Error “Restore process has failed” when trying to create image of startup drive on external hard drive

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Level 1

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Error “Restore process has failed” when trying to create image of startup drive on external hard drive

Hi

I am having some performance issues with my early 2015 13” MacBook Pro. I decided to try addressing them by reformatting the hard drive but I have a bunch of software on there that I only use occasionally but wouldn’t be able to install again. To get around this, I want to create a bootable version of my current hard drive on an external HD so that I can boot from it if I want to use some of those programs, but otherwise use my nice, clean, fast reformatted internal drive for my day-to-day work.

I followed the instructions here: https://www.lifewire.com/use-disk-utility-to-clone-macs-drive-4042367

but i I got this error:

is this because the external hard drive I am using is unsuitable? I have wiped it clean and formatted it correctly as far as I can tell. What else could explain this?

Posted on May 26, 2018 12:08 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Grant Bennet-Alder

Level 10

126,695 points

May 26, 2018 7:50 AM in response to Jadanas

No, it is something really weird:

Creating a Startup Clone

Using Disk Utility’s restore capabilities to make a clone of your startup drive has a limitation. Disk Utility uses a block copy method that provides for a faster copy, but it also needs to unmount all of the volumes involved in the restore process. Since the startup drive can’t be unmounted, you can’t make a clone of the startup drive directly.

thanks to OWC support in this article:

Tech Tip: How to Use the Restore Feature of Disk Utility to Clone a Drive | Other World Computing Blog

The solution? Try using Disk Utility in Recovery

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Answer 2

May 26, 2018 3:55 PM in response to Jadanas

so sorry I was less than clear.

Do it in INTERNET Recovery. When you invoke Internet recovery, your drive is left completely alone. About a dozen RAM disks are created to hold everything needed. All the programs are downloaded from the Internet. Your drive should be completely FREE and able to be Unmounted.

MacBooks from before 2010 can not use this option, because they do not have Internet recovery in their boot ROM.

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Answer 3

Jadanas Author

Level 1

9 points

May 26, 2018 4:19 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Hi Grant. I was doing it by booting to the recovery HD volume, by restarting and holding down command + R. That seems to be what the instructions you posted say to do as well. It should theoretically allow my startup disk to fully unmount, according to the instructions. Is internet recovery something different? If so, can you explain how to access it? Thanks for your help.

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