I've replaced drives using CCC and also via Time Machine. The fans will go to full blast if that's the case, and you'll need Macs Fan Control (free download) to manually over-ride that fan setting. Note that there may be a temperature sensor on the existing HDD, which won't be present when you swap in an SSD. The improvement in speeed on going to an SSD will knock your socks off. Once you've shown that the Mac can boot from it, you can install it inside the iMac in place of the existing HDD. The drive has to be 'blessed' (old term for it) in order to be bootable. If you don't, the drive won't show up as an option when you boot with the option key held down. An SSD is better suited to a cloned backup or running applications.īottom line here is, no matter what you decide in the long run, definitely perform a full Time Machine backup NOW.Ĭarbon Copy Cloner has the ability to create a bootable clone, but it's something you have to select when you create the clone. It's better to use a dedicated drive for TM. Something about twice the size of your internal drive. Lastly, I would be inclined to use a reliable HDD (spinner) external drive, if you have one, rather than your SSD for Time Machine. With later macOS the process is a little different and TM can boot your device into the Recovery Partition but you need to use Internet Recovery to instal the OS before restoring your data because TM does not copy your Operating System like a clone does, just your user data. If you have for example an operating system 10.14.0 or before you can create a bootable clone which makes transfer to and formatting of a new blank internal drive a breeze. Most cloning software offer 30 day free, no obligation fully functional trials. It would be good to know that? Older Mac OSX have different restore process' to newer macOS.

In your case it depends a little on the Mac Operating System you are running. The two have different qualities, advantages and disadvantages. Clone there is no simple answer, I use both.

Clone hard drive with disk utility mac