Cloning Original HD - Mac Pro 3,1; 10.6.8 (Early 2008), New GC, New 16GB RAM

macos tips
1

Thanks to the advice of knowledgeable folks here, I purchased a new GC (NVidia GForce 8800) and 16 GB of RAM from Amazon for my early 2008 Mac Pro. Everything is going great but as I keep looking ahead, I keep reading it’s also wise to clone my original startup HD. This is something new for me so if you could spare a few minutes, please advise on such a move. (best hd to buy for the job, software, and also, please, best practices and a simple step-by-step ‘sorta’ thing to follow). Thanks a million!

2

It seems like you wanna clone the startup disk to the new drive you purchased for backup and alternative boot option. Well, in this case, you can launch Disk Utility to clone macOS to an external hard drive with ease.

  1. Launch Disk Utility. To do this, you can use Spotlight Search to find and launch the application. Simply press the Command + Space bar at the same time and then type in Disk Utility. It will then show up as one of the results.

  2. Once you’ve launched Disk Utility, select the backup drive that you would like to clone your Mac hard drive to as the target drive. Lastly, click Restore.

  3. Disk Utility will display a new window with a drop-down menu labeled Restore from. Select your Mac SSD (normally APPLE SSD XXX) from the drop-down menu as the source drive., then click Restore to begin the cloning process.

  4. Then, Disk Utility will show you a status bar that slowly fills up as it clones your drive. When it’s finished, click Done to complete the operation.

The following section explains how to restore your Mac from the clone:

  1. Turn off your Mac.

  2. Connect your external drive to the appropriate port on your Mac.

  3. Turn on your Mac.

  4. Hold down the Command and R keys as soon as the system restarts to enter macOS Recovery Mode. Your Mac will boot to the macOS Utilities screen.

  5. Click on Disk Utility and then click Continue.

  6. Select your hard drive.

  7. Click on the Restore tab at the top of the Disk Utility window.

  8. Select your external drive next to Restore From.

  9. Select your Mac’s hard drive next to Restore to and click Restore.

  10. Once the backup has finished restoring, restart your computer.