Disk Utility or an External Application: which is better to Clone Mac Drive?

Data loss is the biggest fear for computer users. Mac systems are a dream for those who do not own it and true companions for its users; however, when it comes to security, no computer is away from glitches. Mac computers are designed with high level of security and other important measures in mind, yet some adverse situations are just impossible to control. To manage such cases, it is your job to understand and implement useful mechanisms helpful in saving your important data. You might have heard of many techniques, such as data backup and others. However, if we take an example of data backup, it is a great strategy to keep the data safe, but may not contain everything of your Mac. Even if it does, it will take you hours to accomplish the whole task.

Therefore, sometimes, it is good to omit taking a simple backup and adopt advanced techniques like cloning. As you understand with the name, cloning is an exact copy or replica of your entire hard drive, and hence provides you a backup of every bit of data as it is. When you clone your system to an external drive, it can be used to boot and with this, clone works for you as a bootable drive. Clone Mac drive helps you out in the following ways:

• When you clone your hard drive, you are simply provided with a functional backup of the entire system. Clone contains users' home directories as well as operating system files and as explained earlier that you easily boot from the clone.

• When you intend to upgrade your Mac to its higher version, of course, you need full system backup. This is where you can simply clone Mac drive to back up the data and restore the data after upgrading is done.

• In some unfortunate conditions, your primary hard drive may come across corruption or damage and you lose access to it. In this case, if you have a clone of the drive, it can be an alternative to primary hard drive so that you need not wait for a long time to get started again.

• You can also use the clone for testing new applications before getting them installed on the primary system. It can also be used if there are problems with the system. You can boot from the clone for identifying what causes the problem.

However, you must ensure that the destination drive has equal to and larger space than that of the source drive (the drive that has to be cloned). You can clone Mac drive from Apple's inbuilt tool 'Disk Utility'.

Well, it is all about cloning your Mac hard drive; however, did you know that there is a Recovery HD partition in your Mac not visible to Disk Utility and default Mac application? When you install Mac OS X Lion, the installer partitions the boot drive to create Recovery HD partition of 650 MB. The partition is treated as a separate volume by the OS and cannot be accessed directly. There are situations when startup volume does not help to boot due to some serious issues. In such cases, Recovery HD can be used to boot from. In addition, when you format your drive, the partition remains at its place and helps you reinstall the OS, restore files, etc.

However, in some cases, you may need to clone Recovery HD partition, for which there is no built-in tool. Remember that Disk Utility does not work when you attempt to clone Recovery HD partition through it. So, is there any other option left or you will sit idle and see your data getting lost? This is an unacceptable case, not to worry! A better solution will clone your entire Mac system including Recovery HD. You can go with Stellar Drive Clone, which is a trusted, reputed, and popular software application in the entire data recovery industry.

Known for its advanced functionality and elegant interface, Stellar Drive Clone offers an unending list of features that makes it easy to carry out various Sisyphean tasks, such as cloning, imaging, and many others. As you keep exploring the software, it will amaze you with every next feature. So, let's see what it requires for you to clone Mac drive.

Step 1: When you open the application, you are directed to the main user interface that looks as follows:

Step 2: Since, you need to perform cloning, click on 'Clone' under the tab 'Clone & Imaging'; there are two options: 'Disk Clone' and 'Volume Clone'.

Disk Clone

We will cover cloning the disk in the first section, which is further divided into two following options as shown in the screenshot below:

• Clone without resizing
• Clone with resizing

We will cover both the options separately in the next sections.

Choosing 'Clone without resizing'

If the drive that you have chosen to keep the clone on (target drive) is equal to or larger than the drive to be cloned (source drive) and no extra space is required, you can choose to perform cloning without resizing the volumes on the target drive. Perform the following steps carefully:

Step 1: Select the radio box associated to 'Clone without resizing' option.

Step 2: You are provided with two lists, namely 'Select Source' and 'Select Destination', as shown in the screenshot above. Select one from each list, depending on your choice.

Step 3: Click 'Continue' button that is located in the bottom-right corner of the screen. The software will automatically clone the source drive to the destination drive without making any modifications to your original data.

Note that the destination drive is equal to or larger than the source drive prior to carrying out the process.

Choosing 'Clone with resizing'

It is important to know that when you choose a destination drive that is larger than the source drive, the extra space left after cloning cannot be used, and hence becomes useless. In order to make full use of the space, the software allows you to resize the destination drive. For resizing, perform the below given steps:

Step 1: Select the 'Clone with resizing' option.

Step 2: From the 'Select Source' and 'Select Destination' lists, choose the respective drives as you did above.

Step 3: Click on 'Continue' button in the bottom-left corner of the window. 

 

Step 4: You can select the drive that you want to resize, and then either enter a new size in the 'Enter New Size' text box or simply drag the size bar to specify a new size of the drive as software also supports user-defined values. 

 

Step 5: Each time you make changes in the size, click on 'Accept Size' button. It will save the changes.

Step 6: Click on 'Continue' button to allow the application to begin the cloning process. 

 

This is how software provides you with a bootable clone.

Volume Clone

The feature allows you to clone a volume to another volume on the same or another drive. You can use the clone of the volume either as backup or a bootable volume. To create a clone of a volume, perform the following steps:

From the main user interface, select 'Volume Clone' that is again divided into the following three different options:

• 'Clone to Volume'
• 'Clone to Network'
• 'Clone to Folder'
  
  

Choosing 'Clone to Volume'

 

Step 1: From the two lists: 'Select Source' and 'Select Destination', select the source and destination drives. The software will throw a warning that the existing data will be overwritten.

Step 2: Click on 'Continue' button that is visible in the bottom-right corner of the screen. The software will initiate the cloning process.

When you perform cloning, it completely erases the destination volume if there is any data stored. Therefore, make sure to move the data to back it up so that you do not lose it. Else if you choose a free space, the software will create a partition of the free space, and then start the cloning process.

For the other two options: 'Clone to Network' and 'Clone to Folder', you need to choose the respective option, and then carry out the similar steps as you just have done. 

 

Stellar Drive Clone is the best way that you can easily get your drive or volume cloned. Other than cloning, you can use 'Imaging' feature that will create an image of the drive or volume. The application also offers an option 'Restore' that allows you to restore data from the clone. Moreover, the software also clones the Recovery HD partition (that we discussed above) and that is how the all-in-one software works. Apart from features, the application provides a nice, simple and clean user interface that is easy to learn and use.

You can get Stellar Drive Clone through an easy online registration.