Cloning a Hard Drive

Question

Cloning a Hard Drive

How can I utilize the 1TB storage, what did I do wrong?

I purchased an Aleratec 1:1 USB 3.0 Copy Dock SSD/Hard Drive Duplicator & Dock and duplicated my OS 10.11.6 320 Gig hard drive to a 1T solid state drive. I then inserted the solid state drive into my MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2008). When I boot the laptop up it shows the desktop and files as before but the system report shows

Storage

Available: 11.41 GB (11,407,745,024 bytes)

Capacity: 319.08 GB (319,078,957,056 bytes)

Mount Point: /

File System: Journaled HFS+

Writable: Yes

Ignore Ownership: No

BSD Name: disk0s2

Volume UUID: A7447D9E-EDEF-35C6-A32D-3F2C55B87DC2

Physical Drive:

Device Name: Samsung SSD 860 PRO 1TB

Media Name: Samsung SSD 860 PRO 1TB Media

Medium Type: SSD

Protocol: SATA

Internal: Yes

Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)

S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified

SATA/SATA Express

Serial-ATA Device Tree

Intel ICH8-M AHCI

Samsung SSD 860 PRO 1TB

Intel ICH8-M AHCI:

Vendor: Intel

Product: ICH8-M AHCI

Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit

Negotiated Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit

Physical Interconnect: SATA

Description: AHCI Version 1.10 Supported

Samsung SSD 860 PRO 1TB:

Capacity: 1.02 TB (1,024,209,543,168 bytes)

Model: Samsung SSD 860 PRO 1TB

Revision: RVM02B6Q

Serial Number: S5G8NS0R706082F

Native Command Queuing: Yes

Queue Depth: 32

Removable Media: No

Detachable Drive: No

BSD Name: disk0

Medium Type: Solid State

TRIM Support: No

Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)

S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

Volumes:

EFI:

Capacity: 209.7 MB (209,715,200 bytes)

BSD Name: disk0s1

Content: EFI

Volume UUID: 85D67001-D93E-3687-A1C2-79D677F0C2E0

El Capitan I:

Capacity: 319.08 GB (319,078,957,056 bytes)

Available: 11.41 GB (11,407,339,520 bytes)

Writable: Yes

File System: Journaled HFS+

BSD Name: disk0s2

Mount Point: /

Content: Apple_HFS

Volume UUID: A7447D9E-EDEF-35C6-A32D-3F2C55B87DC2

Recovery HD:

Capacity: 650 MB (650,002,432 bytes)

BSD Name: disk0s3

Content: Apple_Boot

Volume UUID: 7A067153-B191-3FA1-855D-981ED8DE0997

Samsung SSD 860 PRO 1TB:

Capacity: 1.02 TB (1,024,209,543,168 bytes)

Model: Samsung SSD 860 PRO 1TB

Revision: RVM02B6Q

Serial Number: S5G8NS0R706082F

Native Command Queuing: Yes

Queue Depth: 32

Removable Media: No

Detachable Drive: No

BSD Name: disk0

Medium Type: Solid State

TRIM Support: No

Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)

S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

Volumes:

EFI:

Capacity: 209.7 MB (209,715,200 bytes)

BSD Name: disk0s1

Content: EFI

Volume UUID: 85D67001-D93E-3687-A1C2-79D677F0C2E0

El Capitan I:

Capacity: 319.08 GB (319,078,957,056 bytes)

Available: 11.41 GB (11,407,339,520 bytes)

Writable: Yes

File System: Journaled HFS+

BSD Name: disk0s2

Mount Point: /

Content: Apple_HFS

Volume UUID: A7447D9E-EDEF-35C6-A32D-3F2C55B87DC2

Recovery HD:

Capacity: 650 MB (650,002,432 bytes)

BSD Name: disk0s3

Content: Apple_Boot

Volume UUID: 7A067153-B191-3FA1-855D-981ED8DE0997

Posted on Oct 20, 2021 3:42 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Community+ 2026

Level 9

70,292 points

Oct 21, 2021 4:50 PM in response to marshallfromridgewood

The drive dock duplicators are really only meant to clone two drives of the exact same size (even then some drives may have just a very small difference in size where it will fail to copy a few bytes).

If you want to clone a boot drive, then use Carbon Copy Cloner. You will first need to erase the whole physical drive as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled). The physical drive in your case will most likely be identified something like "Samsung SSD.....". After properly erasing the new drive, then you can run CCC while booted to your old drive (just close all open apps and don't do any work during the cloning process).

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Answer 2

Jeff_W.

Community Specialist

Oct 21, 2021 6:57 AM in response to marshallfromridgewood

Thanks for reaching out, marshallfromridgewood.

It sounds like the amount of storage you have available is less than you expected. We can help.

Instead of cloning the smaller drive to the larger one, which may be leaving some space unusable, do you have any improvement with formatting and installing from a USB boot drive, as described here: How to create a bootable installer for macOS?

Give that a try, and see if there is any change.

Keep us posted!

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Answer 3

Oct 21, 2021 12:17 PM in response to Jeff_W.

Thanks for this information, this is exactly my issue. I will give that a try, but my only concern is that I will lose some apps (e.g. Final Cut). I still have the 320 gig drive which I will try to use to boot up via a usb input. If I'm able to boot up in that fashion could I then use Disk Utility to erase the new 1TB drive and then transfer the connected 320 G drive via Target Disc mode? Just tried to boot up on the usb attached hard drive but when I select it as the boot up drive it says "You can't change the start up disk to the selected disk. The bless tool was unable to set the current boot disk."

When I start up by holding the option key down I see the internal and usb attached drives as well as two "Recovery-10.11.6" icons. Should I try one of those?

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Answer 4

Oct 21, 2021 5:30 PM in response to Jeff_W.

Because Hurricane Ida flooded my basement I'm having problems locating a cable for a hard drive with enough space to do this. Is there a terminal command that would allow me to create a folder on the free space for storing files? I don't know how to erase my current 1TB internal drive unless I remove it from the laptop, is there a terminal command to erase this drive?

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Answer 5

Jeff_W.

Community Specialist

Oct 21, 2021 12:40 PM in response to marshallfromridgewood

Thanks for following up, marshallfromridgewood.

Let's go ahead and see what happens using the bootable installer first. We have a few options for getting your data transferred, but if we are still seeing issues at that point we may need to explore alternatives.

Keep us posted.

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Answer 6

Oct 23, 2021 4:25 AM in response to HWTech

Thank you all for pointing me in the right direction It took a while but I finally resolved the issue. The Terminal commands that were suggested would not work, I ran the El Capitan install OS from the laptop but quit it and went into the utilities application of that install disk. There I used erase disk and created a partition that used the 1TB size of the disk, at that point I continued the installation and used "Migration Assistant" to transfer my El Capitan from my iMac's external HD, which I had booted up with El Capitan, in case anyone is interested it's an iMac (24-inch, Early 2008) booted with the El Capitan OS on an external Lacie hard drive. It was a slow process, about 5 hours but upon completion the laptop ran at "lightning" speed. I did have to use Disk Warrior and Disk Utility on the Lacie Drive because the iMac would not boot up from it after using "Migration Assistant". However, it too is now working. Next project will be to attempt to use the same process on my wife's laptop, I cloned the solid state drive in that lap top as well and it too is not utilizing the entire 1 TB drive, only 500 Gigs. But that drive is Catalina and my iMac will not boot up in Catalina, so after I finish with my hurricane Ida rebuild I'll move to that project.

Thanks again.

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