How can i clone a copy of Mac OS X to an external drive?

Most users around here use either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable clone of their Mac OS X installation to a peripheral hard drive.

Regards,
Steve M.

First, you need to do this:

Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions

Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart normally.

If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

Second, clone your drive to a freshly formatted external drive.

Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility

1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (journaled, if available) and click on the Erase button. This step can be skipped if the destination has already been freshly erased.
4. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.

Destination means the external drive.
Source means the internal startup drive.

Now, you can use other cloning software but the most reliable and easiest method is what I've described above.

I'm a very Happy SuperDuper user. A full bootable Clone is free. If you want incremental updates to the clone, scheduled backups, etc..., you pay the shareware fee.

SuperDuper has saved my bacon several times.

If you are interested in doing this, you would first probably need to partition your external HD into at least two partitions, one for your clone of your internal HD and one for just a copy of the OS.

What exactly are you wishing to accomplish? Do you just want a bare installation of Mac OS on the external drive (on one partition)? In that case you would actually just do an install onto the external drive by putting your installation DVD into your Mac and installing to the external.

Occasionally someone will want to "copy" their installation DVD onto a partition of their peripheral HD. To do this you would use a similar technique to what you did when you used Disk Utility to clone your internal HD onto your external. In this case you would be copying your DVD onto the peripheral.

Does this answer any of your questions?

Regards,
Steve M.

OK, I don't know how to create a bootable version of 10.6 on an external drive without having the actual DVD of 10.6. You successfully have created a bootable version of your entire OS 10.6 installation using Kappy's instructions up above, correct?

Did you ask the Apple Store to give you a DVD of 10.6? Seems only fair since they installed it on your Mac.

Regards,
Steve M.