I have an original 24" aluminum 2.4GHz and it has been acting very strangely lately, and would not boot yesterday. Luckily I had a clone and booted from that, and on bootup I got the message that the internal disk could not be repaired and to backup and format the disk as soon as possible. However, trying to partition the disk gave "could not unmount"; does "erase disk" do a format?. All of the data appears to be on the disk and accessible, but read only, so it makes me wonder if the hard disk is really bad or if this is some other error. I am going today to buy another external disk so that I can have a clone of my clone (now boot) disk just in case. If the internal disk is bad then it is probably easier just to use an external and forget about the internal; I looked at the teardowns on ifixit and it looks like a very time consuming (but not necessarily difficult) process to replace the disk.
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My hard drive just died
- Thread starter danny_w
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I just tried remotely from work and the internal drive unmounted just fine, so I formatted (erased) the drive and it is now cloning from the external. I am not going to try rebooting until I get home tonight in case it doesn't come back up.
Oh well, the clone to the internal disk died at the last step:
| 10:57:01 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Updating boot cache on '/Volumes/Macintosh HD'
| 10:59:48 AM | Error | sh: line 1: 705 Bus error /usr/bin/update_dyld_shared_cache -root '/Volumes/Macintosh HD' 2>&1
| 10:57:01 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Updating boot cache on '/Volumes/Macintosh HD'
| 10:59:48 AM | Error | sh: line 1: 705 Bus error /usr/bin/update_dyld_shared_cache -root '/Volumes/Macintosh HD' 2>&1
UPDATE: Well I know that nobody has replied, but I followed the posts all over the internet on how to replace the drive and I just did it (but I forgot to replace the pad underneath the hard disk, I suppose that is a silencer). It appears to be working OK; Mac OS X recognized the disk upon booting and gave the message that the drive I inserted needed to be initialized. I am now in the process of cloning.
I'm new to the mac world and I would like to have a clone of my hard drive. (had many hard drive problems with my pc), how do I go about doing this?
Cloning is something unique to Macs and has saved me repeatedly. You can do it any of several ways, but I use SuperDuper!; it is free for basic cloning but registering gets extra features that I consider useful. Many people also use the free Carbon Copy Cloner but I do not trust it personally. You can also make a clone with the built-in Disk Utility but it is slow and non-intuitive and best forgotten for this purpose.
You can download SuperDuper! here:
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
After you make your clone you can use it for a boot drive just like the internal disk; either choose Startup Disk from System Preferences or hold down the Option key as it is booting.
Yes, but I don't remember the specific just now. All I remember is that it seemed to copy things it did not need to (wasteful but ok) but didn't copy other things that it did need to (problem!). It may have just been a fluke, but I would rather trust a paid app that has what seems to be better development behind it. For example, when Leopard came out CCC said that theirs was compatible but it obviously wasn't, while SuperDuper! held off releasing a Leopard app until they knew it was safe (and it took months). If I remember correctly it was during this time when I tried CCC and it failed me.
It is not unique to Macs.
But SuperDuper is an awesome piece of software. Better than anything I have ever using for cloning on Windows. The Smart Update feature has never let me down.I should have been more clear. The word is used in other systems, but the ability to create a bootable copy is AFAIK unique to Mac OS. I have looked for years for this ability in any other OS and have never found it. If you know of a way in Window or Linux please let me know.It is not unique to Macs.
Thanks for the reference. These types of clone programs have been around for a while, and work ok if you replace the original disk with the clone disk, but not if you want to boot from an usb clone. Windows doesn't like booting from external disks and never has.
I was doing Windows 2000 boot drive clones, over a network of identical machines (40+ machines in a lab would get reformatted every week to keep the install and software fresh, while data was stored in users roaming profiles) ten years ago.
Cloning a bootable drive is in no way whatsoever unique to the Mac.
I agree, and I have been doing the same thing. However cloning a boot drive and then booting directly from that clone drive is not a common occurrence. I just wish it were that simple and it would make my life at work (and that of a lot of coworkers) a lot simpler. Please let me know how you can make a clone to a direct attached external drive and then boot directly from that external drive without doing anything else.
I was doing Windows 2000 boot drive clones, over a network of identical machines (40+ machines in a lab would get reformatted every week to keep the install and software fresh, while data was stored in users roaming profiles) ten years ago.
Cloning a bootable drive is in no way whatsoever unique to the Mac.