Why your hard drive crash or failure happens? Clone Mac for data safety

We can say our hard drive is queen of our system because it consist all of your documents. It stores all files including,user files, system files and OS and all our personal and confidential stuff. we are living in computer era and today people are more concern about their data protection.

So, here question arises that is there anyway to protect our hard drive from failure or corruption - the answer is NO.

It means we can't assure that our hard drive is safe, infact we can only avoid some reasons causing drive failure or crash like overheating etc. But, we can't handle it in actual because of no control over its working mechanism and all above its a machine so can crash anytime.

Now I am going to take you beyond the basics:-

Most of us are not aware of details of hard drive although they are using it daily but without knowing that its an amazing piece of engineering. Every hard drive consist a number of circular platters, that are extremely thin and made from glass/ceramic material, spinning at 7200rpm(revolutions per minute) or more. 

 

Means when you leave your hard drive then every day, each platter of your drive will spin 3,784 million times in a year. Read/write head of your hard drive is floating just nanometers away from these platters.

These read/write heads as the name suggests are the part of your hard drive that reads and writes data to the drive.

When the head passes over the drive, the surface of the platters get magnetised in a series of 0s and 1s. So, the drive has to carry this work without crashing these read write heads into the platter because it can damage drive. 

 

According to a study on millions of drive by Google, approximately there's a one-in-three chance failure of a drive in five years of use. These figures might sound like reassuring to us - because one drive in three over five years of usage doesn't sound bad. But, this assurance can be false.

So, Google's released that nearly 3% of hard drives failed in two months. Just suppose that if your drive is one of that 3%, then without a proper backup or clone of your drive you will have lost your vital data. 

 

The only way to keep your data safe from any loss is by taking regular backups.

clone Mac is must to ensure your drive and data safety. You can minimize chances of drive failure by replacing your drive with new advanced Solid-state disks (SSDs). Mac users are mainly seen to use SSD in their Mac machine because SSD are less prone to failure. This is due to the reason that these drives don't have any moving parts like platters etc. This will suggests that these drives should be more reliable than spining disks. 

 

However, according to hardware.fr a French tech site survey of hard drive failure rates, specifically in the first few months Solid State Drives were no less prone to failure or crash than spinning conventional drive. 

 

SSDs life can be rated in terms of its write cycles and a typical Solid State Disks might be rated at 100,000 cycles. Actually a hard drives write about thousands of times in a day.

Here the conclusion is there is no such a thing that will last forever, this means that cloning should be top of your agenda.

There are several kinds of cloning apps there in the market,and which one will be suitable for you depends tottaly on your needs. My recommendations as a most complete kind of cloning tool is probably the most simple,efficient and reliable one. 

 

Recommended tool:

For Mac machines- Stellar Drive Clone(work on multiboot Mac also)

For Windows: Clonezilla

Best award for Mac cloning application: Stellar Drive Clone

As you know importance of backup and cloning your Mac drive and also about options available in industry. Users generally get confuse at the time of selecting one among several applications.

Since it is the most initial and important step towards your data safety so, you should focus on it. In Mac, Time machine(TM) is a great built in backup tool so, usually it is not suggested to go for some other third party backup apps (like superduper, CCC ).

For cloning Mac drive, one must see towards some third party cloning tool as Mac doesn't provide any cloning app. So, now lets discuss the criteria of choosing best Mac cloning apps:

1. It will be better if your software can perform both cloning and imaging processes.
2. Can create bootable copy of current Mac drive
3. Supports windows file formats also (clone window partition on Mac).
4. Should support SSD(solid state drive)
5. Backup network drive and clone Recovery HD also.
6. Should be compatible with latest Mac OS X

This video explains you details of the best Mac cloning software known as Stellar Drive Clone.

Simple Tips to get rid from slow Mac operations

If you are a Mac guy then you would have definitely encountered slow Mac operations. Slow Mac performance affects our work speed and can pull down your work efficiency. And this will become a problematic situation. The real causes behind the issue include unwanted files, junk accumulation on Mac, fragmented files, large no. of startup items and so many widgets on dashboard are some common reasons of slowing down your Mac.

Higher the frequency of editing files more are the chances to increase cache files, log, universal binaries, duplicate files etc. in your Mac which ultimately slows down Mac operations. But, this is not a permanent issue and it can be resolved just by following few simple steps.

Reconsidering the number of start up apps and Speed up software can improve your Mac performance in an easy and efficient way.

Some facts to be taken care of, to handle a slow Mac:

• Enabling only necessary services, apps and preference settings while disable unnecessary apps.
• Delete unused drive or volume hidden in Device Manager of your machine.
• For speeding up boot time one should disable unused ports.
• Clean uninstalled apps, unwanted files, duplicate files from your Mac.
• Clear cache, log files universal binaries of your Mac using Mac cleaning tool like Stellar Speedup Mac.
• Clean old and unused files or apps from my documents folder.
• After every new program installation make sure to reboot Mac OS.
• Upgrade your Mac drive by increasing its size.
• Defragment large files in your Mac.
• Monitor Apple's Activity Monitor to see the status of CPU usage, RAM and virtual memory usage that will help you in optimizing you Mac. Activity monitor allows you to see spikes to show how much memory is utilized by each apps. So, by analyzing this you can quit those apps consuming more memory as they cause other apps to run slow.
• Manage your startup items by turn off apps you don't want to open at startup. All you need to do is go to System Preferences -> System -> Users & Groups -> Login Items. Then uncheck the apps you don't want on from the startup.

Five simple steps to optimize your Mac performance

Making an old Mac run faster is like trying to speed up an old car. My Mac is only one year old but due to system junks & highly fragmented files, its speed slows down. You have to perform cleaning on your Mac in order to gain speed and increase performance of your Mac. So, make sure that you have cleaned out all the clutters & junk files from it. Defragmentation of files using some third party tool is also must to regain its lost speed.

Both these processes of cleaning and defragmentation allow your Mac to run like it was new. Here are the top five common reasons and their fixes of Mac running extremely slow.

1. Minimize Desktop items:

You are probably unaware that accumulation of lot of files on Mac desktop is one of the prominent reason for slowing down Mac performance. Because on every boot or startup your Mac OS X used to index all of the content of your desktop. It catalog the content of every folder after creating a thumbnail icon for each and every file on desktop. This process take time hence slows down other Mac operations. That is why it is advisable to keep only frequently used files on desktop.

2. Disable unused start-up apps:

In order to speed up your Mac you need to remove some apps from startup list. When your Mac is booting or at startup you might have noticed that some applications automatically opens. So, it is advisable to remove those apps that you don't often use from auto start-up option.

3 Minimize widgets on dashboard:

Several widgets and clips on dashboard utilize lots of memory and thus brings the system speed down. Minimizing unnecessary or unused widgets is an effective way to enhance fruition of your Mac.

4.Turn off unnecessary Applications:

In order to speed up your Mac you need to turn off the apps you seldom use like Bluetooth, Speech Recognition or Internet Sharing. This action of yours will not only speed up your Mac but help you to save your battery life.

5.Defragmentation of Mac drive:

After a long usage of computer, files get automatically fragmented which indirectly effects system speed and performance. In Mac, HFS+ file system have capability to defragment files but upto 20MB file size only. In case of fragmented files processor takes time in fetching files from different locations.

Stellar Drive Defrag is the best Mac defragmenting app from my point of view. It can also alert you about your hard drive by showing temperature of it. I have been using this software from two years and it gives my Mac new life.

All the above steps help you to increase Mac speed but only upto some extent. If you want to optimize your Mac performance completely than must clean your Mac by some Mac cleaning apps. You need to clear unwanted files and apps, cache log files, universal binaries etc. in order to get rid of slow Mac.

How to move Mac OS X installation to another drive | Migrating OS X to new drive

Migrating Mac OS X installation to new drive in order to upgrade it -- is a good way to improve experience with Mac.

Transferring or moving OS X or your data you will need to connect your new drive to your system first. Then you have to choose the best way among Migration Assistant and installing a fresh copy of OS X. Among both the methods, Apple recommends installation method instead of Migration Assistant because installing a fresh copy of OS X gives a clean start. It means that if there was any issue with operating system on your old Mac drive than it will be not there after fresh installation. The fresh installation cleans all the leftovers, logs that tends to increase as we use our machines.

Your new drive without these leftovers files tends to give more performance and stability. Especially for Mac OS X 10.7 and later versions of OS X, it is highly recommended to use fresh installation OS X method because these Mac OS have invisible Recovery partition which is created.

Steps to move Mac OS X to a new drive:

Step1: Install correct drive in your computer

Make sure to check your model configuration and install the drive that will compatible on it.

Step2:Ensure s way of transferring data:

As discussed above for transferring your data to new drive you will need to connect both your original and new drive to system using some device like adaptor or external enclosure. In case of laptops(single drive computer) you will need to have a device to connect old drive to your system after being installed new drive to it.

But, in rare cases if you can't connect drive externally the aforementioned steps will be slightly different. In thi case see the Important Note I have given at the end of this article.

Step3: Make sure to have current Backup and clone of your old drive

Before begin the process of upgrading make sure to take backup of your data on an external drive. And it is recommended to take clone Mac hdd including installed apps and OS using software like Stellar Drive Clone. This will keep you stress free if any unlikely event of data loss occur during the process of upgradation.

Step4: Install your new designated drive:

Now, you should install your new checked drive in your Machine.

Step5: Connect old drive externally:

Here connect your old drive as discussed in step 2 to external enclosure or using the appropriate cable.

Step6: Boots up to installation disc or Recovery HD

Those having 10.6 or earlier just boot to your installer. For users running Mac OS X 10.7 or later can boot to Recovery HD by holding cmd+R keys during startup.

Step7: Formating on new drive:

To format your new drive use Mac inbuilt Disk Utility find in Utilities menu. Open Disk Utility, select your new drive from left pa of Dis utility and then click on Erase tab onn the right side. Now, set the Format to “Mac OS Extended Journaled” which is recommended format to Mac OS machines.

Step8: Install OS X on new drive:

After formatting the drive, closing disk utility itself take you to the installation process in case you have 10.6 or earlier versions. But, if you have 10.7 or later, then from Mac OS X utilities you need to select “Reinstall Mac OS X” option.

Now, all you need to do is just follow on screen instructions. But, make sure to choose your new drive as the install location for Mac OS X. As the process is automated so you can do any of your task instead of waiting for installation.

Step9: Transferring data using Migration Assistant:

After installation o OS X on new drive you have to complete some final steps by through some prompts point to Migration assistant. Otherwise you can find Migration Assistant in application-> Utilities folder of your Mac. Run this apps and select the option to tranfer data and click continue.

You can select or deselect items like user information,folders and apps that you want to transfer over another drive. After selecting these click “transfer” button. Now time it will take depend on the amount of data you are transferring and on media of tranfer.

Step11: Run software update:

Go to Apple menu-> select software update on your new installation and run updates avilable for version of OS X or other updates.

Step12: Repir Disk Permissions using Disk Utility:

Open Disk utilty in aaplication folder inside utilities. Select your new drive in left hand pane of disk utility and click on 'First aid tab' -> click 'Repair Disk Permissions'.

Step13: You are DONE!

After double check your drive to make sure data came correctly you can delete datat from old drive and can used it for other purpose.

Step 14: SPECIAL NOTE...

If anyhow you can't attach your old drive externally you can do this by creating a clone of your original drive or if you have time machine backup(that you can use in place of your original drive). Only you have to perform a variation after step 4.

• Create a clone using Stellar Drive Clone application(gives bootable clone) to external drive.
• Clone Mac is easy and fast process and can be achieved in running Mac.
• After Step 4 upto 13, just use cloned external drive instead of original drive while performing above steps.
• If you have Time machine backups than you can use it in place of original drive and transfer data using Migration assistant.

Cloning Tool to transfer my Mac OS X from one machine to another

I am a Mac user and according to my experience one very common and frequently asked question that Mac OS X users have is "How to copy or transfer Mac OS X installation from one hard drive/machine to another?" 

 

So, users search the question in two cases:

1. Those who bought a new (larger) hard drive example: SSD,Hybrid drives need to move their data from old drive to new one.

2. In case of Mac users who have bought a new Mac machine and need to transfer Mac OS X and all system files and applications from their old Mac machine to the new one.
 

So, you can move your Mac OS X, and all installed applications and files by cloning (not copying), from one machine to another so that it should boot up and work properly. Now, here you should ask why I said to 'clone' instead of copying, why we can't do this by simply copying. This is because unlike Mac OS 9, where you have to just drag and drop by selecting all your files and copying them to the connected drive or another machine. 

 

Problem: While copying app by finder and Terminal:

• It requires special tools to do this job.

• There are many invisible files in Mac OS X. Recovery HD of OS X Lion and mountain Lion is also hidden and therefore can't be copied by Finder.

• Sometimes infact we can't assure that all files will be copied because of some permissions issues in Mac OS X.

Copying Using Terminal: 
 

In these situations, Terminal can help you. 
Using commands over this you can copy each and every single file to your preferred location. However, mostly people don't use this method because it is hard to learn a list of commands and its also time taking process. 

 

Another most preferred and recommended approach is using third party cloning tool. And in this case, Stellar Drive Clone utility from Stellar is famous for its additional feature to provide you bootable clone of your Mac drive including Recovery HD. 

 

Now, question arises that how to use Stellar Drive Clone to transfer all of your Mac drive contents including installed applications, files,OS etc to another drive or to another Mac machine.

Now, here is the details to transfer Mac data from one drive/Machine to another using Stellar Drive Clone.

For Transferring Mac OS X between Mac's using Stellar Drive Clone application:

• The easiest transfer media is to use firewire cable which should be available at any electronics store or computer store.
• Connect firewire cable into firewire port on your both machines(old and new).
• Start your old machine normally.
• Hold down T key on keyboard while pressing power button until you see the firewire symbol on the screen of your machine.
   
• Launch Stellar Drive Clone apps in your Mac.
• Click on clone&imaging and then select 'Disk clone'.
• Now, select your old machine as source drive and new mac drive as destination drive in order to create clone of all content, apps of old drive to new drive.
• By this way you can create bootable disk of your old drive at your desired new drive in a fast and efficient manner.

Secure Your Data by Creating a Replica of Your Hard Drive

Macs are undoubtedly one of the most robust operating systems that are secure against viruses and less prone to file system corruption. However, this does not mean Mac machines never encounter data loss. Indeed, Mac users also come across situations where the invaluable data stored on their hard drive becomes inaccessible or gets lost. Therefore, it is suggested to take backup of your hard drive data irrespective of the operating system used on it.

Data backup is considered as one of the most efficient methods to restore data in various cases of data loss. Therefore, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and later versions come with a utility called ‘Time Machine’ that creates backup of your entire data, including system files, emails, photos, applications, movies, documents, etc. 

This efficient utility of Mac OS X is simple to use as you just need to attach the drive on which you want to the back up and configure ‘Time Machine’ to use it. The reason why ‘Time Machine’ is different from any other backup utility is it not only copies Mac drive with all its files, but remembers how your machine looked like at any given time. In this way, you can create hourly backup of your hard drive for past 24 hours, daily backups for past month, and weekly backup until your backup drive is full.

However, you can take the benefit of ‘Time Machine’ only when you are a user of Mac OS X 10.5 or later Mac version. Moreover, you may sometime find out that the process is time-consuming and tedious for you. If you experience any of these situations, then use of a professional software to clone Mac is often recommended.

These tools are generally known as drive cloning utilities. As their name suggests, i.e. clone tools, they create a replica of your entire hard drive to an external drive. However, the destination drive must have free space equal or more than that of the source drive. Moreover, it is suggested not to save anything on the destination drive as the cloning process overwrites everything present on it.

An efficient cloning utility enables its users to resize the destination drive to reuse all the remaining space on it, which could be wasted otherwise. Apart from this, some reliable tools give you option to create the bootable DVD of your system and set the preferences for personalizing the end task activities.

According to your requirement, you can create the backup copy of your entire Mac hard drive with any of the two above mentioned methods.