Disk Imaging/Cloning software for MacOs? (Disk Utility is terrible)

[kofman13]

Hey all. For most of my backup needs I’ve used Macrium Reflect on windows which is AMAZING. First off the personal use version is free and the basic features in this version are fine for me. It does amazing compression ratios, its super fast, it can make its own format of images that are read/write and mount very quickly in windows. 

But recently I use my 2019 MacBook Pro Touch Bar more than my pc and I’d rather not have to turn on my windows computer every time I want to clone backup my drives once a month or whatever I do. Several people recommended the native Disk Utility in macOS to do backup/cloning and I found it to be horrible. I tested making an image of 16GB flash drive in disk utility. Not only did it take a whopping 22 minutes at 13 mb/s, it made a 16GB image even though only 2 GB is used.  Macrium reflect in windows would have taken maybe 2 minutes at a MUCH faster output speed and it would only make an image from the data USED (2 GB), and on top of that it would compress it with a REALLY good ratio so it would have been like a 1.6 GB image done in 2 minutes instead of a 16gb image done in 23 minutes in disk utility on Mac.

Is there a good third party app for macOS that can do what I do in windows?

[jpenguin]

I haven't used OSX for a few years, but here are a cople

 

https://www.thefanclub.co.za/how-to/dd-utility-write-and-backup-operating-system-img-and-iso-files-memory-card-or-disk

https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-create-disk-image-on-mac-os-x-with-dd-command/

https://shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

[hishnash]

On 11/15/2019 at 3:55 AM, kofman13 said:

Not only did it take a whopping 22 minutes at 13 mb/s, it made a 16GB image even though only 2 GB is used.  

 

If you what to make an Image of a disk then you expect it to be `byte` for `byte` the same as the original. However in macOS you can create Sparse Images, these will appear to be the full (16GB when inspecting from inside) but on disk (outside of the image) they will take up just the space that is needed. 

 

When creating an image in Disk Utility did you try selected the `Compressed` option? 

Both SuperDuper (the link above) and Carbon Copy Cloner https://bombich.com/ are considered the best tools in this space.

And as the person above suggests you can also of course just do `dd` to a sparse volume (basically what both of the above tools do)

If you don't want a Byte For Byte copy but rather a file for file copy (what you are used to in the windows space) then take a look at this article using sparse bundles and rsync:

https://blog.fosketts.net/2015/07/22/how-to-use-mac-os-x-sparse-bundle-disk-images/