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MPG Table of Contents   Page 1: How to Capture the Screen or Window as an Image Page 2: How to boot off an external drive Page 3: How to upgrade your system/boot drive Page 4: How to Set the Startup Volume / Startup Drive/Disk Page 5: How to clone a volume Page 6: How to Verify/Repair a RAID Volume Page 7: How to detect a failing hard drive (SMART status) Page 8: How to test memory for reliability Page 9: How to install 6GB or 8GB memory in MacBook Pro Page 10: How to Reset Apple Safari Saved Information Page 11: How-To Disallow Saving Usernames/Passwords in Safari Page 12: How-To Erase a Web Site Password in Safari or Firefox Page 13: Moving Your Bookmarks to Another Computer Page 14: How to Create a Group of Bookmarks in Safari Page 15: Enabling the Developer / Debug Menu to Safari Page 16: How to Change Date and Time Formats for Ease of Viewing Page 17: How to Create and Use a RAM Disk Page 18: How to See Disk Usage / Space Used Page 19: How to use a Mac Pro as a Robust File Server

How to clone a volume

Cloning a volume makes an identical copy. Cloning is more than a backup, it’s a functionally-identical copy, a distinction that is particularly relevant for your boot drive (system and applications): you can start the Mac from the clone.

See also Using Cloning as a Backup Strategy.

Cloning with Carbon Copy Cloner

Shown below is the window for Carbon Copy Cloner, one of several programs that can make bootable clones of your system drive (any drive can be cloned of course).

Select your existing drive (“Source Disk”) and select the new drive (“Target Disk”), then click the Clone button. The process will take time proportional to how much data you have on the drives, the speed of each drive, etc. Figure 15 minutes or more in most cases.

As shown below, the boot volume Boot is being cloned to BootClone (I append the date and time to my clones, which is optional, just something I prefer).