Comparison of Cloning software with Migration Assistant in Mac

 There is confusion faced by Mac users in choosing between cloning software or migration assistant for transferring files from one Machine to another. So, in this video I told some facts about both along with their limitations and features. Conclusion is using cloning software is more better and easy than migration assistant. Migration Assistant is good utility but as per users review in many forums I can say it sometimes fails to transfer files between two Macs but can transfers apps.

For details of cloning software you can refer:http://www/stellarclonedrive.com/

Best cloning and imaging application for Mac OS X

One week ago, we asked you to vote for your favorite cloning application. As expected, we got tremendous (5516) votes and recommendations. The results we got, were not on the basis of cost of apps but, truely on the basis of performance.

Five best mac cloning tools are:

CLONING SOFTWARE PRICE VOTES

CCC(Carbon Copy Cloner)  $40                                                1,830

Stellar Drive Clone              $39                                                1,560

SuperDuper                         $27                                                  913

Choronosync                        $40                                                  785

Disk Utility                           Free                                                428

According to your votes on these five utility CCC is on number one and Stellar Drive Clone on second position.

No doubt, CCC is an amazing cloning software but users generally complaint for its high price. Initially it was donation ware but now its available for $40. A sudden rise in price is little indigestible for Many Mac users.

Stellar Drive Clone is not as old as CCC but is easy and user friendly as compared to CCC.

Where Stellar Drive Clone Excels:

• It creates exact replica of your files or disk.

• It creates bootable clone of Mac and Recovery HD.

• It supports Solid State Drive, Exfat formatted drives and MBR partition scheme.

• It is easy to use with easily understandable interface.

• Create bootable image of Mac drive.

• It is compatible with Mountain lion.

It can perform block level cloning (In block level cloning, picks data block wise rather than file by file , so it is fast)

So, you are free to use any cloning software that win the race. I personally go for Stellar Drive Clone, because of its interactive GUI and advance features.

Which is better for Mac cloning:Time Machine or Stellar Drive Clone

Often Mac users are concerned about their data safety and protection against loss. So, they used to do cloning and taking backups of their important files and documents. Some prefer to do cloning using some third party tool while others by time machine backups. I have used many cloning software and it is obvious no one is perfect. So, one can choose one on the basis of his/her requirements that they prefer more and want in their cloning software. For example: I want software that is easy to use, interactive GUI, can create bootable clone, give support to my SSD, can create image of my Mac disk and Restore options also. On the basis of above features, I choose Stellar Drive Clone. In this video, I described why it is better than Time machine.
 

Clone Vs Backup of Important data in Mac

Cloning and backup both are different concepts. Clone is a bootable backup of your Mac drive that provides stand up for both your vital data and Mac OS in any volume corruption or loss. Cloning is easy process and it is complementary to backup methods like Time Machine backup. By cloning or backup one can get back to his/her work even after a crash or failure.

Requirements for making clone:

You need a to store the clone at external disk or partition. Whatever you have either disk or partition, it should be large enough (more than the source drive) in size to hold all the data of source drive by leaving at least 10GB of free space. The cloning process creates exact replica of selected drive or volume to be cloned to your designated destination drive.

Clone Bootable disk

You can make bootable clone of your drive,recovery HD and boot camp partition by using some third party tool because time machine of Mac doesn't provide this facility. Stellar Drive Clone is one such popular utility that is able to make bootable copy of your Mac drive.

Below I have described the process to create bootable clone of your drive using Mac disk utility.

Mac’s Disk Utility can create clone of Mac Drive using its restore tab. In my upcoming blog, I will describe how to create bootable clone of Mac drive using Disk Utility that should be fairly simple to you.

Advantages of making bootable clone

Create functional Backup of Entire Mac data:

By cloning your Mac Drive, you are actually creating an exact copy of your entire Mac machine, this includes Partition structure, OS files and the directories. You can boot your Mac machine with clone of your drive in situations when your Mac rejects booting.

Platform for testing applications and troubleshooting Issues:

The Clone Drive can be used to test new applications updates before installing them onto the primary drive. Also,it can be used to troubleshoot errors of your Mac drive.

Replacement of Primary Hard Drive:

In case of a Hard Drive failure or crash, one could be crippled for weeks before the primary Drive could be repaired and data restoration process. Instead, you could be immediately back to form by booting up your Mac using your bootable Clone.

Maximize your Mac’s Battery Life to its fullest

You can increase or maintain your battery life just by takeing care of few things. You should also keep updating your software and make sure to have latest software because Apple keeps releasing updates from time to time that can play role in improving battery performance.

Maximizing Mac’s Battery Life to its fullest Will Keep Mac Running efficiently:

1. Calibrating New Mac's Battery

After buying new Mac, you should calibrate its battery within 2 weeks of buying it. Firstly, charge it fully before doing anything with it and make sure to use it after disconnecting its adaptor.

Second calibration method: when a battery level goes down and shows pop up messages for shutting down and finally goes to sleep mode, quitting all the current applications. This is the stage when the battery goes drained out and needs calibration.

2. Turning off settings and certain apps:

Turning off certain control panel settings and applications lengthens battery life on Mac. Often people leave their DVDs in machine even after watching movies. Although it doesn't harm the RAM but keeps consuming bits of battery power. So,remember to eject the DVD once after completed to extend your battery time.

There are lots advantages of control panel settings. First, dimming the screen to your comfortable level help in maximizing your battery life.

When you are not working on Mac, you can put it into sleep mode. To do this go to­-­­­-

'System Preferences,'then --> click on Hardware and press 'Energy Saver'.

You have two options:-

• Computer Sleep
• Display Sleep

We can also change time that we want it to for sleep after some time of inactivity. The lower the time is, the better it will be for your battery life.

Mac in Sleeping mode still using power;

People generally have big misconceptions that after putting Mac to sleep mode it is not using power. It doesn't save any power into Sleep Mode as your applications and files are still running. So. if you go somewhere for long duration, it is better to just shut down your Mac. This is good for both, your Mac and its battery.

Maximizing your battery life to fullest not only make your machine healthy but also make you wealthy. Mac batteries cost about $80 from Apple store. If you work on your notebook for a very very long duration and that is in your habit then you must follow aforemetioned steps.

Optimize Mac speed by some easy and effective tricks

How to optimize Mac? Ways to speed up Mac and increase Mac performance? Does clean Mac drive improves Mac performance? These are some common questions that are being asked by many Mac users in Mac forums and yahoo comments. Sluggish behavior of Mac becomes an issue of concern for Mac users.

• Outdated versions of applications are not as efficient and fast compare to their later versions that leads Mac speed to decrease, so updating these applications time to time is necessary.
• A little maintenance of Mac drive is enough to keep its performance reliable and fast as the brand new machine.
• Cleaning unwanted clutters and uninstall useless applications is also one important process for speeding up Mac. But, doing all this manually consumes a lot of time and its results are also not 100% efficient.
• With the passage of time, useless data gets accumulated on your drive and you can't avoid this to happen, whether one having a Mac or Microsoft. Identifying files like duplicate files, universal binaries, log files, cache files is also difficult task for deleting these completely.

Some common tricks to boost your Mac speed are :

1. Minimize Login items
2. Tracking activity monitor to analyze drive status
3. Free up disk space
4. Clear unnecessary files and uninstall unused apps
5. Resetting PRAM
6. Reduce desktop widgets

Although there are lot of aforementioned reasons behind Mac slow speed but, here I am discussing facts that are still beyond your reach. 

 

1. Using SMART tool :

If you find any failures and inconsistencies then you can determine the cause by checking output of your hard drive using SMART tool. But, make sure that you have SATA/eSATA/IDE internal drives because it doesn't work in external drives. And it works on Intel/ppc processor only.

2. Don't use highly animated desktop background:

If performance is important for you then avoid using animated desktop background, because, it steals turns from other processes so, it's better to have a static picture.

3. Anti-alias option

As we know Alias has its own benefit but it sometimes cause input/output error in Mac which can be solved by deleting Alias. The Anti-alias option cause slow screen redraw. So, to disable this option follow steps:

Choose Edit --> Preferences --> General

then deselect Anti-aliased Artwork --> and lastly click--> OK.

Strategy for preventing data loss in Mac|Backup and Cloning

We all need to protect our vital data, no matter whether its personal or professional.Anything that has a value and resides on your computer need to be backed up. It can involve family stuff, business plans and strategies, accounting files, employee details etc.

So an effective data safeguard plan includes regular backup routine. A comprehensive data backup and cloning plan is vital for your data security. No one wants to loose their precious data but before they think about taking backup, disaster hits them. So, its important to start a good backup strategy as soon as possible.

Begin a Backup/Clone Plan:

Backup or clone plan includes few aforementioned questions that should be clear to everyone because these help in achieving successful backup.

1.Where your clone or backup will be kept?
Ans1.Never keep your backup and clone on the same drive of same machine. Because if anyhow your drive crash or corrupt it take away your backup too.

2.How often will you take backups?
Ans2.You should make habit of taking regular backups. And “regular” means daily/weekly/monthly backup plan. So, it depends upon the frequency of your changing or modifying data that you choose weekly, daily or may be hourly plan.

3.Which application is suitable for cloning and backups?
Ans3. Although there are many options available to Mac users for backing up data.

Like:

Time Machine:It is very useful utility for backing up Mac data. It is not compatible with 10.5 earlier versions. And main disadvantage of time machine is that it not provide you bootable clone of Mac drive.

Cloud Storage: iCloud is better application for keeping your important stuff but its quite expensive to use as a backup method. And insecurity of iCloud is one more reason for its less acceptance as backup option.

Third party Utility: Though many good utilities are there in Mac market like CCC, Stellar Drive Clone, Superduper,etc. I had experience all these software as being an old Mac user. And my favourite is Stellar Drive Clone for cloning and backup my entire drive or specific volumes. I find easy to clone Mac HDD by using this software.

Prominent and unique features:

• It provides support to SSD drives and exFAT formatted drives, so one could use this software having SSD drive in their Mac.
• It can clone drive formatted with MBR partition map scheme.
• It provides you bootable clone of your Mac OSX and Recovery HD.
• It supports Mac OS X 10.4 or later versions.

Backing up your data is like buying insurance, as its not something you can wait to do until you need it.

So, don’t let it be “too late” for your vita information and drive. Make a good backup strategy today, process it now, follow and keep yourself away from worries and allow yourself no excuses.

Download software: http://www.stellarclonedrive.com/download-free-mac-drive-clone.php

Can I create bootable clone of my Mac OS X

Yes, you can create clone of your operating system, whatsoever OS it may be. Here, for Mac users, though time machine is a useful and easy to use backup utility but it doesn't help you to create bootable clone of Mac drive. It is recommended by experts to have bootable clone of your Mac so that you can boot your system when it fails to boot. People lose their precious data sometimes due to accidental deletion or due to OS crash or corrupt.

It can also happen sometimes during up-gradation of Mac, partitioning and formating a drive etc.

Firstly, it is quite obvious that creating clone of Mac drive is a need to reduce chances of permanent data loss. Secondly, creating clone of Mac OS is easy and inexpensive process.

Before upgrading Mac OS, make sure to take full backup of your machine.

Now, I would like to introduce the shareware Stellar Drive Clone for creating bootable clone and provide you facility of cloning or imaging any volume including boot volume. Stellar Drive Clone also provides you facility to create bootable dvd and minimal system drive. Both these allows you to startup machine in case it fails to boot as described below.

While making bootable dvd, stellar drive clone utility is included by default in which you can add different applications depending on the space left in it. On the other hand creating Minimal system drive helps you to boot machine in case of any trouble situation. “Minimal system” includes minimum files that are required to boot your system. Like most needed system files, default applications, default folders and preferences.

There’s a lot of things that you should consider while taking backup of your data but in my view the best approach is – “choosing best tool for backup”. So, I suggest you to install this tool and make clone of your drive in two steps.

It also allows you to create bootable disk in few steps. This software do its job in few clicks without demanding any expertise. You will definitely enjoy its interactive and easy to use interface.

For more details: http://www.stellarclonedrive.com/

Vote for your best Mac cloning software

We all are aware of benefits of cloning and backup of our hard drive. Here, I will discuss about creating clone of Mac drive and the best applications available for cloning.

Cloning on weekly basis can keep you away from data loss cause due to many reasons like accidental deletion of data, OS crash, hard drive failure etc. Creating bootable clone helps you to boot your Mac in situations when it is unable to boot because of some reason.

If you are very much concerned about your data, you can take exact clone of your entire Mac on every day.

Many of the Mac users leave their machine with risk of losing data without any backup. So, what makes people delaying in creating clone of their Mac drive is – inability to decide and choose the best cloning strategy and application for their Mac.

Below are some characteristics or features required in a good cloning software, which we see at various technical forums:

• Create exact replica of Mac drive,volume and store to any volume,folder,drive and network.
• Easy to use application with interactive interface. 
• Can make bootable clone of your drive and Recovery HD.  
• Able to create incremental backup.  
• Should be compatible on mountain lion and lower versions atleast upto 10.3. 
• Can support fast SSD drive etc.

So, instead of just placing my own views , Ithink it would be better to choos the best suitable App through voting. It would be great because everyone is free to give or share his opinion about the product he has used. So, this week I want to hear about your best cloning software. So tell us what tools help you for making clone of your drive with ease and without any expertise.

You can vote for your best Mac cloning tool by writing VOTE : “Favourite Cloning tool of Mac”, in your comment.

We'll get back to you after a week and disclose the result in next blog.

How to avoid Data Corruption or Loss in Mac

Today, we have so many resources around us to keep our data secure and protected. So, we should keep regular backups of our important office stuff and confidential data in order to utilize those resources to the best. Because, it is foolish to take risk for your data by keeping it without any backup and clone copy.

As for Mac, there are many backup and cloning options available as external drive, cloud storage, time machine, many third party software like CCC, Stellar drive clone, superduper etc. 
 
Our workplace is becoming more mobile due to increase in the number of users accessing corporate data from anywhere at any time. This access is possible due to different backup locations for example one at home, another at office in other system or drive. This has now become a trend in corporate and it significantly improve productivity.

But, with this accessing data facility from anywhere, risk of data loss also get increases that could cause unrecoverable harm. 
 
In this blog, IT professionals guides you about the steps that are necessary to implement a practical data loss prevention (DLP) strategy. Examples are:-

Common reasons of data corruption/loss includes:

• Power-related problems.
• Improper shutdowns, sometimes caused by power outages or pressing/holding the power button.
• Hardware issues or failures, including volume/drive corruption or crash, bad sectors of drive.
• Failure to eject external drives and related storage devices before disconnecting them or powering them off.
• Bad programming

For avoiding data corruption and loss:

Checking Hard Disk Temperature:

Temperature of the hard disk should be appropriate to keep it in working state. High temperature of drive could result in data loss and drive failure or crash. So, do not let your Mac working continuously because it increase temperature of your disk.

• Implementing Backup and Cloning plan:
  It is essential to clone or backup for ensuring your data protection in the situation of hard drive crash. Cloning Mac drive is therefore a need to to be on safe side.

Perform small amount of regular maintenance required for smooth running of Mac.

• Troubleshooting problems using disk utility when they occur.

Avoid hard restart:
If you are in a habit of solving problems by performing a hard restart and returning back to your work without going for troubleshooting the cause of the problem. You risk letting a small problem compound into larger problem.