If maintaining a pure clone, then the same size or slightly larger than your primary boot drive will do. If you like the idea of saving the differences between the clone updates, then get a much larger drive. (if so) So later it will be bootable backup (clone) of that new drive. Get a external hard drive equal to or larger than the drive you intend to replace the internal one with. Problems with not enough space for a BootCamp partition and how cloning/reverse cloning can resolve thatīootCamp: 'This disc can not be partitioned/impossible to move files.' Read this for the differences, advantages and disadvantages of TimeMacine and other backup systems. How cloning/reverse cloning using CCC can defrag and optimize your boot hard drive (SSD's no effect) Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive If you need to make a new/clean bootable system on a external drive to reverse clone with Made before disaster strikes, it's a real lifesaver!Ĭloning is a bootable backup system, it doesn't fix issues in software

It can be used for backup, moving to a larger drive, moving your users to a new Mac (using Migration Assistant), defragmenting and optimizing the system (with reverse clone), shifting data up on hard drives to make more room for BootCamp or another partition (reverse clone) or as a data recovery/undelete boot drive. This is a step by step instruction how to make and boot a bootable clone of your OS X system.

How to create an os x boot disk