Thanks Jon, I was wondering that maybe migration is not as good. Maybe itunes or other links wont work as good as a pure clone back.
I can't answer for Jon, but that has not been my experience. The only link problem I have ever had was when I moved the iTunes library to another drive but that was a self-induced problem. Recovering from a clone is less time consuming however.
My reason for having a clone is not as a backup rather it is lodged in my firm belief in McGillicuddy's corollary to Murphy's law,
If any thing can go wrong it will and at the worst possible time. If I am facing a deadline and have a failure, I can work from the clone to complete the project and worry about recovering the system later.
But if you have SD then you don't want to clone back right? You want to download the OS and then do migration? To get that recovery drive?
Unless there is a failure of the drive mechanism you should not lose the Recovery Drive, but in the event of a complete mechanical drive failure, while there are other ways of creating a Recovery Drive, what you suggest is by far the easiest and most reliable. Besides that you end up with the latest release of OS X. 🤓
BTW, if disk utility see issues that it cannot fix, and then you try Disc Warrior or tech tool, and it does not dix it, then erasing wont help probably, you need a new drive?
- Disk Utility, Diskwarrior, TechTool Pro, and Drive Genius can repair damage to the volume structure of a drive that is the directory and file structure. (That used to be a far more common problem than it is with the latest versions of OS X. I have not seen an instance of that in years.)
- Although it has improved significantly over the years Disk Utility is not particularly robust at repairing volume structure errors that Diskwarrior, TechTool Pro, or Drive Genius can repair.
- There are also situations where Diskwarrior, TechTool Pro, and Drive Genius may fail but one of the other in the triumvirate may be able to repair and contrary to popular belief even Diskwarrior is not infallible.
- Erasing the disk does not repair the volume structure, it replaces the directory with a new empty directory which IS infallible except
- you lose the entire contents of the drive and
- It cannot and does not correct for mechanical drive failure
- TechTool Pro and Drive Genius can perform a surface scan of a drive which does two good things
- identifies any new bad data sectors found on the drive which in the case of an HD is the most reliable indicator of impending mechanical drive failure ie. the magnetic media is flaking off the surface of the drive platters and
- will force the drive mechanism to remap any bad sectors found to spare sectors that are on the drive for that specific purpose
- The presence of new bad data sectors on an HD are an indication that it is time to
- Get very serious about backups
- start shopping for a new SSD or HD.
