How Do I Copy My Mac Hard Drive
- Cloning your hard drive is an easy way of preserving essential files. You can create copies of all your files and clone your OS, software, and more to fully restore your computer.
- Now insert the drive into your Mac and drag the data onto your Mac’s hard drive using Finder. Note: For data transfer purposes, make sure your USB drive is formatted using Windows FAT32 filesystem. This will make the drive compatible to both the operating systems. Also, once you have copied all items to your Mac, do format it with Mac’s.
- Connect the external hard drive that you will use to copy the iPhoto Library. You should see it appear on your desktop. Open a new Finder window and click Pictures in the left sidebar.
Mac Users: Clone Your Drive with SuperDuper If you're on a Mac, we recommend SuperDuper for all your cloning needs. It's free, simple to use, and has been around for years. Download the app, open. Before you clone hard drive to SSD Mac requires that you dive into Disk Utility and erase that external drive. Plug the external hard drive into your Mac, and launch Disk Utility. Go to the Utilities folder in Applications and double-click on Disk Utility to open it. To clone Mac hard drive Disk Utility is Apple’s built-in solution.
A mate of mine who has only been using Macs for a few weeks has been using a PowerBook G3. We installed Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger on it, and then he got a larger hard drive. He was about to reinstall OS X when I suggested cloning.
Being a PC user, he was new to the idea, so I emailed him some instructions, and it worked with no problem. So for anyone new to cloning, here is how to do it.
Cloning makes a complete bootable copy of your hard drive onto another drive.
Here is what you will need:
- a Mac with Mac OS X Tiger or Leopard installed
- a new hard drive
- a FireWire or USB enclosure for the drive (not necessary if you have a Power Mac with room for another internal drive)
- a copy of SuperDuper [Editor’s note: You can also use Carbon Copy Cloner.]
Let’s get started.
First, put your new drive hard drive enclosure. Plug it into your Mac, and switch the Mac on. If your enclosure needs to be plugged into a power source, do this and then switch it on.
Once the Mac is booted, you will need to format the new drive into a Mac format in Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder). Down the left hand side Disk Utility will show both drives. Select the one in the enclosure.
You will see five tabs across the middle of the screen: select “Erase”. Double check the Volume Format is “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” and give it a name (or leave it as it is). Then select the “Erase” button. The new drive will erase within a few seconds and your drive is now ready for cloning.
Don’t worry – you cannot erase your existing hard drive with Mac OS X installed on it, as it is the drive you have booted from and is therefore locked.
Download SuperDuper. It is free when used for cloning. Install it and run it.
In the SuperDuper screen, you will see three drop downs.
In the first one, labelled “copy”, select the drive in your Mac. In the second drop down labelled “to”, select the new drive that you just formatted.
The third one should be labelled “using” – select “Backup – all files”.
New select the “Copy Now” button.
If you are connected via USB 1.1, it will take quite a while (maybe an hour or two). If you are connected via FireWire or USB 2.0, then it will be quicker (maybe 20 minutes – depending on how much is on your hard drive).
Once completed, shut down the computer and external hard drive. Remove the internal drive and replace it with the new one you just cloned to – and boot the machine.*
If successful, the Mac will work exactly as before. You will not notice anything different, except a larger drive.
If it hasn’t worked, the machine will not boot.
* Editor’s note: You may want to test the clone drive before performing the transplant. To boot from the external drive, hold down the Option key during startup. Your Mac will display icons for any bootable drive. Select the new drive, click on the right arrow icon, and your Mac should boot from it. If not, erase the new drive and try again. Once you know it’s working, transplant it. (Note that some of the oldest G3 Macs can’t boot into OS X via USB.)
You can also use this procedure to clone OS X to another Mac – just install the cloned drive. As long as it’s not too big for that Mac’s drive controller to recognize (see How Big a Hard Drive Can I Put in My iMac, eMac, Power Mac, PowerBook, or iBook?), you should be good to go.
We’ve been doing this at Low End Mac headquarters for years, and it works very well. The registered version of SuperDuper is also a great backup program, which we use regularly.
Carbon Copy Cloner works as well as SuperDuper for cloning, and version 2.3 will also let you clone Mac OS X 10.2 and 10.3. (SuperDuper only supports OS X 10.4 and 10.5.) dk
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Mac OS X do not support writing files into NTFS filesystems by default and you cannot copy files to external hard drive from mac. But Mac do support reading the NTFS drives and copying files from NTFS HDDs. Most of the Mac users don’t know this and will buy portable external hard disks to expand the storage space. If you bought one, don’t worry 3 solutions are for you.
Cannot copy files to external hard drive from mac ?
Solution 1. Format the Hard disk with ExFat file system (Windows and Mac will fully support it)
Solution 2. A Third party utility to support read and write operations on NTFS file system.
Solution 3. Using simple tweaks play on your Mac OS X.
1. Format the Hard disk with ExFat file system
If you go for the first solution, simply backup all the data and connect your external hard disk to your MAC and follow the steps
- Connect your Portable External Hard drive and open “Disk Utility”
- Select the External Disk on the left section, and click on the “ERASE” tab and format as ExFAT file system
2. Third party software for NTFS support on Mac
Second solution is a third party utility that adds NTFS drivers for Mac. Go for “Paragon NTFS for Mac” which is a paid software. Download and install it.
If you are using Seagate external hard disk, the download free copy of “Paragon NTFS” thats comes absolutely free and only works with Seagate branded portable hard disks. Download Paragon NTFS for Seagate made Portable Hard disks.
3. NTFS write support for MAC using simple OS X Tweaks
Its a bit skill oriented task, so follow it carefully and at your own risk.
First connect your NTFS Drive into the Mac and open “Terminal” application and run the below command to find the UUID of your External NTFS Hard Disk. (My NTFS HDD name is “TOSHIBA”, Edit with your own Mac HDD name)
diskutil info /Volumes/TOSHIBA grep UUID
Sample output:
Volume UUID: 45125EB1-E1C3-3D21-9484-32DE22FEF0
How Do I Copy My Mac Hard Drives
Now enable read/write support for the Hard drive (based on UUID) run the below command, edit with your own Disk Volume UUID. This command add read write attribute to the /etc/fstab
sudo echo “UUID=<UUID> none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse” >> /etc/fstab
example:
sudo echo “UUID=45125EB1-E1C3-3D21-9484-32DE22FEF0 none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse” >> /etc/fstab
Now you will be able to perform both read and write to that NTFS formatted Hard drive from that Mac. If you got another NTFS hard drive, Follow the steps again to find that HDD’s UUID and enale the rw/wr .