Chosen Solution
Hi, I’m planning to upgrade my current 500gb HDD to a 50gb SSD. Could I clone it using disk utility given that the storage capacity is the same? Or should I use a third party app like Superduper or CCC?
Cloning apps are passé! Surprisingly you already have the needed tool within the OS installer > Migration Assistant < If you have a SATA to USB adapter or an external drive case to hold your old drive it’s a cake walk! Boot up under either a USB thumb drive which is setup as an OS installer or run the installer from your old drive from the adapter cable. Format the drive and install the OS. At the end of the installer it will ask you if you want to migrate your stiff from another system or TimeMachine backup. As it turns out you can also do it from an external drive as well! This is how I do all of my upgrades now. I just did two systems Saturday. Many clone apps don’t properly setup the drive with the hidden partition in addition all of your old junk is carried over. A clean OS install sheds this buildup of junk and Migration Assistant will carrier over only the stuff you need. Even if you don’t do the Migration Assistant right after the install, you can do it later! And don’t forget you can also run it from your TimeMachine backup too!
If you already have a backup external drive there’s no need of disk utility or third party cloning utilities, all you need is time machine in system preferences for your backup and migration assistant in the utilities folder to restore your data on your new drive after Ssd install.
