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Internal HDD won't restore from External SSD

I am trying to restore my original HDD to my external SSD, but when I attempt to do this, I get this error message:


Here are my stats:


Does anyone know how to fix this?


Many thanks in advance!

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jan 18, 2022 11:58 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 19, 2022 11:57 AM

To clone a macOS boot disk it is much better to use Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC). Disk Utility doesn't work well to clone a macOS boot drive. In fact, sometimes, using Disk Utility to image a large folder does not always work well. I've never had any issues using CCC to clone a macOS boot drive. If you are using macOS 11.x+, then you need to right-click or control-click within CCC on the destination and select the "Legacy" option in order to make a macOS 11.x+ drive bootable (assuming the source drive is already bootable). Plus if you are cloning macOS 10.15+, then you need to be booted from that same version of macOS or newer due to the numerous under the hood changes to the drive layouts which older versions of macOS don't understand completely.

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4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 19, 2022 11:57 AM in response to HeathrowAviatorYT

To clone a macOS boot disk it is much better to use Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC). Disk Utility doesn't work well to clone a macOS boot drive. In fact, sometimes, using Disk Utility to image a large folder does not always work well. I've never had any issues using CCC to clone a macOS boot drive. If you are using macOS 11.x+, then you need to right-click or control-click within CCC on the destination and select the "Legacy" option in order to make a macOS 11.x+ drive bootable (assuming the source drive is already bootable). Plus if you are cloning macOS 10.15+, then you need to be booted from that same version of macOS or newer due to the numerous under the hood changes to the drive layouts which older versions of macOS don't understand completely.

Jan 18, 2022 12:28 PM in response to HeathrowAviatorYT

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities.


Follow these steps to setup an external SSD as your startup disk: How to Setup and Use an External SSD as y… - Apple Community.


If it still doesn't work using the method above, or if you are in the return period, consider using a G-Technology G-DRIVE mobile SSD R-Series Storage - Apple instead of a Samsung SSD.


Jack

Jan 18, 2022 1:04 PM in response to Jack-19

Sorry, I forgot to mention, I have already set the SSD as my startup disk and it works fine, I just want to format it as MS-DOS so I can convert my iMac to Windows via Boot Camp.


To do this, I could buy another external storage device but I instead thought to restore the original HDD with my SSD’s current data. However, as you know, when I try to do this, I receive an error message (OSstatus error 6). Sorry for the misunderstanding!

Internal HDD won't restore from External SSD

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