Stellar Drive 2.5 Clone Review: Cloning and Imaging software for Mac

Stellar Drive Clone is an ideal cloning tool for Mac users who can't afford to let their important data loss or hard drive crash. This new cloning software from Stellar has become popular among Mac users.

With interactive interface and capability of creating bootable clone, its 2.5 version adds some more useful features and make it more worthy.

Stellar Drive Clone Pros:

• Easy to understand interface and smooth process.

• Create Bootable clone of your Mac drive and Recovery HD (include Lion and Mountain lion) also.

• It supports SSD and exFAT formatted drives or volumes.

• Clones to external drive, another volume and network drive.

• Perform both File level and block level cloning.

• Ensure data safety and protection without causing any loss.

• Provide support to MBR formatted partition scheme.

Stellar Drive Clone Cons:

• Doesn't provide estimate time for cloning.

• Image created by it is not in compressed form.
  
  
  

  

  Download Stellar Drive Clone

  
  

Review of Stellar Drive Clone:

When it comes to keep back up of your Mac files, I think Apple's Time Machine is there for backing up and keep your data safe from any loss. However, Time Machine and Stellar Drive Clone differ in there nature of job. 

 

Using Time Machine you can access backup of your files that have been corrupted or deleted accidentally. Stellar Drive Clone offers you to clone and create Mac bootable dvd of your drive and specific volumes that enables you to continue your work on a different Mac machine even when your Mac gets suddenly crashed.

Although time machine is great Mac's utility for backup and restoring files but Stellar Drive Clone can do something where time machine fails. Like creating bootable clone, imaging, restore, create exact clone of your drive or folder etc.

Ease of Use: 10/10 

 

Generally, cloning process is considered to be complex but with Stellar Drive Clone it becomes smooth and fast. It clone your Mac hard drive without any technical expertise and also letting your work flow same without disturbance and interference while cloning.

Its interactive and easy to use interface enables you to perform job smoothly without any expertise, It offers you three tabs: Clone&Imaging, Restore and Tools.

If you want to create clone of your drive then click on 'clone and imaging tab' and select clone option. Now, choose “clone” for creating clone of your drive. Select the source and destination to store the clone. Do the same for creating image by clicking on “Image” tab. For restore, you need to click on 'restore tab' and for creating bootable dvd click on tools button.

Cloning Feature: 8.2/10

While there are many Cloning softwaree in market, but I prefer it due to its fast performance in cloning without disturbing you with lots of pop up ads. Clone Mac hard drive using this software is easy and reliable. Clone Mac data is essential for a integrity and maintenance against any type of loss.

Imaging Feature: 7.5/10

It can easily create disk image including image of bootable volume that helps you when you face problem in booting.It leaves bad sectors while creating image of disk or volume. If you process to create image of hard drive then a pop up window opens saying “create minimal system of boot volume”. Click it to create image of your bootable volume. This can be taken as a backup which helps you if your bootable volume crash.

Support: 8.6/10

You can find Support in preferences tab where there is a link of the site to know in detail. It provides you Installation guide, un-installation guide, user manual(describing each term without technical jargon) gives all answers to your questions. And all content is written by keeping end user in mind.

There are FAQs and blogs to let you more clear about cloning and problems that another users have come across. Finally if something cause problem then you are free to call any time to customer support open 24/5 hours or can email also.

Summary/Final thoughts:

After observing its amazing features, I would say that it is one of the best Mac cloning applications I ever came across.

Interrelation between Cloning and Backup

In this article, I want to explain how to backup your Mac machine using method of cloning. Actually, many people argue that cloning is something different than backup or one can say not a method of backing up. However, I am agree that cloning is basically required to perform before upgradation to new drive, switching from old Mac to new Mac, test applications and ofcourse a great way to back up your drive.

Cloning refers to making an exact copy of your Mac drive, to an external drive, network drive and another Mac.

Here, I am not going deep into the many reasons that why cloning is essential on regular basis.

But, want to share you some expert recommendations on cloning backup methods, for both Windows and Apple Mac machines.

Relation between cloning and backup is -­-­- backups can be scheduled while cloning doesn't. While cloning is copying your all files and applications exactly same as they are such that you don't need to install those cloned applications in destination drive or machine again. However in backup you need to install all those application again in your destination drive.

So, if you want to replace your old drive with new one or want to switch to another Mac its better to clone your drive rather than backup.

Cloning creates carbon copy of your Mac drive and make you enable to create bootable clone of your Mac. Means you can start your Mac using your bootable clone of your boot drive in case your system is not booting or crashed, without leting you to stop your work.

Some recommended tool by experts to clone Mac drive are:-

• Stellar Drive Clone
• Carbon Copy Cloner
• Clonezilla
• Superduper

But, I have been using Stellar Drive Clone, so I will recommend this tool for Apple Mac users. I prefer this tool because of its easy interface and advanced features like:

• Create bootable clone of your Mac drive
• Create image and support SSD
• Give suppport to ExFat formatted files and MBR partition scheme

As discussed above Stellar Drive Clone is a cloning and imaging software. It is capable for creating bootable clone of your Mac within few clicks. Bootable backups are beneficial in situations when your drive corrupts suddenly in the middle of your work and you continue your work in a minute by booting your machine from your bootable backup stored at external drive.

Recommended windows cloning software are:

XXClone:Free tool

Its shotcoming is -­- it gives supports only to XP version not vista or window 7.

Seagate DiscWizard: Free tool

It give supports to Vista and Win7 but requires either Maxtor or seagate drive.

Backup or copy your DVD movies on Mac OS X

For storing and enjoying favorate movies and personal stuff (including family photos and songs) Mac users too prefer DVDs. The only problem is that DVDs are prone to scratches. These scratches let your data inaccessible Like contact lenses you have to take care of it in order to protect it from scratches.

So, all it implies that these required a good care.

DVDs can hold data equivalent to about 12 CDs. So, you can say DVD's are 'massive data storage device'.

Because of its portability feature, one can enjoy his movies,pictures at outstation too on platforms like T.V, laptop etc. Today, with the increase in mobility of electronic devices, it became important to take care of your DVDs.

On last weekend, all my friends assembled at my place for party and fun. We all decided to watch one of our favourite DVD. I sat relaxed on couch and then suddenly movieplayback got frozen. That was very pathetic. We had no choice except turning off our DVD player because it got stucked with so many deep scratches that was enough to put an end to our movie.

Then we felt the need of creating DVD copy so as to protect from being corrupted or loss. There are many DVD copy software like wondershare, ripper, handbrake etc. But, in case of lots of DVDs, it is recommended to make backups of your DVDs.

DVD copy or clone to External drive

You can create clone or backup of your DVDs with Stellar Drive Clone software. You can clone your DVDs to any external drive, folder, another Mac and even at network drive. It supports ExFAT formatted files and MBR partition scheme too. I have used it and found its interface easy to use and it works fast as well. Actually not only of DVDs but it can create bootable clone of my Mac which is very useful if my Mac is crashed or fail to boot. Stellar Drive Clone is a cloning and imaging software, it enables you to create image of your drive, volume and can restore your deleted files.

Now, I am relaxed with this adroit cloning tool for Mac, and this coming weekend we are planning get together for enjoying that movie and one of our college video clips. So, don't just think over it, just go ahead and buy this amazing software (Stellar Drive Clone) and have fun.

Steps to delete my Recovery HD partition using Disk Utility?

As discussed in our previous blog about the need for deleting recovery partition, here are the steps to delete it from your Mac OS X (lion+).

First Clone your Mac using Stellar Drive Clone software:

The foremost thing is --- creating clone (bootable clone) of your Mac drive using some adroit tool like Stellar Drive Clone. So, first make bootable copy of Recovery HD using this software on your external drive and then delete recovery HD from your Mac is a better option. It enables you to use recovery HD clone from external drive when required and keeps your Mac protect from unauthorized access.

In fact, Stellar Drive Clone can create bootable copy of your Mac recovery HD too that you can keep anywhere in some external drive and can use whenever required.

This tool can clone can create bootable copy of your drive and image of your Mac disk using which you can restore your Mac when needed.

Steps to delete recovery partition using Mac's Disk utility:

Step1. First confirm the presence of Recovery HD, so open Terminal.app and enter ' diskutil list' command and press return key.

If you find its presence then follow further steps:

Step2. Write the command - "defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1 " and press return.

Actually this command will enable the Debug option of disk utility that is usually hidden. By using this option we complete further procedure.

Step3. Open Disk Utillity, Select debug and click on 'show every partition'

This action revealed the Recovery HD in the left hand pane of disk utility that usually seems to be grayed.

Step4. Now, select Recovery HD and click icon on the top named as Mount to make it active.

Step5. Now it will no longer greyed, you can delete it using secondary click of mouse or by control click and then clicking erase.

Step6. Now, you will be left with the free space of 650mb partition with nothing on it, so in order to free that space for future use, It is better to remove that partition too using partition tab.

Select partition tab than click on recovery HD partition showing in drive, then a dialogue box open to ask for confirmation of removal or cancel. Click to remove make the task done.

If you want to check for confirmation: Again you can check its presence by typing command diskutil list in terminal.app.

Need to delete Recovery HD for your Mac Security

Users having Lion or Mountain lion know about Recovery partition that is created while installing the OS. If you want to upgrade from your Intel Mac from Snow leopard to Lion or to Mountain Lion then you are at right article. Here , I am going to discuss about merits and demerits of recovery partition on your Mac.

First of all, for users who are new to Mac perhaps need to know about What it is and how to access recovery HD. The users who are already aware of recovery partition and its uses can directly move directly to the section explaining need of deleting recovery partition from your drive.

What is Recovery Partition and How to access it?

Its a small partition of 650 mb, hidden, new feature comes only with Lion or ML, that is created automatically after installation of these Mac OS versions.

It is reserved for inbuilt utility of Mac like Disk Utility, can repair your Mac drive and recover your Mac data in case of any issue or drive failure.

"It can install Mac OS X new copy, repair your Mac drive, recover data using time machine backups, you can boot your Mac OS X using recovery partition "

So, using recovery HD, you can restore your application to your Mac without the need of USBs and DVDs.

How to access your Recovery HD:

Two ways:-

1. Press and hold command (R) just after start up of your Mac. If it doesn't work try second one.

2. Keep holding option key while booting until gray screen appears showing all the connected bootable drives, represented by their respective icons and names beneath them. From here, just click on recovery HD to start your Mac using it as boot drive.

Why Recovery partition should be deleted?

You may need to delete it for the sake of its security and protection against unauthorized access to your Mac data because one can reset your passwords just by booting your Mac using recovery partition. And this would made your personal data public without even letting you know about this. 

 

As you know, Recovery partition takes the place of DVD installation. Difference is -­-­- instead of physical DVD, it is present as hidden partition in hard drive.

So, one who is concerned about his/her privacy should definitely delete it as soon as possible.

Note: Before deleting recovery HD, it is recommended to clone mac hard drive.

Stellar speedup Mac: Software to speed up Mac performance

Are you wondering that why your Mac machine seems to be crawling like a tortoise unlike the previous months when it was quite new and every time you open it with a smiled at your new Mac?

Many Mac users proudly boast about the fact that their Macs don't show issues like Windows but, this is only partially correct.

My 2year old Mac showing signs of sluggishness no matter how well I look after my mac machine(by performing several maintenance tricks) as things would be happen after a while. So, it made your beloved Mac machine slow, and hence decreasing performance.

Now let’s look at some reasons of Mac running slow and how can you manage to bring Mac to its proper track. Spend some time over it and save your bucks that may go waste without knowing the actual reason of your slow Mac.

Common reasons causing slow Mac:

• Overfilled drive (Less than 10% free disc space in drive)
• Large number of Fragmented files
• Problem with RAM or processor
• Incorrect permissions on system files
• Many Login items at start up
• Too many widgets on desktop

By applying the above mentioned steps you can speedup your Mac upto some extent but not to its best. So, to gain a fully optimized Mac you should go for some Mac cleanup software. Third party tool does job like cleaning cache files, log files, duplicate files, universal binaries,etc. So, one can boost up his Mac performance by using some application like Stellar Speedup Mac. This tool is really wonderful to clean Mac drive and uninstall unused application, speedup your Mac by removing all unwanted clutters.

Stellar Speedup Mac utility does its job successfully and easily.

Revive your Mac Machine with SSD drive

For improving performance of your Mac machine using handy tricks and third party software is a common approach today that people are adopting. Often users are not aware of that just upgrading hard drive could bring big improvement to everything you did in your Mac.

SSD became more popular because of its speed and its compatibility with number of devices.

After upgrade to SSD, you will experience changes like:

• Fast boot times
• Instantly saving files
• Application launches fastly
• Quick switching of programs
  

How SSD differs from HDD's:

This Solid-State drive works fast because it uses high speed flash memory chips for storing data. It doesn't have any spinning platter in it. It offers several benefits:

• Silently perform operation
• Required low-power
• Shock resistance

     Although SSD offers multiple advantages as mentioned above but the most irresistible reason to have it is its unconditional speed. Infect, some SSD's are much faster than the conventional HDD.

Due to no moving parts in SSD, it is more reliable than other HDD's. While traditional drives are more prone to failure and produce noise due to moving platters that grows naturally with the usage. On the other hand, SSD having warranties up to 5 years by manufacturers. But, SSDs are more expensive than conventional hard drives.

How to do Compatible SSD upgrade:

Upgrading to Solid state drive is not easy as that purchasing a drive and just inserting it in your computer.

So, there are some areas of concern that need to be verified like:-

1. Selecting right model
2. Ensuring it will go with your setup
3. Having installed process clean
4. and last but not least Cloning your old drive carefully( this point we'll discuss at the end of the blog)

    For testing Mac compatibility SSD upgrade:

Firstly, determine that if your computer is well suited for SSD or not.

Making sure about your computer's BIOS support to SSD and also the OS it has, if compatible for SSD or not.

For example: OS like Win XP and older ones are not compatible for SSD.

If everything above you checked, and finally you want to perform upgrade to SSD, then now its time to choose your SSD from wide variety of SSDs array's available.

Eg. For Windows Vista -­-­-­- make sure to update it to Service Pack 1 results in improving Vista's performance, when running using SSD.

Windows 7 is also a better OS for running SSDs.

    Capacities of Mac compatible SSD:

Range from 32 GB -­-­-­- 1 TB.

Mac owner should consider sizes 28GB -­-­-­- 256GB range.

Clone your old drive to SSD using Stellar Drive Clone:

The situation of upgrading or replacing a drive is -­-­- when cloning is utmost requirement. Upgrading to new drive needs to be cloned onto new drive, so as not to lose any of your important file.

Cloning your old drive is very important before going for any upgradation because it lets all your applications installed in your new drive. However, if you take backup of your Mac drive instead of clone, you will have to install those applications on your new drive. 

 

You can clone your old drive using Stellar Drive Clone that I have been using from past two years. It can create bootable dvd of your old Mac and its new version supports SSD that is really one of its great feature.

Mac Backup and Cloning applications: CCC, Stellar Drive Clone, Clonezilla

Today there are numerous applications available for cloning Mac drive. Some famous cloning software include CCC, Stellar Drive Clone and Clonezilla. No one wants to loose his important stuff , so it is essential to take backup or clone your drive or volume. Have you ever lost any of your precious documents, images, videos, audios, reports and more due to accidental deletion, virus attack, formatting , hard drive crash etc.

Loss of sensitive and important data of a company would affect its productivity and reputation as well and no one can afford it. So, its better to not to take risk for your sensitive data, and make the habit of cloning/backing up your data regularly. Cloning protects your data in case of hard drive failure due to untimely power outages, and some other things that may cause your data loss.
Cloning can create exact copy of your drive or volume to another drive, folder or Mac. Three most popular Mac cloning tool and its features:-


Carbon Copy Cloner(CCC):-
Better bootable backup
Support to Block level cloning
Clones recovery HD(Lion+)
Incremental backups(Copy only the files that have changed since last backup)
Schedule tasks on hourly,daily and monthly basis
Can save backup to external drive also network drive also.
Price: $40


Stellar Drive Clone:
Easy to use interface
Cloning and Imaging software
Create bootable clone of Mac drive including recovery HD
Supports file level as well as block level cloning
Clone with or without resizing your volume
Can save your clone to another folder, external drive and network drive.
Create image of your Mac disk and volume(incuding bootable volume)
Restore your deleted image file
Supports SSD or ExFAT formatted partition files
Supports MBR partition scheme
Price: $39


Clonezilla:
Free tool
Supports so many filesystem
Mainly used for massive cloning
Consumes lots of time in massive cloning
Can't create bootable backups


So, after considering the features of all three of above mentioned cloning tools, I personally find Stellar Drive Clone better for cloning and imaging.

All about your Mac's Hard drive that you must know

In this article, we will have an indepth analysis of a hard drive. We will see thr details of its working principle, health maintenance and filesystems.

The hard drive is a place, where all your data is stored and are considered to be most important piece of hardware in your computer. If your hard drive behaves weired or stop working it could be quite dangerous for your data stored in it. Infact most of the computer problems are encountered from your hard drive, so its crucial to maintain your hard drive health.

There are two types of hard drives: HDD(Hard disk drives) and SSD(Solid- State drives). Both perform same task but differently.

How (HDD) hard disk drive works:

Hard drive perform read and write operations by changing the magnetic polarities on the drive. Any magnetic direction change when head passes over drive that lead to voltage spike and creating a 1. And there will be no change in voltage spikes when magnetic direction is same, so it creates 0.

How SSD works:

Solid State Drives are becoming more popular because of increasing number of portable devices and more advanced technology it has. Non -Retina is the only laptop of Apple that don't have flash storage. Unlike HDD that deliver data rely on a spinning platter, SSD due to absence of moving parts it stores data inside transistors or gates in the form of electrical charges. In the presence of a charge it produces 1 and in absence 0.

Comparison between HDD and SSD: HDD are cheaper, easier to damage and can hold more data comparatively SSD. While, SSD is expensive, perform faster read operation than HDD as no time consumes in waiting for platter to spin up. However SSD can't hold much data as HDD.

Fusion Drive: A fusion drive as the name describe is a mixture of both an SSD and a hard disk drive. So, if you have fusion drive in your computer means your computer has two separate drives, but only one drive will be visible to you. And intersting thing is OS X automatically decides that in which drive to store files depending on how much you use drive.

Maintenance of Mac hard drive: Your Mac drive will degrade in health with the passage of time. But, using some techniques you can maintain your hard drive and increase life of your drive.

S.M.A.R.T -­-­- smarter choice of S.M.A.R.T people

Your Mac drive comes with a tool called S.M.A.R.T that diagnose your drive for any sort of problems and reports you, if find any issue. So ,it is quite safe to check SMART status of your drive regularly so that one can take an appropriate action before any mishappening.

SMART(Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Report Technology) will let you know before occuring of any problem by sending several warning messages.

For Verifying Health of of your Mac drive:

Opens Mac Disk Utility

Select Mac HD in left hand pane

Click Verify Disk for verifying your disk

After complete it will let you know if found any problems in its log file, then click Repair Disk for fixing those problems.

Mac drive Formatting: Formatting hard drive refers to how your data is represented or stores in OS. There are three common filesystems:HFS+, FAT32 and NTFS.

Mac OS X filesystem is HFS+, while Windows user uses NTFS and used to use FAT32 also.
Below chart showing that these filesystem compatible with which operating system.

	HFS+	FAT32	NTFS
WINDOWS	Read Only	Read and Write	Read and Write
Mac OS X	Read and Write	Read and Write	Read Only

Now, one may think that when FAT32 is cross platform then why not we format our Mac drive using FAT32. This is because of the reason of its limitation in size of the file, while it have larger capacity but can't have files larger than 4GB on the disk.

Note: Before doing formatting you need to create bootable copy Mac OS X  in order to protect your data from any loss during such operation. So, remember to clone your drive before formatting your Mac drive or its partitions.

Which is better: Hybrid drive or SSD

New hybrid hard drive won all the popularity over traditional hard drives very quickly. As its name reflects, a Hybrid hard drive is a combination of an SSD and a traditional hard drive. It proclaims features of both the technologies.

This drive contributes the maximum to enhance system performance without being uneasy with your pocket. You can see the price difference between an SSD and Hybrid drive:

2 GB SSD cost-­-­-­- $450

750 GB hybrid drive (with 32 GB SSD) -­-­-­- $120

Lets us take an example: By combining a fast 7200 rpm Sata hard disk with a 32 GB Solid State Drive, you will get a great increase in the performance of your Mac.

In 2007, both Samsung and Seagate began production of hybrid drives but can't did so well in selling these drive until its price drops.

If we compare performance of hybrid and SSD then it is very easy to see the difference in their speed. Hybrid drives enhance your Mac performance but not as efficient and fast as SSD. 

These drives are of both 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch formats. Leading manufacturers of hard drives like Seagate and Western Digital are producing numerous hybrid hard drive models. Recently Seagate drives have been found more advantageous in both price and performance than western digital.

Performance can be judged on the basis of size and rpm factor. An SSD is rated on the basis of size whereas an HDD is rated on its revolutions per minute (rpm). Both these features are attributed in hybrid drives.

I did a test and compared my Macbook Pro (with an SSD of 500 GB) with my friend's Sony laptop with 7200 rpm traditional drive and found that the boot times and daily activities were noticeably faster in my friends laptop. So, if one can't afford an SSD, he can happily boost his machine with Hybrid drive.

Both these systems were about 2 years old but after upgrading both with hybrid hard drive their performance boost up that made them like a brand new. It’s important to clone your old drive using some cloning application before doing any upgradation. It is recommended to create bootable clone of your old drive. 

In my knowledge, Stellar Drive Clone is one such great cloning application that can create bootable clone of your Mac drive smoothly and quickly. It also gives support to SSD or Hybrid drives. So, by considering above described points, right now I can say Hybrid drives could be best deal for you.

As per my experience, I would say that upgrading drive is the best approach to enhance performance for older machines and laptops.

Mac Cloning problems and their solutions

Cloning is making exact copy of your applications and files to another drive or Mac so that no need to install them at destination drive and this clone works as your backup. You can create bootable clone too which helps in case your drive crash or corrupt.

We all know importance of our data, as far as my files and data are concerned (including personal and professional) are my life. So, it is foremost required to take backup and clone of your important data.

There are two methods for saving your data against any loss: Time machine backups and Cloning software. Both these are used for same purpose but perform functions differently due to some difference in their mechanism.

Cloning problems:
Time machine - great inbuilt backup utility of Mac designed for keeping your incremental backups (automatically backup changes occured in files so, don't copy them again). However, when your machine isn’t connected to Time Machine, it still track changes occurring in files as per your schedule settings it saves them automatically on your drive.

But, time machine deletes your older backups without giving you any warning message when you attempt to take backup of more data and your destination drive is full. The considerable disadvantage from my point of view is time machine can't create 'bootable backups'. I have described in detail about this term in last paragraph. 
 
So, its intelligent to use a cloning software in place of time machine backups. Now, lets come to Cloning problems that have been faced by Mac users. 
 
Apart from cloning advantages, it brings you some unwanted stuff and leaves the necessary ones. Have you ever noticed that you clone only 24GB of data but it clones 82GB? Actually, last week one of my colleague tried to clone his macbook pro (58GB) to his new SSD. The whole process went very swiftly except ­ he got 187GB of data instead of 58GB.

And this is not the only case I have heard, there are several similar cases I have came across. Actually, there are lot of files that you don't need like cache files, log files, duplicate files, etc. So, to resolve this issue you need some cleaning tools like Stellar Speedup Mac that makes your Mac free from all such unwanted files.

This Mac cleaning application clear all duplicate files, cache files, log files, universal binaries etc. After cleaning all such unwanted applications you can clone only the desired data. You can select the files you want to clean or exclude the ones you don't want by tick mark by going in preferences section of software. For example you want to clean duplicate, lot of universal binaries but not cache files.

For details visit

As explained above, while performing cloning to your complete drive it still leaves some necessary stuff behind. That is -­- Recovery partition. Yes, cloning your drive leave recovery partition because it is hidden. Users having lion or Mountain lion might experience this thing. But, few software does this job easily. Like Stellar Drive Clone can clone your Recovery partition so you can boot from your cloned recovery partition if somehow your original recovery partition gets deleted.

Stellar Drive Clone is cloning and imaging software so it allows you to make bootable copy of your Mac drive and recovery HD.