A simple way to clone your Mac OS X system

Hi!

Thought it might be helpful to others: here's how I finally managed to clone my Mac OS X system and make this clone bootable.

1. Connect your external drive
2. Launch /Applications/Utilities/Terminal
3. Type "df" (without quotes)
4. You'll see a list of partitions, "/" will be your system disk and its id should be something like "disk0s2". The drive itself is "disk0". Your external partition will be something like "disk1s2", hence drive "disk1".
5. Launch /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility
6. Click on your external drive partition (not the disk itself)
7. Select "Unmount" in the "File" menu
8. In Terminal, type "sudo dd if=/dev/disk0 of=/dev/disk1 bs=1024k" (without quotes, and replacing "disk0" and "disk1" with the appropriate ids you found at step 4)
9. Wait for a while... a long while... a very very very very very long while... You'll see your drives' lights blinking, that's a good sign
10. When all is finished, type "sudo pico /Volumes/YOUR_BACKUP_PARTITION/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist"
11. Under "Kernel Flags" and between "<string>" and "<string>", type "rd=disk1s2" (your external partition's id, that is, without quotes)
12. Press [CTRL]+[X], [Y] and [RETURN]

Ready to go !

EDIT : if it doesn't work for you and dd tells you disk0s2 is in use or something, boot from your install DVD and perform the same steps but this time unmount disk0s2 as well. Hope this helps.

 

Hmm... Actually I must have made a mistake because I can't repeat the procedure. So try typing "sudo dd if=/dev/disk0 of=/dev/disk1 bs=1024k" instead. Sorry.