“Cloning your Mac drive is
certainly a grand initiative to keep your data protected at the time when your
Mac starts throwing errors or some similar situation is encountered. Once you
clone your Mac, since it takes the bootable backup of your Mac drive, you can
use the clone drive to boot your Mac machine in case it is unable to boot from
the original drive. Since cloning Mac drive to an external USB drive is going
to be portable and convenient, you can boot any Mac machine having same system
configuration with the clone drive. Well, since SSDs are much faster than the
HDDs, choosing an SSD as the destination drive would be more advantageous.”
Well, there ain’t any uncertainty
that the data stored on your Mac drive is valuable and you cannot afford losing
it any cost. However, a disaster may strike anytime and make you lose all your
data. Since you cannot prevent a disaster to strike, you can certainly avoid
losing your precious data by implementing an advanced technique, which is
termed as cloning Mac HDD. Besides, cloning your Mac HDD not only
prevents your data from being lost, but also copies all applications installed
on it to the destination drive. One of the vital features of cloning the Mac
HDD is that the process consumes considerable amount of time and system
resources (i.e. RAM & Processor).
By
the way, the term HDD is acronym for the Hard Disk Drive, the major source of
secondary memory (i.e. the data storage space) embedded on your Mac system. In
fact, the HDDs not only facilitate data storage space to large extent, but also
contain all system files stored on a single Mac volume, termed as the boot
volume.
You
may wonder that why both the system files and user data are stored on a common
drive. Well, storing your data and the operating system files on a single hard drive
does not mean that both are stored on a common volume. In fact, storing data
along with the system files on a common volume is quite risky, as you may lose
all your data in case your Mac fails to boot. Therefore, partitioning the Mac
HDD and storing all your data separate from the system files is the ultimate
solution of this problem. Moreover, it becomes quite easy for Mac to access
data when both are located on the same hard drive.
Using HDD on Macs
Have
you ever thought of how data is stored on a HDD? What is there inside a HDD
that facilitates Macs perform data read/write operations on it? Perhaps you
have not; however, delving an HDD elucidates all such queries concurrently. In fact, the
internal structure of an HDD is less or more a mechanical setup of electronic
and magnetic components that is wrapped inside a metallic case. These
components include an electrical panel powering up a spindle motor that rotates
a magnetic disc (i.e. termed as the platter) and a read/write head (held by an
actuator arm connected to an actuator axis) moves over it in back and forth fashion.
The speed of this spindle motor is increased automatically when data read/write
operations on the platter are carried out. This mechanical setup of the hard
drive’s components makes it susceptible to corruption, as failure of any of
these components cause the hard drive failure. Therefore, this keeps your
precious data threatened 24*7*365.
Why cloning to SSD
Today, smart computers
having embedded SSD are available worldwide that are thin, lightweight, and gives
outstanding performance. Since it is possible to clone Mac HDD to SSD,
you can get rid of your older Mac HDD and the related performance issues, as SSDs
never slow down.
The term SSD is
acronym for Solid State Drive that embeds Integrated Circuit chips unlike a HDD
that embeds a magnetic disk (i.e. the platter) revolving over a spindle motor and
a read/write head moving back and forth over it. In order to make substitution in
computers and their applications easy, SSDs use the I/O interface meant for the
HDDs. The vital feature of the SSDs is that the data transfer speed they offer
is much faster as compared to that of the HDDs. Technically, the SSDs offer 100
times faster data read/write speed as compared to that of the HDDs.
Since SSDs apparently offer high-speed data read/write
operations, it is obvious for you wishing to upgrade to a SSD on your Mac.
However, for this, you will have to format and partition the new drive, reinstall
Mac OS X, and shift all your data to it. Though you can perform each of these
tasks on your own, all these operations consume system resources largely and
require you being involved at each phase.
Well, you would certainly be glad to know that you
can clone your Mac HDD to a brand new SSD using a professional Mac cloning
application. Upgrading to SSD is recommended because it offers the following
advantageous features:
High-speed Data
Read/write operations
Since SSDs embed Integrated Circuit chips for data
storage, one of the prime benefits of using the SSDs is that they offer high-speed
data read/write operations. In fact, HDDs are capable of offering up to
1000MBPS data reading speed, whereas the fastest SSD today is SATA capable of offering
6GBPS data reading speed. These advantageous features make Mac users upgrade to
an SSD.
SSDs are Reliable
SSDs are more reliable as compared to the HDDs, as SSDs
do not embed mechanically set up electric and magnetic revolving and moving components
making them unreliable. Hard drives are not reliable especially for frequent
travelers. On the other hand, since the internal components of the SSDs are
embedded electronically, they eliminate the odds of its failure.
Almost
negligible heat, noise, and vibration
Since HDDs embed electronic circuit powering up the
spindle motor to revolve the magnetic platter, all these components heat up because
the speed of the spindle motor is highest during data read/write operations. Moreover,
the incessantly revolving magnetic platter causes vibration and sometimes, the random
noises. Since SSDs do not embed any such component, there is almost negligible
noise and vibration.
No need for
Defragmentation
Unlike HDDs, since the SSDs are manufactured to
store data evenly in their sectors, Mac file system cannot split the storage
space of a SSD into blocks to store data. This prevents fragmentation to occur
on the SSDs. Therefore, when no fragments are there, you do not have to defragment
the SSDs.
Cloning your Mac HDD to SSD
As the prime
requirement for cloning, you must have a secondary disk (i.e. the SSD in this
case). Make sure the SSD is larger or at least equal as compared to your Mac
HDD. Moreover, you need a cloning tool for Mac as well. Once all these requirements are
satisfied, you can start cloning your Mac HDD to an SSD. In case the SSD you
have is brand new, you need to initialize it on Mac and then format it as Mac
OS External (Journaled). For this, you need to track the following steps:
- Once
you connect the SSD to your Mac, a Disk Insertion message pops up.
Stellar Drive clone - Click Initialize button on this message box.
- Clicking the Initialize button opens Disk Utility.
- Select the SSD in the left pane of Disk Utility and go to the Partition tab in the right pane.
- Here, click Options button and choose GUID Partition Table, and then click OK button.
- After that, click the Volume Scheme menu and select the number of partition to create
Important: In the Volume Scheme dropdown
menu, the number of partition you select should be equal to that on your Mac
drive.
- Now, give these partitions a Name, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the volume Format, and specify a Size
- Finally, click Apply button to format and partition this SSD
After Disk Utility is finished with formatting and
partitioning the SSD, you see this drive on your Mac desktop. You can use this SSD
on your Intel-based Mac for both data storage and booting purpose, whereas only
for data read/write purpose on a PowerPC-based Mac.
Now, all you need to do is clone your Mac HDD including
all applications to this SDD. For this, you will have to boot your Mac Lion or Mountain
Lion in Recovery Mode or an earlier Mac machine with Mac OS X install disc and
follow these steps:
For Mac OS X Lion or Mountain Lion
- Restart your Mac and hold down the Command + R keys or the Option key
- Once you see the grey screen, release these keys
- Choose Disk Utility in the Utilities window
For earlier versions of Mac OS X
- Insert Mac OS X install disc and press the C key
- Release the C key as soon as you see the grey screen
- After that, select a preferred OS language and click the Next button
- Select Disk Utility in the Utilities window
Once Disk Utility is launched, go to its Restore tab.
Herein; drag your Mac HDD to the Source field and the SSD to the Destination
field. Finally, click Restore button to start cloning your Mac. Once Mac
cloning is finished, quit Disk Utility and restart the Mac. On Mac keyboard, hold
down the ALT key and choose the SSD to boot with. In case it boots
successfully, you can replace the HDD with the clone SSD.
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