Can't restore to external drive in recovery mode

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Level 1

43 points

Can't restore to external drive in recovery mode

I'm planning to upgrade my MacBook Pro (17" mid or late 2010, forgot which) from OS 10.8 to latest Mac OS. So, first, i want to back up my whole drive, and start with a clean install. I'm trying to back up my hard drive to an external drive (which is larger than my Mac drive), so I shut down the Mac, connect my external drive (WD Passport) to the USB port, and start my Mac while holding down the Cmd-R. I get the correct screen, with the OS X Utilities box and list of options. It looks like the proper screen for the Recovery mode, so I open Disk Utility, select my Mac OS X Base System drive, and choose the Restore tab. My Mac drive is in the Source box, and I drag the external WD drive to the destination box, and click the Restore button. I get an error message that says, "The startup disk can't be used as a restore source" with instructions telling me that if I want to do this, I have to restart my computer using the recovery system and try again. Does anyone know what is wrong? Thank you for your help!

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on May 8, 2018 7:31 AM

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Answer 1

May 8, 2018 8:19 AM in response to ms manatee

First, make sure you are not looking at Volume-View:

note the LACK of Hardware-names in this view, only Volumes are shown.

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You want Device View to get access to everything:

Immutable Hardware names of the Physical devices are shown along with the names of Volumes.

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Answer 2

y_p_w

Level 6

17,762 points

May 8, 2018 7:46 AM in response to ms manatee

If you want to do this, it's possible to do it with regular Disk Utility in MacOS/OS X. However, I'm not quite sure what happens if files are changing while the clone (which is what the poorly named "Restore" feature does) is being copied.

You need to select your boot volume as the source. The default name is Macintosh HD, although many people change the name. It will be the name that you see in the disk drive icon on your desktop.

Restore a disk using Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 3

May 8, 2018 8:01 AM in response to ms manatee

select my Mac OS X Base System drive

MacOS Base System drive is the incoming INSTALLER Volume, not your files, and not your external drive.

Be sure you have ERASED the WD Passport -- they have a history of providing WD Utilities that leaves the drive as a Windows New Technology File System (NTFS) drive, and emulate Macintosh Volumes on it. This ends up being VERY inconvenient.

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Answer 4

ms manatee Author

Level 1

43 points

May 8, 2018 8:01 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Grant, why do you suppose the incoming installer volume is showing instead of my Mac internal drive? All that appears in the list is this Mac OS X Base System and my WD drive. Yes, the WD drive is freshly formatted. I formatted it exFAT with a slow command line format on my Windows machine. However, it's a 4 TB drive only showing 3.6 TB available, so that does seem like a lot of unallocated space... could be something hiding there. Following these instructions (http://nyacomputing.com/how-to-create-a-bootable-clone-of-your-mac-hard-drive/) it doesn't mention that the drive needs to be a Mac OS format, so I assumed the restore process will take care of that, as it warns it will erase it. I think the problem is what you said, the MacOS Base System isn't what I'm supposed to see there... do you have any idea why I wouldn't be seeing my internal drive, but instead only the Base System? Thank you so much!

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Answer 5

ms manatee Author

Level 1

43 points

May 8, 2018 8:18 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Ah! You got it! The Mac drive is up at the top left in another little box with gray icons. I was only looking at the bright yellow icons like a monkey 😁 It's working now! Thank you so much for your help, Grant!

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Can't restore to external drive in recovery mode

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