How to Clone your macOS Hard Drive | Carbon Copy Cloner

In this video I discuss how to make a bootable copy of your macOS hard drive using a piece of software called carbon copy cloner.

Carbon Copy Cloner:
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Parts Used:
Sintech NGFF M.2 nVME SSD Adapter Card

Intel 670p 2TB SSD

Lemorele M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure Tool
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Music: Epidemic Sounds - Ballpoint - Bezerk

[SteelCity-jouz]

I tried to clone 100gb of a 1tb ssd Hi Sierra using Mac Disk Utility 3x, it failed miserably taking almost a full day total. I ran across this video and figured give it a try. I chose and downloaded the correct version of CCC for Hi Sierra which was #5 in my case. Following your video closely, I followed the steps outlined by you and the CCC app. Although slightly different than your #6 instructions, the CCC app instructions were very intuitive and easy to follow, in my case consisting of 2 easy steps which made the clone bootable. The entire process took approx. 35 mins, powered off mac, replaced internal ssd with new cloned copy, powered up and Voila she booted up right away. Man what a breeze. This app and your video was a lifesaver. Forget disk utility, this app is awesome, even just using the trial version. Thanks Again.

[WM-slnf]

Thank you very much for this guide! Other tutorials didn't include the part about Legacy Bootable Copy Assistant so this was very helpful.
One thing I'd like to add is that for my SSD, I had to press the 'Option' key when rebooting and select the cloned SSD in order to boot from it.

[scutched]

I just want to thank you for taking the time to walk thru this process. I was trying to figure this out from message boards, but some of those people can be the worst communicators.

A side note, I installed Monterey from an external USB as the original mechanical HD as the source to the new internal SSD as the destination. The clone worked great, finally. Thanks from Fort Collins!

[haseenmultimedia]

you mentioned an important option that needs to be enabled (legacy option with right click). others seems to leave that out and hence CCC fails, and I struggledbefore. Thank you for the video. Very good.

[jamesbrown]

tried it and it was a success, cloned Monterey os in my mac mini late 2014.thank you for the great and easy way using CCC rather than using disk utility

[mrcet]

Wonderful step-by-step tutorial! Thanks.

Dang, the last time I used CCC was probably ... 12 years ago! 🤪

Waaaay-minor nitpick: It's probably best to not name the two disks exactly the same, to avoid confusing the two (wipe out the wrong disk!).

[LuisDiazArtist]

Thank you! Very easy! Using it for cloning another drive, but should be very similar.

[gegloff]

Thanks for the video. I've been using CCC for many years, but had been lazy recently and, of course, my MacPro died. Completely. Apple replaced the main system drive and logic board and I had to rebuild the system which took many hours.  
For me, I always avoid naming my back-up drive the exact same thing as my main system drive. I could see some people (like myself) making mistakes.. I've always named the target drive: "CCC" or "Backup" or anything that's not "Macintosh HD". 🙂

[sephyyyboi]

I'm actually very intrigued that this has a disk image feature. I'm honestly interested in just that, given that I'm into digital forensics (as a novice), and I've yet to find a good tool other than Recon ITR for live imaging.

[DarshitTheGamerAndTechie]

TYSM Man! This Helped Me So You Got a Sub.

[guserusa]

Nice! I didn't know about that right click to bring up the legacy bootable copy page. When I used older versions of CCC it just seemed to make bootable copies automatically. I think CCC showed a Clone button instead of a Start button. I guess that was with MBR before APFS was being used. Anyway, thanks for the video as I have to make an external clone SSD for a duplicate 2018 macmini that has an unstable Sonoma OS.

[hughsie]

I have a mid-2015 iMac with Big Sur OS installed. Using CCC v6 I followed these instructions to clone my internal hard drive to a Crucial 1TB SSD. The cloning went perfectly but when I then try and boot off the SSD my iMac would only identify the internal drive as a bootable disc.

[eschum]

Great video. On an M3 MacBook Pro the bootable drive didn't work. It stated that the OS needed to be reinstalled on the bootable drive and failed when testing. Not sure how to resolve that. Any clues?

[marcialarmenta]

Great video!, it helps a lot, I have a Classic Mac pro mid 2010 5, 1 and I'm using mac os mojave then I want to clone my mc os using the Carbon Copy Cloner, my question is, do you have video on how to run the cloned mc os to the raid 0 drive? or any help to use it. Thanks in advance.

[Lavoste.C]

will it work on my dual os mac. am using dual mac i have window and mac on same ssd will it still run dual when i clone according to your steps

[johnbaize]

I have an iMac 2017 21.5 running Ventura 13.6.7 on an internal 1T HDD. I have available an empty 2 T WD SSD external drive. The Mac HDD is frustratingly slow. If I were to employ CCC as described in this video, and make the cloned drive the boot drive, would it be markedly faster? If so and I use CCC, would/should I erase the hard drive and use it for storage?

[blancadickinson]

Hello I’m new here but I’m wondering if i can update an old carbon copy backup?

[ilbulga]

hallo, Iwould ask You if I could copy my hard drive of windows into an HD that is inside of an Imac 2006, (without unmont it from the iMAC and install THE hd INSIDE THE pc . to install a clean Windows OS. and finish this procedure, put it off , and reinstall the HD inside the imac .
I will do this . Take off an HD from lenovo pc . use a Macbook with carbon copy cloner to clone the hd of Lenovo into Imac 2006 with the cable ( called with a name i don't remeber. ) Thanks

[ronyrea]

Good morning brother, how are you? I wanted to ask you a question ! I have an iMac 2015 late 27 inc, as we know, it comes with Fusion Drive. I deconfigure the units. I have it separately because I have the idea of ​​eliminating the HDD and installing a Crucial P3 1TB PCIe Gen3 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD. I also bought the adapter and made it. everything as is but the iMac does not turn on, I saw your cloning video I did it as is it does not turn on either I think it may be an adapter what do you think or has this ever happened to you is there a solution thank you ..

[Kopecky_]

I should've found this tutorial way earlier. Today I lost 8 hours of work in trying to close an HDD to an SSD using disk utility. Got A APFS invert error and got me loosing time until hitting a brick wall