clone hdd on a mac

the adam · May 20, 2005

hey guys I have little expeirence with the mac os and was wondering how I could clone the hdd onto another external hdd. I want to do this because my sister's computer which is a mac recently had its hdd fail and my dad wanted me to back it up for her on an external hdd.

I found a program called disk utility but it only makes images and even when I try to burn an image to the external hdd it says "Drive is Busy" but I can still save files to this hdd.

So if her hdd failed again could she just restore everything from the image or does the image only store some files? Or is there another program out there that u guys like out that does a good job for cloning mac hdd's.

Thx for the help in advance guys

-Adam

Gnufsh · May 20, 2005

the adam said:
So if her hdd failed again could she just restore everything from the image or does the image only store some files?

-Adam

An image should entirely restore the hdd. You can also use dd to image hdd. I don't know if it's included with OSX, but you should be able to get it (it's a simple command line tool for performing sector by sector copies of a disk).

the adam · May 21, 2005

the only thing is I cant get the disk utility to save an image or the drive im imaging isnt letting me (it says "Drive Busy"). I tried looking up some stuff on the dd command and im not sure how it works.

Code:

dd if=/Volumes/Util-4/OSX-Backup-8-2/Bak of=/dev/rdisk0 bs=524288
count=1000;umount -f /Volumes/OSX;umount -f /Volumes/Tiny;umount -f
/Volumes/OS9;umount -f /Volumes/Spare;umount -f /Volumes/Storage;dd
if=/Volumes/Util-4/OSX-Backup-8-2/Bak2 of=/dev/rdisk0 bs=524288
oseek=1000 count=1000;umount -f /Volumes/OSX;umount -f
/Volumes/Tiny;umount -f /Volumes/OS9;umount -f /Volumes/Spare;umount -f
/Volumes/Storage;dd if=/Volumes/Util-4/OSX-Backup-8-2/Bak3
of=/dev/rdisk0 bs=524288 oseek=2000 count=1000;umount -f
/Volumes/OSX;umount -f /Volumes/Tiny;umount -f /Volumes/OS9;umount -f
/Volumes/Spare;umount -f /Volumes/Storage;dd
if=/Volumes/Util-4/OSX-Backup-8-2/Bak4 of=/dev/rdisk0 bs=524288
oseek=3000 count=1000;umount -f /Volumes/OSX;umount -f
/Volumes/Tiny;umount -f /Volumes/OS9;umount -f /Volumes/Spare;umount -f
/Volumes/Storage;dd if=/Volumes/Util-4/OSX-Backup-8-2/Bak5
of=/dev/rdisk0 bs=524288 oseek=4000 count=1000;umount -f
/Volumes/OSX;umount -f /Volumes/Tiny;umount -f /Volumes/OS9;umount -f
/Volumes/Spare;umount -f /Volumes/Storage;dd
if=/Volumes/Util-4/OSX-Backup-8-2/Bak6 of=/dev/rdisk0 bs=524288
oseek=5000 count=1000;umount -f /Volumes/OSX;umount -f
/Volumes/Tiny;umount -f /Volumes/OS9;umount -f /Volumes/Spare;umount -f
/Volumes/Storage;dd if=/Volumes/Util-4/OSX-Backup-8-2/Bak7
of=/dev/rdisk0 bs=524288 oseek=6000 count=1000;umount -f
/Volumes/OSX;umount -f /Volumes/Tiny;umount -f /Volumes/OS9;umount -f
/Volumes/Spare;umount -f /Volumes/Storage;dd
if=/Volumes/Util-4/OSX-Backup-8-2/Bak8 of=/dev/rdisk0 bs=524288
oseek=24574 count=5

on guy had this and it doesnt make any sense to me (is this guy just making this really complicated...)

If someone could help me troubleshoot/tell me how to use dd I would be greatly appreciative.

Restorer · May 21, 2005

Disk Utility is stubborn. It wants to unmount the disk before imaging it, and that won't work if the disk you're imaging is the startup disk.

I recommend Carbon Copy Cloner. It has the ability to create a restorable image that will work perfectly for what you need.

the adam · May 21, 2005

thx the carbon copy cloner program worked

clone hdd on a mac

the adam

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Gnufsh

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the adam

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Restorer

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the adam

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