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I'm replacing my spinning disk drive with a smaller SSD, because it should make my system much faster[1]. The data I have on the larger drive will fit on the smaller one.
So far, I've done the following:
- Reboot OSX, holding Command + R, to boot into recovery mode
- Use Disk Utility to erase and rename the new drive (plugged into USB with a USB-to-SATA adapter cable)
- Try to restore the main hard drive to the SSD
I get an error like "not enough space on /dev/disk13s2", meaning, I think, "the destination drive is too small." ([asr -source /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD -target /Volumes/the_new_drive -erase -noprompt]
(http://www.maclife.com/article/columns/terminal_101_make_drive_clone) gives the exact same error.)
Suggestions I've read to fix this are:
- Use some third-party, commercial software instead. I don't like this option because 1) I think it shouldn't be necessary and 2) I want to limit how many pieces of software and companies I trust with my data
- Resize the partition on the source drive to be smaller than the destination drive. This scares me. I don't want to lose data. Is it safe?
To be clear: what I want is an exact clone, byte-for-byte. I don't want any changes to file modification times or permissions, etc. I don't want to reinstall stuff. I just want to boot to the new drive and have it work.
Also, I'm using FileVault on the old drive.
I'd love a solution that uses solely built-in Apple tools (like Disk Utility or asr
) or something open source.
How can I clone my data from the larger drive onto the new, smaller drive?
[1] I've used iopending
to see that pending disk operations are, in fact, slowing me down.
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It's the kind of task I've always used Carbon Copy Cloner for, so I'm not posting this as an answer as it doesn't actually answer your question, but it works & it's reliable for anything except Boot Camp, for which the only option is WinClone
– Tetsujin – 2015-04-04T11:51:00.003as CarbonCopyCloner is "just" a GUI to rsync you could take a look at rsync. CarbonCopyCloner though does a lot more than just rsync so In my eyes it's the easiest solution for your problem. on cloning it also takes care of your rescue disc etc. – heiglandreas – 2015-04-05T07:52:21.620