Clone a harddisk

Question

Clone a harddisk

I'm still running Mojave (10.14.6) on my 2017 Retina 5K iMac. This is because every now and then, I have to use some older software (mainly Cinema 4D) which still suits my needs and is pretty costly to upgrade.

But Mojave is getting too old for some other software I use on a daily basis (Photoshop, Safari, Pages Numbers etc.).

I'm running Mojave on an external SSD (2Tb of which 1,2 Tb is in use) because my internal (fusion) drive has died.

What I would like to do is clone my startup disk to another SSD to run that older software and upgrade my startup disk to a newer OSX.

I do have a (spare) SSD of 1 Tb, which is big enough to run Mojave and C4D but slightly too small to clone the whole startup disk by means of the "Restore" option in DiskUtility.

I don't think DiskUtility has an option to leave stuff behind (for instance a huge Music library and movies) in the cloning process. Is there a workaround for this (via dmg for instance) ?

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 10.14

Posted on Nov 22, 2024 8:55 AM

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Answer 1

John Galt

Level 10

146,432 points

Nov 22, 2024 9:08 AM in response to Gerrit Velthuis

Off the top of my head I can't find a way to do that in the direct manner you describe, but I believe if you were to install Mojave on that 1 TB SSD, boot from it, and then use Migration Assistant to migrate selected broad categories of items to transfer that ought to work.

Restore is a great idea but it will fail if you're using more than the target disk's capacity.

Ought to go without saying, but be sure to back up your Mac: Back up your files with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support

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