How to create a Clone of your Mac OS X in an easy and effective way

With increase in the number of users of Mac OS X, consciousness for data protection has also been increased. Mac OS X cloning and imaging are two useful modes for protecting your data stored on Mac volume. Practically, clone of a thing means an exact replica or a mirror image. Yes, like human or animal clones, you can also create clone of your hard drive. Having clone of your hard drive overcome(s) the data loss situations. So, it protects your data by keeping backup of your entire drive including system files.

If you are planning to clone your Mac drive, then you must need an application for it. Are you aware of some reliable Mac cloning and imaging applications? Well, Mac OS X itself has an in-built Disk Utility application that is able to perform various tasks. These tasks include imaging of drive , individual volumes , create/delete a volume, verifying & repairing disk permissions, clone Mac volumes, resize existing volumes and even restore Mac drive image. If we attempt to clone a volume of Mac drive, it creates an exact carbon copy of our selected volume.

Using Disk Utility application of Mac, you can even create a bootable clone of your Mac disk onto another drive. Only you need to be sure that your destination drive should be equal to or larger than the source drive. You can use this cloned drive as an alternative to original drive when it fails. Here,you can go through the step-by-step process of cloning a Mac volume (containing your precious data) using disk utility:

• Launch Disk Utility on the desktop or click Go -­-­-­-> select Applications menu -­-­-­-> open Utilities -­-­-­-> open Disk Utility.
• Select the target Mac volume(destination volume) in the left hand pane of Disk Utility window.
• Go to the 'Restore tab' in the right hand pane of disk utility.
• Drag and drop the destination Mac volume to the Source field.
• Now, drag and drop the destination Mac volume to the destination field. Recheck in order to ensure that you have chosen the correct source and destination volumes.

• Click 'Restore button' to start cloning process.

After the completion of cloning process, you can see a carbon copy of your selected source Mac volume at the destination drive. But, being free it is not so efficient in comparison with outside (third party)products of cloning&imaging. I have heard many complaints from Mac users about Disk Utility’ complications. Therefore, it is advisable to use easy and reliable application for cloning and imaging your Mac drive.

So, to avoid any unfavorable situation or complexity, it is recommended to use a third party Mac cloning software. Now, the question arises that what are the features that should be in a good Mac cloning tool. Following are some required features:-

• Easy to use interface.

• Clone selected drive/volume/folder and also recovery HD (lion+)
• Able to work on various file formats like MBR, FAT32, Exfat etc.
• Support to SSD (Solid State Drive)
• Cloning to network drive(destination drive).

You can also create clone of your hard disk using ‘Restore’ feature of ‘Disk Utility’. However, if one want more robust, easy and advance Mac cloning method, then one can try a third party application. Let us understand this scenario with a practical example.

Jasmine – a college student wants to replace her old Mac drive with SSD. However, before doing replacement of the drive, she wants to clone Mac drive, so that its settings, preferences, and applications remain the same. Instead of using her machine ‘Disk Utility’ for creating clone, she wants to use some reliable Mac cloning software as she heard that some of them are much robust and efficient.

For selecting the better one, she) searched over the internet and found some great professional Mac cloning utilities available. After going through various reviews, forums, blogs, articles, and websites, she found one tool (Stellar Drive Clone) which was recommended by most of the users. However, to check its efficiency , first she downloaded the free demo version to see the options available in the application.

features Available in Demo Version of Stellar Drive Clone:

1. Restore volume from folder

2. Restore volume from volume image file

3. Create clone to network

4. Create clone to folder

However, in order to experience all of its features and functions, you have to purchase the license of this application. Therefore, for enabling all the features , she bought the license and easily create clone and image of her Mac drive and volumes on any external drive.

Now, before replacing her hard drive with new SSD, she created clone using this tool and checked this clone on her machine and it was working exactly the same as old machine.

In the same way, as Jasmine create clone of her Mac drive to SSD, you too can create an easy,fast and reliable clone backup of your drive to an external drive. Good part of this application is that it runs in a background. One can perform cloning and continue work at the same time. This tool has really a simple, interactive and easy to use interface.