There are a couple of stages involved in cloning a hard drive, so I've broken this part down into bitesize steps let's go. So, now that we've covered the basics, let's get started with the fun stuff - the Mac clone! How to clone a Mac hard drive

To prepare for an aging or failing hard drive To protect data when testing beta Mac operating systems Let's take a look at some other reasons why people want to know how to clone a hard drive on a Mac: Data loss is a horrible issue to deal with, so many users like to create a clone of their hard drive, but that's not the only motivation. These days, Macs are generally fairly robust, but that doesn't mean they're invincible. Why you might need to clone a Mac hard drive Somewhere secure to store your cloned hard drive.ĭon't worry we'll walk you through the steps in an easy-to-understand way, but first, let's discuss reasons to clone. To create a clone, you'll need three things:Ī new or completely erased external hard drive or SSD.ĭisk Utility and the correct Mac cloner software. You might be thinking, isn't the native Apple backup feature Time Machine the answer to this problem? Well, Time Machine sure is great at backing up our files and folders, but it's not built to clone an entire drive or bootable macOS data. So you want to clone a Mac? It sounds like a scary, somewhat challenging subject to many, but it's actually easier than you might think.Ĭloning a hard drive basically means creating an exact and precise copy of the original disk, including all of its content and bootable macOS files.

Clone macos to external drive