I've been having trouble creating an image of Macintosh HD so i can copy it onto my newer macs.
I am using 10.10.3. When I click on Macintosh HD, the one below the main hard drive, I right-click to New Image. It then prompts me to give it a name and does create it as a .dmg file, just what I want. But when I try to mount the .dmg file, it does not want to fully mount the Macintosh HD.
Try Carbon Copy Cloner. It will be much simpler. Also CCC has an option to transfer the Recovery partition.
You could also try SuperDuper, which is free for a full clone, which is what you are doing. This should also be easier.
But Disk Utility should work. I've done it, but I find the above 2 utilities easier.
Disk Utility -> Select a mount volume (any mounted volume) -> restore -> Source -> Image...
now find your Yosemite.dmg image in the Open Dialog box, select it, click Open.
NOTE: Do not pre-mount your .dmg
Drag the volume partition you want to restore yosemite.dmg onto into Destination
NOTE: The destination partition CANNOT be what you are booted from.
If necessary, boot from the recovery partition and select Disk Utility from the recovery partition menu
You cannot do that, and shouldn't try. What you need is an external drive large enough to hold a bootable backup of your startup volume.
Clone Yosemite, Mavericks, Lion/Mountain Lion using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu then press the Continue
button.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it
to the Destination entry field.
5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
the Source entry field.
6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup volume.
Sorry for not being clear but that is what I meant. I want to image my Machintosh HD to an external then do a restore on the new Mac using the same image.
I got it to the point where I did copy the Image but when Restoring on the new mac it doesnt want to take the copy as the Source. When I try to drag it to the source field, it does nothing.
To be more clear, I named the image Yosemite, which successfully imaged/copied. On the new computer, under Macintosh HD, I click Restore. The Yosemite is a .dmg file which I open and Macintosh HD opens below it. When I try to drag that into the source field, nothing
How to Create Image of Macintosh HD?
