Help cloning an HDD to a new SSD

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seba1685 Author

Level 1

4 points

Help cloning an HDD to a new SSD

Hello Apple Community,

I'm helping a friend upgrade his old MBP because its been freezing up like crazy. Here are some specs on this computer:

• Mid-2012 Macbook Pro 13" (non-retina), 2.5Ghz Dual-Core Inter Core i5 (A1278)

• macOS Catalina (10.10.7)

• 4GB RAM

• 500GB HDD (which he encrypted)

We upgraded the RAM to 16GB (2x8GB sticks) which seemed to work just fine as the computer booted up and recognized the new RAM.

My problem: I'm trying to clone his old HDD to a new SSD and running into problems. We purchased a SAMSUNG 870 QVO SATA III 2.5" SSD 1TB drive and an external docking station (Thermaltake BlacX Duet, uses USB 3.0 cable), and here is what I tried (after upgrading the RAM):

Formatted the new SSD (plugged in externally) to APFS Encrypted (same as the old HDD)
Rebooted the computer, held down Command+R to get into the macOS Recovery System
In Disk Utility, I mounted both the internal HDD and external SSD by entering in the password (because they're both encrypted)
Once mounted, I clicked on the newly formatted SSD and chose "Restore" from the "Macintosh HD" volume (the original HDD, and NOT the one that ends in "Data")
The restore process took several hours, the computer was left overnight and in the morning it was turned off. Checking in on it last night it only made about 1/6th progress.
This morning we booted up the computer in recovery mode and found the new SSD with an additional "ASRData Volume" created - both empty. Without reformatting the SSD, we deleted the new "ASRData" drive and tried the restore process again. Its made 90% progress in 1.5 hrs, now its stuck on the last 10%, still replicating...

Am I going about this the right way? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Sebastian

Posted on Mar 1, 2021 8:06 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

60,560 points

Mar 1, 2021 11:56 AM in response to seba1685

You should really figure out what was causing the crashes before attempting any upgrades as you may end up with multiple issues to troubleshoot. To look for software issues run EtreCheck. To check the health of the original hard drive run DriveDx. Post both reports here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.

For a 13" (mid-2012) model the hard drive SATA Cable may be bad. This cable has an extremely high failure rate on this particular model especially when used with an SSD.

https://eshop.macsales.com/search/?q=hard%20drive%20cable&filter.catidpath=3406

The easiest way to clone a macOS boot drive is by using Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC). You will need to erase the whole physical SSD again as GUID partition and APFS (top option). Don't select the "encrypted" option. macOS tends to treat the Filevault encryption option slightly differently than when enabling file system encryption using Disk Utility. After using CCC to clone the original hard drive you will need to enable Filevault. You will also want to make sure the default Startup Disk is selected.

You may want to enable TRIM on the new SSD or at least uncheck "Put hard drive to sleep when possible" located in the Energy Saver System Preferences.

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Help cloning an HDD to a new SSD

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