How to Clone Mac OS X El Capitan with Disk Utility

Cloning, or migrating data, is a critical step when you're replacing a hard drive with a new Crucial SSD because it transfers your data from your old drive to the new one. Watch our step-by-step walk-through of how to clone Mac OS X El Capitan using Disk Utility.

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[hesGOTgame]

This video is perfect. Concise, to the point and more effective than any other tutorial out there. Thank you for posting this.

[mauricewalcott]

Thanks for posting this. My change to an SSD drive went extremely smooth with this tutorial. I let the restoring process run overnight from the internal HD to the external SSD drive in an enclosure. In the morning I took another 10 minutes to change out the drives. Thanks again.

[Wise]

Worked like a champ for me today. Took just over 4 hours to clone my 1TB Factory HD to a 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD. Swapped the drive and booted right up. Make sure you reselect your SSD in Start Up Disk under system preferences or you will have the white screen longer than expected as your mac is searching for the drive. I also enable Trim after I was done. This drive is smoking fast.

[danielolano]

After watching like 10 different videos on how to clone my drive on MBP. This was the best informational video.

[cyclone]

When I walked into the tech store to ask for a cable, the sales rep tried to sell me software. When I asked why I couldn't just use disk utility, he sighed, put back the program and handed me a $10 cable. THANK YOU! As a middle aged woman, I never thought swapping out drives would be so easy and inexpensive. My 2011 Macbook runs better than new!

[frango]

Thanks a lot! Worked for me after searching for a couple of hours!

[MrLebebe]

You should use this video on your support area, thanks for sharing

[FloorEncer]

Glad to see disk cloning remains in Disk Utility. Thank you.
RAID, striping, concatenating disks might be another story.

[mouser]

I watched a dozen videos all showing third party software. This one really works! Thank you.

Awesome!!! This is just what i needed to see. Thank you for posting!!!

[andrewbodor]

Ok. Thank you. Now waiting for process to complete. I used "partition", not erase, and created two partitions on external HD. Once complete with Mac partition I hope to go back to Disk Utility and "restore" the second Bootcamp partition onto the external HD. Hope it works.

[HoaiPhuong]

Thank you. This works while I couldn't get it to work with Carbon Copy Cloner. I can boot from the new drive.

[ibizenco]

My parents have an old Mac Mini with a mechanical HD in it. As a "loyal" user of Crucial SSD's, I think this video will come in handy, when cloning their El Capitan install onto a new Crucial SSD (which I have never done, like with Windows).

A Samsung 850 Evo, or a Crucial MX500: with Crucial being less expensive (and practically just as good), a Crucial MX500 it is going to be. :)

[mjasystems]

Perfect, I was trying to do it whilst in El Capitan, thanks! :-D

[shanyaraleonie]

thanks for the video, have been looking for the Restore option for a while... thought it was removed! Apple wtf did you have to move this to the Edit menu???

[mullsgo]

I used carbon copy cloner, said my ssd was faulty. Cc also said there was an issue, so just squeezed the connector and it worked.

[markshirley]

so this clones your complete hard drive to an external hard drive that then can replace the internal hard drive - will all my applications work as well.

[UNKNOW-rksj]

Hi.. I have problem.. My iMac after I hold CMD+R is not open OSX Utilities .. My iMac show me a some kernal error..I cant acces to OSX Utilities :( What I can doing :(

[gardntool]

The question I"m having before I begin this is ... Is it a must to clone the drive or can I just restore from the (Time Machine) backups on my external drive ?

[cvdavis]

I’m wondering if this works with a wireless keyboard. Holding command and R keys down while booting up didn’t do anything. I’ve read that you should wait a bit but more likely use a wired keyboard - which I don’t have. Hmmm