How to Use Time Machine to Clone Hard Drive

I want to clone my MacBook's hard drive as a bootable disaster recovery. Can I use the Time Machine to do this? Do you have a step-by-step guide to achieve that successfully?

Best Answered by

Larissa· Answered on Feb 22, 2023

Time Machine cannot be used to clone a hard drive. It only supports backing up files on your macOS hard drive, not the whole disk.

If you want to clone a hard drive, you can use the Disk utility or a third-party utility, like EaseUS Todo Backup for Mac.

Disk Utility is a macOS built-in storage device manager that you can use it to create a disk image or clone partition on Mac OS X with its Restore function. Here are the steps to clone a hard drive with Disk Utility:

  • Connect the hard drive you want to clone with your Mac computer.
  • Open Disk Utility and select the target disk where you want to save the cloned drive.
  • Select Restore from Disk Utility' Edit option.
  • A window asking you to choose a disk as the source location will pop up. Choose the disk you want to clone, and click Restore.
  • The restore process will start. Wait for the process to finish; you can have a copy of your hard drive.

Disk Utility isn't a direct and easy solution to clone Mac hard drive. If you are looking for a straightforward and simple tool, EaseUS Todo Backup for Mac can help. It supports cloning your disk that can be booted from other computers. When your macOS fails, no time is wasted recovering from a bootable backup and getting back to work. It only takes three steps to finish the cloning process.

Related Article: Guide on How to Clone Mac Hard Drive to SSD

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