Clone a disk with multiple volumes

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Level 1

115 points

Clone a disk with multiple volumes

Hi all,

here is my question: how can I clone an entire iMac HDD to another iMac, knowing that the disk has multiple volumes, and that I would like to reproduce exactly the same volumes on another iMac ?

Background info: for testing / training purpose, I installed multiple versions of OS X on an iMac. This Mac now has 13 volumes / partitions (in fact, all OS X versions since 10.6 Snow Leopard, with a recovery for each, except 10.6, plus a shared data volume). This one is working fine, and I can reboot it in any OS X version we need.

Now this first Mac is working fine (let's call it Master Install), I would like to clone ("ghost") the complete HDD to other iMacs so we can have multiple test machines with the same setup.

I would like to avoid

reinstalling 6 versions of OS X on other iMacs (time consuming, especially to install all OS X, iLife & iWork updates)
restoring each volume one by one (including the multiple Recovery partitions) to multiple Macs.

I already tested:

connecting another iMac to the Master Install using Target Disk mode and using the Disk Utility's restore feature to restore the Master HDD to the Target one, but I do receive the following message "Restore failed - operation not supported", whatever I try the Yosemite Disk Utility (version 13 (606)) or the El Capitan one (15.0 (1511.3)).
booting the Master Install from a USB drive, and created a disk image (including all volumes) using the Yosemite Disk Utility (version 13 (606)). I could create the image (size is 81 Gb), and store it on an external drive, but there is no way for Disk Utility to restore this image on another iMac HDD: I also receive the following message "Restore failed - operation not supported".
added the image created in step 2 above to DeployStudio repository, created a workflow to restore this image to a disk, but restore fails (DeployStudio report workflow aborted because restore is not possible).
tried to clone with Carbon Copy Cloner, but that app seems to work only with volumes, not whole disks, so I would need to restore each of the 13 volumes separately.
searched Google, and found reports about CloneZilla, but could not find an OS X version on their website.
searched Google, and found reports about CopyCatX, but app is no freeware.

I used to be a Windows user (please do not shoot, nobody is perfect, ... and I left the dark side 10 years ago), and I was using Norton Ghost for such purposes, which was very effective, whatever the partition setup that was present on the disk. Don't we have a tool out there that could do the same on multiple-volumes OS X disks, as Apple's Disk Utility seems unable to do the job ?

NOTE: I am not scared using Terminal if required. But man asr reports that the asr command is the command-line equivalent of the Disk Utility's restore feature, which failed to restore such an image or clone disk-to-disk.

Thanks in advance for any relevant info about this.

Posted on Mar 9, 2016 2:04 AM

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Answer 1

Phil-CB Author

Level 1

115 points

Mar 16, 2017 1:58 AM in response to Tony T1

In thread Clone full disk with multiple OS X Versions installed, I was also suggested to use CopyCatX, ... so I did.

Indeed the app does the job (takes something like 9 hours to clone) and the destination iMac has all bootable volumes and is working.

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Answer 2

Tony T1

Level 6

10,247 points

Mar 16, 2017 1:58 AM in response to Phil-CB

If you do not have a Windows partitons, CopyCatX will do it, but as you said, it's not free

I thought that CCC had a device clone option (using asr), but CCC is not free either

Edit: CCC used to have an option that used asr in older versions: https://bombich.com/kb/ccc3/block-level-copy

Where is the "Block Copy" option?

The Block Copy feature is no longer supported in CCC 4. CCC 3 leveraged OS X's built-in Apple Software Restore utility to perform block copies. We had great luck with this utility over the years, but recently it has offered less and less detail about error conditions, so much so that it has become impossible to support when problems occur. CCC's file-level copying utility is generally faster and more reliable than a block copy, especially when media errors are present, so we recommend file-level copies exclusively.

If you haven't done so already, google "Block Level" cloning.

Clonezilla: This article says it supports OS X: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/four-cloning-solutions-for-os-x/

and it looks to be the only free option.

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Answer 3

BobHarris

Level 9

57,065 points

Mar 9, 2016 6:53 AM in response to Phil-CB

There is always the 'dd' command

Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal -> man dd

some experimentation will be necessary.

Also it is best if the disks are of identical size, or that the destination is equal or larger, and you do not care about the wasted space.

Or use diskutil (man diskutil) and get a list of all the partitions, including recovery, then write a script to use a collection of utilities that will partition the destination disk, and then clone each partition from the original to the destination. Again some experimentation will be necessary, and it would be best if you used a test original that you cobbled together with some files you can verify on the destination, but does not need to have everything of the original, as you just want to verify your copying algorithm works and goes in the right direction before risking your master disk.

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