There are many things that make SSD (Solid-State Drive) a breakthrough technology in the world of computing. They are different from traditional hard drives in a way that they do not comprise moving parts that are prone to failures. These drives use flash memory for data storage that you commonly see in the digital camera cards. Besides low failure rate, SSDs have the benefit of faster data processing over a mechanical drive. SSD drives can start up and read data almost instantly. Considering SSDs as a relatively new entry in the market and its other drawbacks (such as limited write-cycle lifetimes or slow write speeds), you may want to back up your SSD to another Mac hard drive (possibly one of your disk drives).
Cloning means replicating the source disk in terms of both its structure and content. This process can be performed by creating a disk image of the source and then copying this image to the destination. Some software usually do not create an image, but an exact replica of the source disk. Compression is used to prevent copying any unused file space on the source. Cloning is a good way to archive data while drive clones can also be used for recovery in the event of a catastrophe.
How to Back up Your SSD on to another Mac Hard Drive
Apple provides you with the all-in-one Disk Utility that can easily create clones of any Mac OS X drive. You can use the same to back up your SSD to another hard drive or SSD recognized by OS X. You should make sure your destination drive is empty. You can also erase your destination drive using Disk Utility. To do so, navigate to the ‘Utilities’ folder within your ‘Applications’ folder and click ‘Disk Utility’. In the Disk Utility window, click the ‘Erase’ tab. Next, choose the destination drive to which you need to clone your SSD and click ‘Erase’. The process involves unmounting the destination drive, erasing all the data content of this drive, and then remounting the same on your desktop.
Open the Finder and select your erased drive. On the ‘File’ menu, click ‘Get Info’. Move to the ‘Sharing & Permissions’ section and ensure that the ‘Ignore Ownership on this volume’ check box is not selected. This is to prevent sharing among multiple users. Now, you can use the Disk Utility to clone your SSD to the erased drive. To do so, follow the given steps:
1. Go to ‘Applications’ folder ? ‘Utilities’ folder. Select Disk Utility.
2. In the Disk Utility window, click the ‘Restore’ tab.
3. Specify the ‘Source’ and ‘Destination’ by simply dragging the respective drives and dropping them in the white area.
4. Click ‘Restore’ to create a copy of the source drive on the selected destination drive.
A range of professional Mac Drive Cloning software is on the market that can clone a SSD to another SSD or an external hard drive. With these competent tools, you can create an exact bit-by-bit replica of the source disk without any potential risks of data loss. Furthermore, these software support the latest Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and all lower versions.
Author Bio: Tom is a Mac user, blogger & his areas of interest are mainly focusing Apple Inc. devices. This time he is sharing information on cloning a SSD drive on Mac OS X.
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