Simple Steps to Clone Mac Hard Drive for Preventing Data Loss

Usually, all of you maintain the backup of your precious files and folders, but you may

sometimes need a bootable backup or (more precisely) clone of your hard drive. Mac

users need not worry in all such cases, as Mac OS X provides the feature to back up

almost everything on it, including the Operating System (OS), files, software. This

backup is known as clone of your hard drive.

The hard drive clone enables you to have your complete system on an external hard drive

or other external data storage media, which you can boot anytime without needing to

install the OS again. Additionally, the clone is the best source of data backup that helps

Mac users for easily overcoming disastrous situations of data loss. Apart from this, some

people want to have a spare system wherein they can test all the new software and

applications before installing them to their system. For them, clone of their hard drive

works as a boon.

The ‘Disk Utility’ of your Mac is the tool to perform the cloning of your hard drive.

However, you need to have a destination drive (an external hard drive or other external

data storage media) for cloning your complete hard drive to it. Before starting the cloning process,

make sure that your target or destination drive is not having any data. Since the

cloning process writes everything from the source drive to the destination drive, the

chances of overwriting of data on destination drive are high. Thus, it is said to observe

this precaution.

Follow the below mentioned steps to perform the cloning of your hard 

drive with ‘Disk

Utility’ of your Mac OS X:

• Step 1: Attach the external hard drive to your system.
• Step 2: Open ‘Disk Utility’ by going to the path ‘User >>Applications >> Utilities >
  > Disk Utility’.
• Step 3: From the left pane of the ‘Disk Utility’, select the hard drive 
  of which you want to create the clone, and then click the ‘Restore’ tab
  provided at the top of the right pane.
• Step 4: The drive that you want to clone is listed under ‘Source’ field. Select the drive on which you want to copy everything and drag it to 
  the ‘Destination’ field.
• Step 5: Click ‘Restore’ button provided at the bottom of this interface. Note: Ensure that there is nothing important on the destination drive because it will be erased after the cloning.

If everything works fine, you will be able to have a complete clone of your

hard drive on the destination drive easily. However, this cloning process 

may take a large amount of time, which entirely depends upon the size of 

your source drive. Moreover, it is assumed that your source drive has only 

one partition or volume.

In case your source drive is having multiple partitions and you want all the

partitions to be cloned,then make sure your destination drive or target hard

drive has the same number and size of partitions. That means the partition structure of both the drives source and destination must match.

Once identical partitions are created on your target hard drive, you can 

easily clone each partition or volume using the above method, except the

OS partition. This clearly indicates that the bootable clone of a hard drive

cannot be created with ‘Disk Utility’, if it has multiple partitions or 

volumes on your source hard drive.

Therefore, in situations wherein you want to create the bootable backup of your Mac hard drive that is having multiple partitions and that too without taking much time, using professional utility to clone Mac drive is recommended. A professional software like Stellar Drive Clone creates 

the exact replica of your Mac hard drives and logical volumes. 

Apart from cloning, the software also provides some other efficient features

like imaging with which you can create the image of one hard drive volume

or the complete volume. 

The availability of the software to create bootable volume or minimal

system keeps you away from the grief of Disk Utility’s inability to create

the bootable clone of Mac that has partitions.

Moreover, this efficient utility enables you to make full use of the storage space on your destination

drive by allowing you to resize volumes during the process of cloning. The option ‘Clone with resizing’ enables you to resize volumes on your 

destination drive and utilize all of its storage space.However, if you wish,

you can also select the option to clone the hard drive without resizing the destination drive. The software provides you both the options. The simple steps of this software for creating the clone of hard drive without resizing

the destination drive are:

• Step 1: Run ‘Stellar Drive Clone’ software.
• Step 2: Go to ‘Clone & Imaging’ tab and click the ‘Clone’ button. 
  This displays the cloning screen.
• Step 3: Select ‘Disk Clone’ option, and then opt for the option that says ‘Clone without resizing’
• Step 4: Select your ‘Source’ drive and the ‘Destination’ drive from 
  ‘Select Source’ list and 'Select Destination’ list respectively.
• Step 5: Click ‘Continue’ for starting the cloning process.

With these simple steps, the software will clone the entire source drive to 

the destination

drive without making any changes to it. However, before selecting any storage drive as destination or target drive, make sure that it is larger than or equal

to in size than the source drive. If you want to create the clone of your hard 

drive by resizing your destination drive, follow the below mentioned steps:

• Step 1: Run ‘Stellar Drive Clone’ application.
• Step 2: Go to ‘Clone & Imaging’ tab and click the ‘Clone’ button. You 
  will get a‘Cloning’ screen.
• Step 3: Select ‘Disk Clone’ option, and then select ‘Clone with resizing’ option.
• Select the source and destination drive from ‘Select Source’ list and ‘Select Destination’ list.
• Step 4: Click ‘Continue’ and you will see the resizing window.
• Step 5: Now select the volume that you want to resize. Enter new size 
  or drag the
  slider to mention the new size of the Volume(s) in your destination drive. Click ‘Accept Size’ every time you make changes in the size of the volume(s).
• Step 6: Click ‘Continue’ for starting the cloning process.

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So far, you have seen that commercial software are certainly better than

‘Disk Utility’,as

they not only enable you to create the bootable clone of a hard drive 

having partitions, but

also lets you resize volumes on the destination drive.The easily 

understandable steps of Stellar Drive Clone tool let you perform the cloning of your hard drive by your own without needing any help of a professionalor technical user.

To analyze this tool, you can initially download its free demo version.

The demo lets you perform various cloning options very exhaustively; 

however, to create the final image of your hard drive,you need to purchase

the license of the software, which bears a reasonable cost.

Why to Clone Mac OS X 10.8.3 Drive

Recently, Apple Inc. released the latest Mac OS X Mountain Lion version (i.e. Mac OS X 10.8.3), thereby fixing the bugs in Safari, Security Update 2013-001, and many other apps. Many of you might have upgraded to OS X 10.8.3 as suggested by Apple. Mac OS X 10.8.3 integrates security, stability, and compatibility.

Latest Mac OS X version is likely to fix many of the bugs encountered in earlier and a few current versions. However, many users are complaining that their Mac machine is freezing, crashing, and a few are getting gray screen on startup after upgrading to the latest OS X 10.8.3.

Apple must be aware of the tribulations users are facing after upgrading to OS X 10.8.3. Therefore, the developers must make sure to fix the issues soon..

However, users are recommended to stick to their current data security strategies (such as Mac drive cloning and imaging) to protect their valuable data. As cloning a Mac drive involves formal process of duplication, the resulted drive is an exact copy of the source drive, which is used in place of the original drive.

After a formal upgrade to the latest Mac OS X 10.8.3, you certainly do not want anything happening adversely. Therefore, Mac drive cloning not only ensures the data is protected, but even ensures for robustness of the Mac machine. Disk Utility troubleshoots the issues (such as disk permissions error, data read/write problem, volume header corruption, etc.) encountered while accessing Mac volumes, including boot volume. Moreover, it facilitates cloning the complete Mac 10.8.3 drive at once or individual volumes.

Follow the straightforward process discussed below to clone a Mac volume using Disk Utility:

Open disk utility from Applications-> Utilities folder. Click the Restore tab in the right pane of the disk utility window. Now drag and drop the target volume from the left pane of the Disk Utility window to the source field in the right pane.

Similarly, drag and drop the destination volume from the left pane to the destination field. Now, make sure that the selected volumes are correct.

In addition, make sure the destination volume does not contain any data. If it does, move everything to any other location, as cloning is going to format the destination drive first. At last, click Restore button to initiate the cloning process.

However, if you are cloning the boot volume of the Mac OS X 10.8.3, it is recommended to go to Recovery mode, and then start cloning.

How to detect bad sectors of Mac drive and monitor its health

Why we need to check our Mac drive health status regularly? How to avoid bad sectors in your hard drive? These are some common questions that has been asked or searched by many Mac users. However, Mac machines are pretty good in performance and made of quality hardware and technology that makes it less prone to failure still it demands proper maintenance and care. 

We recommend backing up Mac hard drive in case of bad sectors. Helpful utility Mac hard drive backup.

 

So, we can say that Mac OS X is a pretty solid system, it just require your little attention and awareness towards its health and performance.  There are many things that one can perform to keep his Mac drive running without any trouble.

Things like: optimizing(speedup) Mac performance, partitioning drive, cloning(bootable backup) your Mac disk, checking Mac drive health status etc for maintaining your Mac completely. There are many applications available in market for performing the above mentioned tasks. But, here we will focus on about how to assess your Mac drive health. 

 

The first tool that helps in determining whether your Mac disk is encountering trouble or not is your Mac's own Disk Utility. But it can't fix failing things in your Mac drive. So, basically this inbuilt application checking your volume status if it shows error messages or warnings. 

 

As we know that no one can stop drive crash but can control by proper monitoring and maintenance. There are several reasons of Mac hard drive failure among them bad sectors is the prominent. So, here we will study about causes and types of bad sectors. 

 

Bad sectors is the area on drive which can't be read. Bad sectors can't be repaired but is is experienced that these can't be found in image of drive or volume having bad sectors. Hence, imaging doesn't consist bad sectors. 
 

There are two types of bad sectors – hard and soft

Hard bad sectors or Physical bad sectors:

Hard bad sectors are also called physically damaged sectors which occur due to head crash or in a fixed magnetic state during movement of platter. 

 

Cases when hard bad sectors creates:

1. If your hard disk is exposed to extreme heat while writing data.

2. When the head has comes in contact to the disk surface, a hard bad sector might be created. Please note that hard bad sectors can't be repaired, but they can be prevented.

Soft Bad sectors or Logical bad sectors:

Soft bad sectors are called as logical bad sectors which occurs due to logical errors. 

 

Cases when soft bad sectors creates:

1. If an Error Correction Code (ECC) found in the sector of hard drive that does not match the content of the sector.  
2. Hard drive formatting or logical errors is also a reason of creation of soft bad sectors. Unlike the hard bad sectors, soft bad sectors are repairable. These soft bad sectors can be repaired by overwriting the whole disk with zeros.

Detecting and fixing soft Bad sectors in windows:

If we take the Windows OS, then we find that there has been an inbuilt check disk tool, called "Chkdsk". During booting sometimes a message shown that it is recommended to run check disk for fixing errors. So, it is recommended to run this tool once in a month. It will scan and fix for hard disk logical errors, detect bad sectors, so that it will no longer affect window's hard disk. So, this way it keep away unstability of computer.

Alhough Check Disk takes about half an hour to perform its task. Time taken in check disk depends on many factors, like PC speed, amount of memory occupied on the disk, RAM and disk size. So, it is good to run Check Disk when you don’t need to use the computer for some time.

As we know bad sectors are the area on your hard disk that cannot be read. Not only that but they cause damage or unstability to your drive that may lead to a catastrophic failure. As we have already discussed the cases when they created so it is well known now that these are fairly common with normal computer use after a while. Besides the imperfections of the world we have some perfect tools that help us to detect and avoid hard drive failure due to these. Here I am talking about Mac drive Monitor application.

Now, lets talk about the tool for detecting and avoiding bad sectors in Mac drive.

Unlike 'check Disk' inbuilt tool of windows, Mac doesn't has any inbuilt tool available for detecting bad sectors and monitoring performance of your Mac drive.

But, in my recent search I have found one such tool name Stellar Drive Monitor for assess your Mac drive health.

Important: The above mentioned tool can not purchased as a single tool but it comes by buying “Drive tool box” -­-­-­- which itself a combo of 14 Mac optimization utilities(Drive Monitor is one of its 14 modules).

This tool does following tasks in few minutes:

• Scan your Mac drive for bad sectors
• Give detailed information about your Mac drive/volumes
• It shows performance reports of your Mac drive in order to make you aware and give chance to take any required action before emergency strikes.

This is recommended to take backup or clone of your Mac drive if you suspect that your drive may be failing anytime. Because, technically it is said that the more you use a failing drive or the drive having problem the more you decrease the chances of recovering data that’s stored on it. As this data is becoming completely inaccessible.

Things to be done before upgrading to OS X Mavericks

Mac operating systems are designed in more advanced and easy to use way as compared to other OS. As we know that Apple released its well engineered OS X 10.9 to let you take advantage of technologies to their fullest. So, now, we have Apple’s latest operating system -­- OS X Mavericks. In this post, we’ll take you through the things required before upgrading to OS X 10.9. What are those things that one should keep in before
doing upgradation?
 
First, you should create clone of your data in some external drive in order to protect it. It is essential to take bakup of your entire drive before getting started with the latest version of OS X.

There are numerous tools available for creating backup of your Mac drive. The Apple’s own Time machine is one of the free backup tool. It is easy to use and can backup your data fast one after another.
However, when you go in deep you’ll find some limitations in some aspects which includes cloning, bootable backups and imaging technologies etc. Now the question arises why I need to clone or create bootable backups of my drive.

1. Bootable backup of system prevents your data from being lost if anything goes wrong during upgradation process.
2. It is recommended to create a complete clone of current OS before you upgrade your OS X to Mavericks.

But, in this high tech world we need not worry for these little things. Today in market, there are various reliable and efficient tools available for cloning and imaging your data.
Among various tools you need to elect the best one that best suits your needs and budget. After searching through web we come across follwing tools:

• Superduper
  
• Stellar Drive Clone
  
• Carbon Copy Cloner
  

Being a software analyst I did a deep observation and find Stellar Drive Clone, the best in all respects.
So, this is the one that I am using for my Mac as it also supports windows file formats in my Mac and supports SSD too.
Now, you need to focus on another thing that is whether your Mac machine is compatible for Maverics or not. 
 
Determining compatibility of Mac with Mavericks:
Before installing the latest Mac OS update, you need to check “About This Mac” option. Although it has been said in the announcement for Mavericks that if your Mac can run OS X Mountain Lion then it should run Mavericks.
Check specifications before upgradation OS X 10.9:

• Mac Book Airs from late 2008 or newer)
• mid 2007 or new iMac
• Mac Mini from early 2009 or newer
• Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)

Although there are some other things that one could do before upgrading OS X but the above mentioned one are must to be done.

Best Mac drive cloning and backup software to protect the entire disk

So, our top pick for Mac drive cloning and backup software is – Stellar Drive Clone application for creating bootable clone and image of drive fast and easily within few clicks.

However time machine is a great inbuilt app of your Mac, used to backup your drive by creating image. But, it has certain limitations, which forces you to go for third party shareware program. Those who can compromise with their data can also take backup using free and unreliable Mac backup applications. But, experts will always recommend you to select best utility which meets your need perfectly.

Although, in the middle section of this post we have given an easy graphical representation and comparison table to let you understand user’s choice.

This Article has been written after analyzing the functionalities of a good number of cloning and backup apps available on the web. We have also gone through many reputed software reviews and discussion site's and on the basis of that we concluded that none is as easy and effective as Stellar Drive Clone application.

Before going into details about this software, we make you aware of the importance of keeping emergency flash drive always. As we know that drive failure can happen anytime due to numerous reasons related to hardware, software and human errors that can cause data loss.

Now, let us come to the process of creating an emergency flash drive:

 

What is an emergency drive?
An emergency drive contains only the essential (default) applications that are needed to boot your Mac and can also run troubleshooting Mac utility such as Disk Utility. Well, the above mentioned feature is only available in an adroit cloning and backup software from Stellar.
'Tools' tab of the interface provides two option:
a) Create Bootable Dvd
b) Minimal system

By selecting Minimal system it gives you a quick clone. As the name implies it copies only the required default files to boot your Mac OS X. One just needs to select destination volume and it also gives you an option if you want it to include some other app. So, in technical terms one can say this emergency drive is a minimal system having copy of Mac OS X installation to a selected partition excluding all installed apps.

Note: I recommend to use USB flash drive rather than optical disc to create emergency drive or minimal system by this amazing software. Flash drives are considered more superior because they work with Macs and you can update them as per your requirement. While today most Mac's are shipped without any optical drive.

One can also create emergency drive by an Apple Recovery Disk assistant using Disk utility but again it is a long and a bit difficult method.

Create Mac bootable disc using professional Cloning app

A bootable Disc is nothing but an optical bootable media that helps you troubleshoot several problems that lead to inaccessibility of the entire Mac system. For this, all you need to do is just boot your Mac with this media and make necessary renovations or reinstall Mac OS X if required.

While working on Mac, you might have come across many issues, a few of which even make your Mac system unable to boot. In case your Mac is unable to boot, there might be some problem in its boot volume that requires to be repaired instantly. In order to repair Mac boot volume, you must have a secondary bootable media (such as a bootable disc or a bootable drive). However, Mac Lion (OS X 10.7) and Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) users are unable to perform any such operation, as they are not shipped Mac OS X boot disc along with their Mac machines. Instead, they need to download Mac OS X installer app from online Mac App Store after purchasing it.

Even though these Mac installers are available as download packages, one cannot go online and download an installer app every time when it is required. You might be thinking that why one would have to download the same installer app every time when it is required, as he can keep this installer for henceforth usage after downloading it. However, when you download this installer app from Mac App Store, it is downloaded to the /Applications folder and it is removed automatically after being used for Mac OS X installation. In case you need this installer app again, it is no longer available. This apparently means that you would have to download it again whenever it is required.

Alternatively, a physical media (such as a bootable DVD or a USB drive) is more convenient and reliable to be used as the bootable media. Luckily, it is convenient to create Mac bootable DVD using the installer package downloaded from Mac App Store. Following is the process you lneed to track for this:

At the very first step, download the installer app to your Mac. After downloading it, go to the /Applications folder and look for this app. You can recognize it with the name Install Mac OS X <version name>.app, where version name would be Lion or Mountain Lion. When it is located, right click (or control + click) it and choose ‘Show Package Contents’ in the context menu. In this folder, navigate to Contents > Shared Support folder and look for ‘InstallESD.dmg’ file. Now, minimize this window and launch Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities >Disk Utility), and then drag ‘InstallESD.dmg’ file to the left pane of Disk Utility. After that, select ‘InstallESD.dmg’ file at the left and click the Burn button on the Disk Utility toolbar. When prompted, insert a blank DVD and choose or fill required options in the window that pops up, and then click Burn button. As the disc burning process is finished, a message pops up to notify the same.

Advantages of having a bootable disc

Once the bootable DVD is created, you can use this disc to boot any Mac machine that is compatible with this version of Mac OS X.

• Bootable disc facilitates repairing corrupt Mac boot volume.
• Facilitates repairing corrupt permissions of Mac boot volume
• You can even install Mac OS X with this disc.
• If the Recovery HD on your Mac Lion or Mountain Lion is not accessible, you can boot from this bootable disc.
• Eliminates the need for downloading Mac OS X installer package every time when it is required

The aforementioned process for creating a bootable Mac disc, though, is straightforward. However, you need to purchase Mac OS X installer package for this. If you download an upgraded version of Mac OS X, then you can create a bootable DVD using this process because you would not be able to boot the newer Mac with the old bootable DVD. Well, you would be glad to know that you can also create a bootable DVD from your Mac including all installed apps and data, and the process is termed as cloning.

“Hard drive cloning refers to the process that involves replicating a hard drive to another based on a certain criterion.”

Actually, this criterion includes the formal requirements for copy Mac drive. As the name of the process conveys, cloning process requires a secondary hard drive (internal or external does not matter) to be the clone drive.

• Make sure the Secondary drive is larger or at least equal as compared to the Primary drive (i.e. Mac drive or source drive).
• Both Primary and Secondary drives should be formatted as Mac OS Extended (journaled).
• Both Primary and Secondary drives should be using GUID Partition Table as the Partition Map Scheme.
• The Secondary drive should be partitioned into the number of volumes equal to that on the Primary drive.

Once the aforementioned criterion is satisfied, you can initiate Mac drive cloning process. However, if you are using a new hard drive as the Secondary drive, then you will have to satisfy the aforementioned criteria first.

1. Formatting Secondary drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

As you connect the Secondary drive to your Mac, a Disk Insertion message pops up that says, “The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.” This means that you have to initialize this drive. For this, click Initialize button on this message box that launches Disk Utility.

In the left pane of Disk Utility, select this (i.e. Secondary) drive and go to the Erase tab in the right pane. In the Format dropdown menu, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and specify a name in the Name text field, and then click Erase button to format this drive.

After formatting this drive on Mac, it is visible on the desktop with the given Name.

2. Choosing GUID Partition Table for the Secondary drive

After formatting the Secondary drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), go to the Partition tab in the right pane; make sure the Secondary drive is highlighted at the left. Now, click Options button (i.e. shown beneath the graphical view of the Secondary drive) and choose GUID Partition Table in the window that opens, and then click OK button.

Important: GUID Partition Table enables Intel-based Macs to boot from this drive, whereas Apple Partition Map enables PowerPC-based Macs to boot from this drive. Intel-based Macs can perform data read/write operations on a drive that uses Apple Partition Map, but cannot boot from it. Likewise, Power PC-based Macs can perform data read/write operations on a drive that uses GUID Partition Table, but cannot boot from it. In case you want to upgrade from a Power PC-based Mac to an Intel-based Mac or vice-versa, you will have to alter the Partition Map Scheme used for this drive.

3. Partitioning the Secondary drive

Before initiating the Mac drive cloning process, partition the Secondary drive into the number of volumes equal to that on the Primary drive. For this, click Volume Scheme drop down menu and choose the number of partitions you want to create on the Secondary drive. This partitions your Mac drive into the number of partitions you have chosen. You can also see these partitions in the graphical structure of the hard drive. 
 

For example, if you choose 5 Partitions in the Volume Scheme dropdown menu, then the Secondary drive is partitioned into 5 volumes of equal sizes that you can see in the graphical structure of the hard drive.

Therefore, click one partition and give it a name in the Name text field, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in the Format dropdown menu, and specify a size (in GBs) in the Size text field beneath the Volume Information area. Likewise, give Name, Format, and Size to other Mac volumes as well. After that, click Apply button to save these changes.

Now, since the Secondary drive is ready to act as the destination drive for cloning, you can initiate the process to replicate Mac drive in the following ways:

In Disk Utility, select the Primary drive (i.e.Mac drive) in the left pane and simultaneously go to the Restore tab in the right pane. Now, drag the Primary drive to the Source field and the Secondary drive to the Destination field.

Important: If multiple hard drives are installed on your Mac, then make sure that you have chosen the right drives. Besides, since cloning process involves formatting the destination drive before copying data to it, make sure that it contains no precious file.

Apart from Disk Utility, you can also opt for a professional Mac cloning app. For this, download a professional Mac cloning app from the Internet. Based on the cloning app you choose, the steps to copy Mac drive would be changed, but the criterion remains unchanged as discussed earlier. Some advanced Mac cloning apps facilitate creating bootable DVD from your Mac boot volume, which you can use as a bootable media whenever you need to repair Mac boot volume.

Drive Cloning to replace Data Backup on Mac

You might be backing up every essential Mac file of yours on daily basis. However, taking backup does not really guarantee for the security of your essential data. You may not be able to restore your data, if your backup drive is no longer accessible after a disaster strikes. 

On the other hand, hard drive cloning keeps your Mac alive and data accessible even after your Mac is crashed. In reality, hard drive cloning refers to the process of creating a bootable copy of your Mac drive to another drive based on certain criterion, which is that the secondary drive (i.e. clone drive) you are going to use as the clone drive should be larger or at least equal in size as compared to the source drive.

Apart from this, you need to make sure that the following requirements are satisfied before you proceed to clone Mac drive:

Format secondary drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

• When you attach the secondary hard drive to your Mac, a Disk Insertion message box pops up
• Click initialize button on this message box to launch Disk Utility.
• Highlight this drive at the left and go to the Erase tab at the right.
• In the Format menu, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
• Type a Name for the disk and click Erase button.

Use GUID Partition Table as the Partition Map Scheme for secondary drive

• With secondary hard drive selected at the left, go to the Partition tab at the right.
• Click Options button and choose GUID Partition table in the opening window, and
• Click OK button.

Partition secondary drive into the number of volumes equal to that on the primary drive

• With secondary drive selected at the left, click Volume Scheme menu to choose the number of partitions you want to create (e.g. if you choose 4 Partitions, this disk will be partitioned into four partitions of equal sizes).
• Now, select a partition in the partitioned structure of the hard drive, and type a Name, choose Format, and specify a Size for it (i.e. Format should be Mac OS Extended (Journaled)).
• Repeat this step for other volumes as well.
• Finally, click Apply button to save the changes.
• In the pop up message, click Partition button to allow partitioning.

The time taken by this process is based on the size of the hard drive and the number of partitions you create on it. Once this process is finished, track the following steps to clone Mac drive:

Important: If you are running Mac OS X Lion or Mountain Lion, then boot it in Recovery Mode (hold down Command + R keys or Option key when Mac is booting). Once you see grey screen, choose Disk Utility in the Mac OS X Utilities window. However, the users running Mac OS X versions earlier than Mac Lion boot their Macs with Mac boot disc. Select a preferred Mac OS X language, click Next button, and then click Disk Utility in the Mac OS X Utilities window.

• Select Primary hard drive (i.e. your Mac drive) in the left pane of Disk Utility, and
• Go to the Restore tab at the right.
• Now, drag primary drive to the right pane and drop it to the Source field (if it is not already shown therein).
• Likewise, drag secondary hard drive to the right pane and drop it to the Destination field.

(If you have multiple hard drives installed on your Mac, then please ensure that the chosen drives are correct)

• Finally, click Restore button to start cloning your Mac drive.

Now, since the process involves replicating the entire hard drive including all data, the process may take long time to complete. Once Mac cloning is finished successfully, you can boot from it as well. Some users find cloning using disk utility a little bit complicated so, usually they prefer to perform this using some third party application.

Currently, I am using Stellar Drive Clone application for creating bootable clone of Mac disk and clone of my recovery HD. One can create image, backup of their Mac drive,volumes, folders in any external drive and network drive etc. This application is capable to take clone or backup of window partition in your Mac disk.

Steps to protect Mac drive from failure by scaning its bad sectors?

Have you ever faced the problem of bad sectors in Mac drive? It just takes five minutes for some tricks to analyze and maintain your Mac drive health?

Today, in this advanced digital world, devices like computers, mobiles etc. are becoming important part of our life as we keep all our confidential, official and personal data(photos, songs, video etc) in them. So, it is necessary to take care of our drive's health and protect it from failure and hence for preventing against data loss.

Here, we will discuss about assessing health status of your Mac drives to prevent from crashes and failure incidents. We know that the hard drives are prone to crash and no one can predict the life of a drive. But, today we have enough techniques to work upon it for making it less vulnerable to failure.

A drive has various sectors that store data packets in it. Basically a 'sector' is a unit of information stored on your hard disk. The data stored in sectors (standard size of 512 bytes) in sequential fashion, that helps in accessing data easily and fastly.

We all know the affects of hard drive failure could be very devastating, particularly if it had been a long time since you backed up your important Mac data. I want to add here one more important technology of creating clone or backup of your Mac drive or data regularly. By using cloning method regularly one would feel free from such bad surprises of drive crash or corruption that cause your data loss and sometimes beyond recovery level.

   

However it is also equally important to regularly check your Mac drive status using some relaible smart tools that helps you to maintain your drive health and can scan for bad sectors. These tools let you know the problems and areas that required fixing before it start generating troubles.Such a diagnostic tool is capable in scanning your Mac drive for bad sectors and check your internal drive S.M.A.R.T status.

A very well known application for analyzing your Mac drive is Stellar Drive toolbox. Specifically, the module “Drive Monitor”, assesses the drive performance, scans for bad sectors. It allows you to set preferences for the monitoring tasks. It provide you the capability to perform all above mentioned process and create performance report of your Mac drive and hence shows health of drive.

There are many types of hard drives available in market but all are vulnerable to crash after a while. Some common signs of drive failure are:-

• Sometimes one can predict it if an audible clicking sound comes that signify the problem in movement of spindle over the disk or spinning is not smooth.

• While in other cases, a drive that can be fail will reported errors during boot up or unexplained glitches.

You should follow the preventive measures even if your Mac drive isn’t showing the signs of crash or failure. I mean it is always good to take preventive steps towards your drive and data before it gets late and results affect your productivity. One must scan his Mac disk at least a couple of times in a year.

Note: However, if you suspect that your Mac drive can fail then your first step must be to create clone of your Mac drive, as soon as possible. Because in such a drive, risk of losing data, grows with time.

The above mentioned software i.e Drive Monitor tool for maintaining your Mac drive health performs three major tasks as follows:

• It give details of your internal drive SMART attributes.
• It scans your Mac drive for bad sectors.
• One can view the performance status of Mac drive with the help of graphical representation.

This utility comes in a package alongwith 13 other Mac optimization utilities, integrated as a whole called Drivetool box. It consists all required Mac maintenance utilities with some great applications like Mac partition manager, drive clone, speedup Mac, defragmentation tool etc. This whole package comes in $99 which is a complete optimization package for your Mac OS X.

For more details one can visit: http://www.drivetoolbox.com/

How to build best cloning or backup solution for your Mac

We all have some to-do list according to our priorities. Most of us keep 'cloning and backup' at number one in our list whether its a matter of professional data or a personal one. Everyone wants to know how to create or build the best backup or cloning solution for their Mac or PC.

As we know that it is essential to create clone of our data before it gets too late. But, still we neglect or ignore it? Probably, it’s because we don’t accept its importance. While some of you having a false perception that cloning is a boring and difficult task. So, avoidance comes naturally at the instant this thought comes in your mind.

However, it is better to pay attention towards it as soon as you know that it is strongly recommendation by experts and things go worse because not even the manufacturer can guarantee the life of a hard drive.

There are a lot of situations that make you think over creation of clone drive as a backup in some external drive. Suppose, your laptop get stolen and you have to deliver presentation on the very next day or need to show your project or semester assignment. You won’t be worry if are with a proper backup copy of your stolen drive. 
 

Secondly, your machine is always prone to data loss disaster — it’s only a matter of time. Is it good to live in a fear of digital catastrophe, instead, take a step to create the clone of your Mac drive or PC whatever you have in some storage device. Believe me it is easier than you might think.

Actually when my Mac is running fine, it’s hard to remember to do the routine maintenance(include clean up junk files, duplicate,cache,log files etc.) that, deep down, I know I should. It doesn't mean that Mac maintenance isn’t on my to-do list, it’s just like we didn't realize until something bad happened that pressing us to give attention. 

I used to maintain my Mac in order to maintain its performance like day one. Similarly you need to backup files and clone your entire Mac drive in order to prevent a data loss situation. Because an emergency drive is required in many data disaster situations. It is a bad habit to say “I will clone my drive tomorrow”.

Now, where to begin?

Basically we talk about best cloning approach for Mac OS X. The first basic thing you need is some kind of storage device to keep your backups or clone of your drive. 
 

There are many digital belongings from USB hard drives(SSD) to the out fashioned DVD. These drives are an excellent choice but one can include more advanced systems like RAID enclosures and NAS drives to add more storage and better reliability.

If you had never experienced a catastrophic data loss or you are the person who might not be so concern or worried about it. Then you should ask to the users who paid high for expensive data recovery software. Here is not the money issue but the 'time' you spend which is unrecoverable. So, from this what you got is -­-­-­ creating clone is well worth the time. One thing that I not mentioned is the case of people who never got their data back because it is beyond recovery.

Hence, creating clone and backup important files in my Mac is at the top of my to-do list of my weekend activities. 
 

Now come to the point, I knew that to build a best reliable backup or cloning plan, we needed to set up some standard qualities:

• Quick performance
• Create clone, image and restore backups
• Create clone of individual volumes,folder and entire drive including Recovery HD
• Interactive interface
• Support many file formats

There are a various cloning options for Mac users. Some are complex than others, but each addresses a slightly different type of users. Some cloning software are customizable with advanced features, while others focus are on ease-of-use. 
 

So, we opt best cloning software solely based on the above mentioned standards. 
 

The Stellar Drive Clone application which we find in many authorized reviews site. It supports both file level and block level cloning, alike CCC (carbon copy cloner). It creates clone of your drive, volume on any drive or network drive also. It can create clone of your recovery HD, alike superduper. Support to Windows file formats on Mac, is a unique feature in this easy to use cloning application..

Clone your entire Mac drive to new Mac OS X drive

Today, there are various methods to clone your old hard drive to new one. Before performing cloning you should format your new destination drive using disk utility. As we know, cloning process is recommended during migrating Mac applications, testing application and replacing old drive with new one.

Note: Before you start working with the clone of old Mac drive (created on new drive), ensure it has the same model and hardware requirements as your cloned drive.

Booting into Old Mac Drive:

Check if you have any external enclosure in order to plug your old drive via Firewire or USB. Note that Intel Mac users have only USB bootable option.

Now, while booting your Mac with old drive, just hold down the 'Option key' to go to startup manager showing all connected boot volumes (in case of lion+) in the form of icons as the option for boot.

Now, Click on your old Mac drive to boot it up, and let it to start normally.

Formatting Your New Mac Drive (Target drive):

Formatting new drive will be next important step that you will need to take before starting the cloning process. I am giving you short and simple instruction guide for formatting Mac drive process in Mac.

• Open Disk Utility(Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app)
• Select your new drive on left hand side of menu and then click on "Partition" tab.
• Now, click Options at the bottom side.
• Next step is to choose partition map for formatting.

In fourth step, you need to choose partition depending on your Mac processor. It means if you have a PPC based Mac then "Apple Partition Map" is the default partition map for all external drives. Although, if you are formatting drive for use as an Intel Mac machine then you should choose GUID partition map.

However, Intel based Mac's are able to do read and write operations on a drive with "Apple Partition Map", but one cannot boot the drive with this Partition map.

So, select GUID partition map for Intel Based Machines in order to boot your Mac from the hard drive.

Now, enter the name you want for this drive and click "Partition".

After clicking partition tab, you get a warning message "Partitioning a disk will destroy all the information on the volume of this disk." Then clicking to continue for formatting Partition.

Once it completes, you will see your new drive on desktop, with the same name that you had gave at the time of formatting.

Selecting the best Cloning Software:

There are various cloning apps present in the market. All third party software are similar in cloning and imaging abilities, but some may offer you some additional features. So, on the basis of ease of use, performance and advanced features we have chosen some best applications for cloning Mac drive.

1. Apple's Disk Utility (Mac OS X inbuilt tool) located in Applications > Utilities folder.

2. Stellar Drive Clone: http://www.stellarclonedrive.com/

3. Chronosync of Econtechnologies

Features including pros & cons of these three utilities are explained one by one:-

Apple's Disk Utility (10.3 X or Later Mac versions)    
                                          

Disk Utility is a great application provided by Apple to their Mac users. It performs many operations on Mac including repairing disk permissions on Mac, formatting drives, restoring and cloning. It has ability to create bootable clone of your drive like third party utilities. To do cloning with disk utility you need to follow below steps.                                                                     

1. Select your new drive/volume(target drive) and click on "Restore" tab.

2. Drag your old volume(drive or volume of which you want to create clone) to the Source field.

3. Drag your new target drive to its Destination field.

4. Click check box for "Erasing Destination".

5. Click restore at the bottom.

6. Now, it will start copying over to your new drive i.e destination drive.

Chronosync of Econ Technologies:

If you purchased chronosync cloning software for Mac, it is good but only for advanced users. Because, it has a bit complicated GUI, due to lack of hierarchial view. 

Although by investing $40 you are less with its part chronoagent (chronoagent is a aprt of chronosync required by user in order to get complete access of his backup kept at their destination end.

So, with this amount one will neither get complete access of backups nor schedule their Mac to backup on network drive.

Hence, one must buy chronoagent along with it and it cost $10, so as a full package one could say it -- expensive tool of $50.

In order to work with it one need to install chronoagent at destination drive while chronosync on your primary machine.

But, its additional feature that brings it in good Mac cloning software category is it can synchronize or backup almost anything connected to Mac machine. This will help you easily clone your old hard drive to your new hard drive.

So, basically in order to use all chronosync features you need to buy chronoagent with this.

Stellar Drive Clone software:

 Stellar Drive Clone is a great Mac cloning software for creating a bootable backup, image of your drive. 

Best thing I experience in this software is its self explanatory and interactive interface possess buttons as cloning,imaging and restore. (Download Here).

Its 2.5 version supports windows file formats on Mac like ExFat, Fat32, MBR partition scheme. Its cost just $39. For creating clone using Stellar Drive Clone one need to select his source disk (old drive/volume/folder) and destination disk (new drive/volume/folder). 

 

Its unique feature is that it works as a background process, means you can continue your work while cloning is in progress. Stellar Drive Clone is fast, easy and reliable Mac cloning software.

It also enables you to create clone on network drive.

Verification of 'bootable property' in cloned drive:

Once cloning process completes don't forget to verify whether the clone is bootable or not. To check this, restart Mac by holding "Option" key will show you all connected OS to your Mac. Here, you can select your preferable boot drive just by clicking it. In case you don’t see new cloned drive, you will need to do the cloning again. If it visible, just click on it to boot it up.

This will verify that your hard drive has cloned successfully.