Mac Disk Cloning utilities (also called Disk imaging utilities) are used to create a sector-by-sector, low-level copy of a Mac hard drive or volume. These disk cloning utilities are often confused with backup software. Backup programs copy the contents of your hard drive at the file level, whereas disk cloning tools do the same job at the bit level. Backups are primarily used to protect your data files in the event of system crash, hard drive failure, software malfunction, and the like.
On the contrary, hard drive clones are a time-saving option when you need to set up multiple computers having the same configuration of software and operating system. Mac disk clones can also be used to overcome data loss. You can push a single clone to multiple Macs with similar configuration and hardware components.
Mac disk cloning utilities offer a plethora of benefits as discussed below:
- Deploying and Staging New Systems:
In case you need to deploy and provision new computers for providing users access to data resources, disk cloning utility can save you considerable amount of time and extraneous effort. You just need to prepare the source machine having the complete application suite and the operating system. Afterwards, you can use the source drive clone to provision other computers with the same set of software.
- Standardization:
In an organization, it is essential to keep your hardware and software as consistent as possible. Disk clones not only help to reduce your labor-intensive task of reinstalling the operating system and the application software, they ensure that both the source and destination computers are close to identical. This is typically known as standardizing the IT infrastructure.
- Restoration of computer after failure:
Data backups enable you to restore your critical files lost due to any system glitch or contingency. These backups prove to be worthwhile if you need to restore only a few files or pieces of software. When you need to restore your crashed Mac to its original state, you can do so using the most recent snapshot of the system.
There are myriad advanced Mac cloning software available in the market. These utilities help you effortlessly clone your Mac hard drive or any specific volume on the drive. With the help of these tools, you can also take snapshots of your hard drive and use them to restore lost data at any point of time. Furthermore, these tools are compatible with the latest Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
The one that is “somehow” reliable is online backup .