Simple Methods to Copy A Hard Drive on macOS Sierra

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Actually, if you have a hard drive clone app, you can easily to the job. With disk cloning software, Mac users can directly clone the data from a hard drive to another drive. Here in this article, we will introduce the common disk cloning tools for Mac and show you how to clone hard drive on macOS Sierra step by step.

Clone Hard Drive with Disk Utility on macOS Sierra

The first choice for most Mac users might be using Disk Utility. The tool is macOS built-in and free. You can use the tool to clone hard drive on macOS Sierra without installing additional software.

The software is easy to use, but you should be careful while choosing the drive. Unlike other disk cloning software, you need to first choose the destination disk in Disk Utility. It may cause data loss if you choose the drives wrongly.

Here you can do as follows to start cloning process with Disk Utility step by step:

Step 1. Choose the destination disk.

Open Disk Utility from Applications → Utilities. Select the destination disk from the left sidebar ad click on the Restore tab.

Step 2. Choose the source disk you want to clone.

Choose the source drive you want to clone from the Restore from drop down menu.

Step 3. Start cloning hard drive process.

At last, click on the Restore button. The utility will start to clone the hard drive from one to the other. After the cloning is done, you can then check the data on the cloned drive.

The built-in tool is easy to clone hard drive on macOS Sierra. However, if you are trying to clone the startup disk on Mac, the tool cannot guarantee the cloned drive is also bootable. Then you may have to look for another Mac disk cloning software.

Clone Hard Drive with Donemax Disk Clone for Mac

We suggest you have a try with Donemax Disk Clone for Mac. It provides 3 cloning options to clone a hard drive on macOS Sierra. If you want to clone the data to the new one and will continue using the data on the new drive directly, you can choose Disk Copy. If you want to archive or back up your data instead, you can choose Disk Image mode to create a disk image as backup. The most useful feature is to clone macOS and make a bootable copy.

Before doing the clone, please first prepare the destination drive to keep the cloned data. It's better to choose a destination drive with enough free space for the clone job. Also, please download the the software first from here.

If you are ready to clone hard drive on macOS Sierra, we will share you the simple guides about how to clone a hard drive on macOS Sierra with the 3 modes of the software. Please do as the guides step by step.

Mode 1. Clone a hard drive on macOS Sierra with Disk Copy

In this mode, the software will copy the data from the source hard drive to the destination drive directly. It will just be an exact copy of the source data. You can easily access the data in Finder directly on macOS Sierra. Please read on to see more detail information.

Step 1.Connect and choose both the source and destination drives.

At the first step, please ensure to choose the correct source and destination drives for the disk copy process.

Step 2. Clone a hard drive to the destination drive.

Please just click the Copy Now button, the software will copy the data from source to destination disk automatically.

Step 3. Check the copied data on the destination drive.

After the cloning is finished, you can go to the destination drive to verify if the disk copy is processed successfully.

Mode 2. Make a full and bootable clone for macOS Sierra

Donemax Disk clone for Mac offers a very useful feature to clone the system drive of Mac. The software will migrate the system data, settings, installed apps and all personal files to another drive. It can make sure the cloned drive is also bootable.

Follow the steps below to make a bootable copy of macOS with Donemax Disk Clone for Mac:

Step 1. Select the destination disk.

When you change to this mode, the Mac startup disk is selected as source automatically. You can only choose another external hard drive as destination.

Ensure to choose one with enough space. Also, the process will overwrite the destination disk. So ensure to use an empty disk as destination.

Step 2. Clone Mac system drive.

After clicking on the Clone Now button, the software will start to clone everything from the Mac system drive to the selected destination disk.

Step 3. check the data on destination disk.

It will take a while to finish the disk cloning process. After cloning the hard drive successfully, you can go to the destination disk and check the data.

At last, you can also check if the cloned disk is bootable. Reboot your Mac and hold down Option key to get into the startup disk list. Choose the cloned hard drive to boot from it once.

Or you can change to always boot from the cloned hard drive until you change it the next time. Go to System Preference → Startup Disk. Check and select the cloned disk from the list and click Restart button. The Mac will then reboot and start from the cloned drive.

Mode 3. Create disk image for a hard drive on macOS Sierra

If you just want to create a disk image for your hard drive, this software can also achieve your goal. The software provides the mode Disk Image. It can create 2 different types of disk image: DMG and ZIP. The disk image can be open and use on Mac directly. Also, you can copy and use the ZIP format image on Windows without problem. Here are the steps you need to do.

Step 1. Choose source hard drive and the destination drive.

Please connect both the source and destination hard dries. After that, please run the software and choose the right source hard drive and destination drive for the disk copy.

Step 2. Start to image the hard drive directly on macOS Sierra.

After clicking the Create Now button, the software will try to create an image of your source hard drive. The disk image will be saved to the destination drive.

Step 3. Check the created disk image to verify if it's successful.

Please ensure to mount/open the disk image to check if the disk image was created successfully. You can even move the ZIP format disk image to Windows machine for further use.

You can not only use the software on macOS Sierra, but also the software can clone hard drive on macOS 10.15 Sequoia, macOS Sonoma, macOS Ventura, macOS Monterey, macOS Big Sur, macOS Catalina, macOS 10.14 Mojave, 10.13 High Serra.

No matter you want to clone a USB flash drive, external drive, internal hard drive, SSD, memory card or other drives, you can download Donemax Disk Clone for Mac to have a try first.

Conclusion:

Cloning hard drive on macOS Sierra is useful for backup and restore. You can also use it to upgrade storage devices on Mac. If you need to deploy macOS to multiple Mac machines, cloning the hard drive is also an good choice.

To make sure the cloning works go smoothly, you can follow the guide steps by step in different ways. Disk Utility is free and easy to clone hard drive on macOS Sierra. However, if you want to make a bootable clone backup for macOS, it's better to use the professional disk copy tool Donemax Disk Clone for Mac. It can clone and back up data in different ways and make sure to generate bootable copy for macOS.