Cloning an external hard drive to another on Mac

An IT support person told me to click and drag the contents of the external hard drive I want to copy over to the newly formatted external drive. 


Then, I found the below answer in this community:


If you need to clone Drive A to Drive B:


Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility


1. Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder.

2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.

3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.

4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag

it to the Destination entry field.

5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to

the Source entry field.

6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.


Destination means Drive B. Source means Drive A.



It's old, and no one has replied to the thread for a long time, hence I'm posting this. I don't know which one is correct. Could anyone help me please?! Thanks. 🙏

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Dec 16, 2022 04:03 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 8, 2023 08:34 AM

Hello again. I have tried the method, and it looked like it was working until I tried to use the copy. Then the following message popped up:


The alias "name of the original hard drive disk" can't be opened because the original item can't be found.


I've tried to copy the hard drive twice, but I was unsuccessful every time.

The copy seems to work while the original is also plugged in.


What do you think is happening now? I'd appreciate it if you could advise. Thanks.

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3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 8, 2023 08:34 AM in response to Niel

Hello again. I have tried the method, and it looked like it was working until I tried to use the copy. Then the following message popped up:


The alias "name of the original hard drive disk" can't be opened because the original item can't be found.


I've tried to copy the hard drive twice, but I was unsuccessful every time.

The copy seems to work while the original is also plugged in.


What do you think is happening now? I'd appreciate it if you could advise. Thanks.

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Cloning an external hard drive to another on Mac

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