at night, knowing I have a bootable replacement startup drive ready to go at a moments notice.
bob

CCC has worked fine with 10.3.x but I have been having some issues getting the backup of 10.4 to be recognized.
I don't know if it is the disk (it's on a partition of a sloooow lacie) or the nature of the clone. In either case, it takes a couple of tries before the drive is found as a boot drive and it is a pain....
After a hugely painful and very, very expensive experience with failed backups (we lost the entire office's electronic records going back for 3 years), I have gotten in the habit of booting off the backups once every few weeks to verify they work.
In the immortal words of journalist and fiction writer Damon Runyon, "Trust, but verify."
Cheers,
x
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Similar Messages

Using Disk Utility to Erase an external drive freezes Disk Utility?

When I use Disk Utility to Erase an external drive, Disk Utility freezes indefinitely and the action is not performed.
How do I fix this?

To use it on your MBP you need to set the OPTION when you partition it so that it will be the Intel GUID partition scheme, then set the partition(s) you want.
If it is hanging or failing, that can be caused by bad sectors where the partition table has to be written. You might need to zero the drive. If you have a PC, then use Maxtor's tools to reformat and test the drive.
PPC Macs use one partition/format scheme, IntelMacs use another, and Windows a 3rd.

Using Disk Utility Restore function to clone external hard drives

Hi all,
I have a WD 3Tb My Book external hard drive which I want to use as a replacement for an older WD 1Tb My Book external hard drive. I would like to use Disk Utility's built-in Restore function to clone my old external hard drive onto my new external hard drive. Unfortunately, Disk Utility will not allow me to drag the new drive to the "Destination" box; I can drag the old drive to the "Source" box just fine. Why is this? Am I doing something wrong?
It might be important to note that my old external drive is formated to FAT32, whereas the new drive came pre-formatted to NTFS. Do I need to reformat the new drive to FAT32 before dragging the disk to the "Destination" box? In other words, do the source and destination drives need to be the same format in order to use Disk Utility's Restore function?
Thanks very much in advance.

Are these drives being used on Windows machines? If so then you will need to create a new partition from the Partition Scheme dropdown menu after which you can set the scheme to MBR. If the drives are being used only on the Mac then you have to prep the new drive as follows:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities 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. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
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 can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
After you copy your files from the old drive to the new one you want to repartition and reformat the old drive in the same way as outlined immediately above.

Can I Use Disk Utility from an External Hard Drive?

I would like to use Disk Utility to verify and/or repair my hard drive. I am too lazy to run this from my install disk. Can I merely copy the application to my external hard drive and launch it from there? Would this work successfully? Could it damage anything? Thanks!

Hi! You can't repair a disk that you are booted from so you could run the repair disk function IF you are booted from another volume such as a bootable internal or external drive or the install disc. You'll have to clone your boot drive and repair from the clone after booting to it. Tom

Problems transferring Backups to new External HD using Disk Utility restore

I'm having issues using Disk Utility to transfer my backups to a new disk.
I am transferring data from a 250GB external harddrive to a new completely zero'ed 1TB Iomega external harddrive. Both Harddrives are connected via USB. On my old 250GB HD i have a few folders containing about 100GB of data (raw video footage) that are not in the "Backups.backupdb" folder.
I follow the tutorial in item 18 of the FAQS on this forum exactly (except i didnt check erase destination) but i get an error message each time after about 3 minutes:
"Could not restore - Operation not permitted"
This is what my log says:
2009-12-27 17:12:32 +0000: Restore Disk
2009-12-27 17:12:32 +0000: Source: “Darkers HD”
2009-12-27 17:12:32 +0000: Destination: “Untitled”
2009-12-27 17:12:32 +0000: Erase Destination: No
2009-12-27 17:12:32 +0000:
2009-12-27 17:12:32 +0000: Starting Restore…
2009-12-27 17:12:32 +0000: Validating target...
2009-12-27 17:12:32 +0000: done
2009-12-27 17:12:32 +0000: Validating source...
2009-12-27 17:12:32 +0000: done
2009-12-27 17:12:32 +0000: Validating sizes...
2009-12-27 17:12:32 +0000: done
2009-12-27 17:12:32 +0000: Copying
2009-12-27 17:14:01 +0000: could not copy /Volumes/Untitled/Backups.backupdb/Mac/2009-04-15-054708/Macintosh HD/Applications/Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional/Acrobat Distiller 7.0.app/Contents/Frameworks/AdobeACE.framework/AdobeACE; Operation not permitted
2009-12-27 17:14:01 +0000: Bom copy exited with error 1
2009-12-27 17:14:01 +0000:
2009-12-27 17:14:01 +0000: Could not restore - Operation not permitted
2009-12-27 17:14:02 +0000: Could not restore - Operation not permitted
2009-12-27 17:14:02 +0000:
I can see from this that it is having issues with a file in the destination:
/Volumes/Untitled/Backups.backupdb/Mac/2009-04-15-054708/Macintosh HD/Applications/Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional/Acrobat Distiller 7.0.app/Contents/Frameworks/AdobeACE.framework/AdobeACE
This file is in the first Backup i ever made and all subsequent backups. So i went and looked at this backup through the time machine application and deleted this file from the backup and all subsequent backups. However when i then did the restore again i got the same error message and when i looked at the log it was identical except it had issues with a different "AdobeACE.framework" file from another Adobe CS3 program. I dont want to go through and delete all these types of CS3 files from my backups for obvious reasons, i would much rather understand what the issue is and know whether there is a way round it.
It may well be simply because i have not checked the "erase destination" box before restoring but somehow i doubt this is the issue as the new 1TB HD has already been "zero'ed" as explained earlier.
Any help would be appreciated guys.

check the box to erase destination. the fact that you zeroed it out makes no difference. this is a known issue and checking that box was recommended for a reason.

Moving backups to new drive -- without using disk utility restore

Hello,
I have done some research on this already but I don't believe I've found the solution. I just bought a new media / backup hard drive, and I've moved my itunes library (over 100 GBs) to this drive. Now I have researched how to move the time machine backups to this drive, and know you can't just copy the files.
The instructions I've received tell me to use the disk utility to restore the old time machine backup drive to the new drive, however if I do that won't I lose the iTunes stuff currently on that drive?
Is there an easier way to move that data without me transferring the iTunes back to my laptop, and then restoring through disk utility, and then re-transferring the iTunes again?
thanks,
James

jimumbra wrote:
Hello,
I have done some research on this already but I don't believe I've found the solution. I just bought a new media / backup hard drive, and I've moved my itunes library (over 100 GBs) to this drive. Now I have researched how to move the time machine backups to this drive, and know you can't just copy the files.
The instructions I've received tell me to use the disk utility to restore the old time machine backup drive to the new drive, however if I do that won't I lose the iTunes stuff currently on that drive?
yes, you will. but it is also a VERY bad idea to keep other data on the same partition as the TM backup. first, this data will not be backed up by TM. if you value your itunes data you should have it backed up. also, TM is very buggy and there are too many situations when you need to delete existing TM backups and start from scratch. this should be done by erasing the entire TM partition. you should never delete any TM backups from finder. also, TM will eventually fill up the entire partition with TM backup. it will start bumping up against other data on the partition and you won't be able to put anything else on it.
the upshot is that you should make a separate partition just for TM. don't keep any other data on that partition. you can add a partition to the drive without disturbing your itunes data. type "create new volumes" in disk utility help to see how. however, that's not a good idea IMO as you'll have both the itunes data and the TM backups on the same physical drive. when the drive fails (and it will eventually) you'll loose everything.
Is there an easier way to move that data without me transferring the iTunes back to my laptop, and then restoring through disk utility, and then re-transferring the iTunes again?
thanks,
James

Repairing HD using Disk Utility without an OSX system CD

I purchased a used iMac G4 700 Mhz pre-loaded with OSX 10.4.11 but without any install and restore disks. The system was working OK but froze when I was copying files from an external HD (music files from a Windows iTunes library) and I had to switch it off via the power button.
It restarted OK but I ran Disk Utility on the Macintosh HD and got the message that it needs to be repaired. This, of course, means I need to load the system from another disk!
The only start-up disks I have are Mac OS9 from a previous computer. Would I be able to use one of these to run Disk Utility on the Mac HD?
Another possibility would be to copy the OSX system folder to the external HD and use that as the start-up disk. Is this possible?
The machine is still working (I am using it to post this message) so I don't want to use trial and error methods myself and crash it completely.
Any help would be appreciated.

Welcome!
My concern with your copying your system (actually, "clone" is the operative task) to another drive is that damaged files could go with the clone and you'd have problems in two places instead of one.
Assuming you do the clone, it will have to be a 'bootable clone" created with utilities like CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. The external drive must be bootable--for a G4 iMac that means the drive must be connected via FireWire (IEEE 1394). A USB external drive will not boot a Mac with a PowerPC processor.
The best action on your part could be to make contact with a Mac User group in your area. Maybe someone has system disks they could let you use long enough to repair the internal drive.
This Apple web page:
http://appleusergroups.com/locator/find/locate.cgi?country=17
shows a list of Mac user groups in the UK.

HT201250 Can I make my iMac think it has more (HDD) memory (not RAM) by using disk utility and an external 500GB drive?

I have a Macbook Pro and iMac which are both great. But my 500gb hard drive isn't big enough to backup my 320GB MB PRO
I thought maybe I can attach my HDD to my iMac to give it more memory. Then backup to the iMac
If this isn't possible, could I login as an iMac user on my macbook pro and just have a mini server using my iMac and MB PRO? (My sister and parents use the iMac as their primary computer, i use my MB Pro as mine, so they would have to be able to use the computer at the same time as me using my macbook)
In otherwords, I just want to be able to back up wireleslly but still acces all my files on both computers offline.

If you're talking about TIme Machine backup, it should be dleting as it goes but I agree you need more to run that effectively.
One solution, instead of TM would be to make a bootable clone with either SuperDuper or CarbonCopy Cloner
and use that as your backup solution until you get a disk large enough for TM.

Using Disk Utility to restore/copy disk - who is correct?

I had two long talks with two separate Apple Care people online today who both insisted what they were saying was right and the other person was wrong.
Hmm....
My question is this.
I have a MBP and the internal HD is currently empty. I've been running off of an external HD for about a year now.
I want to clone my external HD into my internal HD and use the internal HD as my system disk now.
One Apple Care person said to go into Disk Utility, select the source disk, from the tabs on the right hand side select Restore and then drag the source disk into the source field, drag the target disk into the target field and press restore. She said this will make a complete clone of the external HD in the internal HD.
The other Apple Care person said "No no no. You can't do that to clone a system disk that way." He said the best thing was to install a new system and then use the restore as a new system from Time Machine option (where I also have a backup.)
I believe the second method will work, but it's more cumbersome for me because I haven't been backing up everything in Time Machine. I have excluded items, such as podcasts and Parallels disk images.
If I could do this from the external system disk life would be easier.
But is the first Apple Support person right or wrong about this? Can I use Disk Utility to copy the system disk from one external HD to another that way?
Thanks,
doug
p.s. I am not in the market for 3rd party software to deal with this one-time issue, so if possible I would like to accomplish this using OS X included features...

The advantage is CCC has built in routines that "bless" (see the Terminal.app command "bless") the
os x installation so it will boot properly on the new volume it is being installed on.
Disk Utility simply copies (restores) files from one volume to another. Many times this works just fine.
Sometimes it won't boot afterwards. Most of the time (as long as there are no system files missing
or corrupted) a person may "bless" the drive and restore it to working condition.
CCC is not a "magical" application, it is in fact a front end to applications that already exist separately
in OS X (asr, hdiutil, diskutil, bless, etc.).
It doesn't matter to me how you do it. It's your time not mine. Everyone should spend some time
behind the command line in terminal. I do many tasks using the command line, including and not
limited to complete system restores, backing up data, disk partitioning, installing software, disk
repair, permissions repair, ACL management, restoring data, managing disk images, network
management, user management, file management, etc. Many people are fearful of the command
line. I feel just the opposite, I'm fearful without it.
Say Hello to my little friend.
http://manuals.info.apple.com/enUS/Command_Line_Adminv10.5.pdf
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unixopensource/clix.html
http://www.macobserver.com/tips/macosxcl101/index.html
http://www.matisse.net/OSX/darwin_commands.html
Kj

Using Disk Utility for backup - target drive must be same size as source?

Hello. I have a 250 GB data drive that I need to back up to an external drive using Disk Utility (restore) so that I can create a RAID-1 set using the 250GB drive. The files take up only 100 GB on the drive.
Does the target external drive need to be 250 GB or just 100+ GB in size for the Disk Utility to work?
Thanks
David

I you want to make a non mirrored drive into a mirrored one you can do that with diskutil. Copying it first is not needed.
man diskutil:
enableRAID mirror|concat device
Convert single filesystem disk or volume into a unpaired mir-
ror RAID set or concat set. Ownership of the affected disk is
required.
repairMirror raidDisk newDisk
Repair a failed mirror. Supply the existing RAID as the raid-
Disk parameter. Supply the new disk as the last parameter of
the request. newDisk and raidDisk are only Device Nodes or
Disk Identifiers. Ownership of the affected disk is required.
The second disk in the mirror set needs to be as big or bigger as the first disk.
Do this booted from another disk or DVD.

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

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

HT1782 disk utility wont fix my hard drive please help!!! it has assignments on it

hey i usually use disk utility to fix my hard drive problems of been invisible, but lately, doing disk utility and repairing the disk doesn't seem to work anymore? do you guys have any other suggestions, its a seagate go flex hard drive

You need to boot to recovery mode to repair the boot drive (partition containing the operating system). Hold cmd+r on boot up, or hold the alt key and select recovery when you are given the options of what partition to boot to.

Can not repair disk using disk utility

I tried using disk utility to repair the main drive of my imac 24" (2007) model and it says that the number of files are off by 1 from the total number that should be there so it could not be prepared it said to start up using the install disk but that was crack in a recent move. We tried disk warrior and it would not repair the main drive because thats where disk warrior is so i did a graph and it said 950,000 (ball park) files are out of order and could not be graphed. The only reason i could think that files would be out of order is my 3 year old he has a game on here and learned the awesome concept of click and drag so before we put a lock on it he was dragging things from the dock and putting them in the trash so he may have rearranged things without knowing. the computer has been extra slow recently and the "white screen" when you restart stays for about 2 mins before the apple timer appears. We have an antivirus so the drive is clean as far as that goes. Please if anyone could help respond back!!
Thanks
Luke

you can not repair a boot up drive while you are booted from it. You really need to get your leopard install DVD replaced. You need it just for these kinds of situations.
You can repair the drive from Single user mode
restart the computer and hold command+S at the chime. a black screen with white text will come up. at the prompt enter
*/sbin/fsck -fy*
that's the drive repair command. wait for the repair to finish. If there are any errors, run it again till no errors are reported.
Once done, enter
reboot
to restart normally.

Using Disk Utility to clone one FW Drive to another FW Drive

can I use Disk Utility to clone one external firewire drive to another external firewire drive? How would I go about this? I am using a PowerBook G4, 1.67 Ghz, 17 in, 2 gig ram with Mac OS 10.3.9
I have both firewire drives connected to the PowerBook.

Yes, you can use Disk Utility for this purpose.
1) Open Disk Utility.
2) In the left hand column, click on one of your Volumes (if your disks are partitioned, this will be one of your named volumes).
3) In the right hand box, you will now see three buttons: First Aid, Erase, Restore. Click on Restore.
4) Drag the volume name of the partition that you want to copy to the "Source" box. Its name should appear in the box. Drag the volume name of the partition that you want to overwrite to the "Destination" box. Its name should appear.
5) Click "Restore" in the lower right corner. You might want to also check the box "Erase destination".
6) Wait patiently, if all goes well you should have a bootable clone. Be sure to test the clone for bootablity before relying on it. Also, do a "Get Info" in the Finder after cloning to make sure the "Ignore Permissions on this Volume" box is not checked, and then use Disk Utility to repair permissions on the volume.
Good Luck!

Use Disk Utility "Restore" to clone system Drive

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