How to create a system image simple & user friendly way..? Tried Disk Utility, CCC

[^GoJo^]

So i want to make a system image of my current setup, export it to external drive and later on restore it on a brand new SSD.

 

In compare to BEFORE APFS, in Disk Utility, the option is greyed. In CCC, i end up with an image of a tiny size, definitly not the whole partition.. So, how to do?

[mek21]

1 hour ago, ^GoJo^ said:

So i want to make a system image of my current setup, export it to external drive and later on restore it on a brand new SSD.

 

In compare to BEFORE APFS, in Disk Utility, the option is greyed. In CCC, i end up with an image of a tiny size, definitly not the whole partition.. So, how to do?

If you want to create a compressed back up and be able to restore an apfs partition/container without a working mac OS use partclone from a bootable linux installation on USB drive.  For these example you will need to also have installed pbzip2, bzcat and a compression package such as lz4.

 

Open a terminal.

 

backup:

sudo partclone.apfs -c -s /dev/sdaX | pbzip2 -c9 > /path/to/store/your/apfs/archive/whatevername

(where X is the source apfs partition and /dev/sda designates a single hard drive computer*)

 

example: 

sudo partclone.apfs -c -s /dev/sda1 | pbzip2 -c9 > /backup/mymacosbackup.bak

(you can omit -c9 if you don't want a compressed backup)

 

restore:

sudo su

  (to enter superuser mode from sudo)

 

sudo bzcat -f /path/to/backup/file | partclone.apfs -r -o /dev/sdaX

(where X is the destination partition number)

 

example: 

sudo bzcat -f /backup/mymacosbackup.bak | partclone.apfs -r -o /dev/sda1

 

*For computers running Linux with multiple hard drives use /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, etc. to designate the source drive

 

from terminal:

lsblk -f  

     will display hard disk partitions

sudo blkid 

     will display partitioni information

[STLVNUB]

From Recovery Run Disk Utility And Select Your Backup Disk And Restore e.g Monterey 

 

Done

Edited March 24, 2023 by STLVNUB