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I manage a group of users who are moving from windows based laptops to macbook pros. I want to create a HD image or clone like I have done for windows based machines. This way I can install and configure all the needed software the user will use for work, and in the event their laptop is stolen or damaged I can issue a new one and load up the cloned image onto the HD.

The built in backup application is only good for saving documents or pictures - not saving applications and their configs in the event of total failure.

Anyone know of a good and easy to use tool for this purpose?

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    how is this serverfault? shouldn't it go to superuser?
    – alexus
    Sep 3, 2015 at 14:35
  • @alexus Why do you think this is off-topic here?
    – EEAA
    Sep 3, 2015 at 14:46
  • or Ask Different, frag grenade. Seriously though I'd say this is on topic here, OP seems to be a professional sysadmin
    – MDMoore313
    Sep 3, 2015 at 14:48
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    The built in backup application is only good for saving documents or pictures - not saving applications and their configs in the event of total failure. This is completely wrong. Time Machine creates a complete backup of the system and every configuration file and you can use it to restore the system to any point of time that you have a backup for.
    – Sven
    Sep 3, 2015 at 15:03
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    @EEAA because it is off-topic. serverfault.com/help/on-topic - "if your question is not about product recommendations"; "Anyone know of a good tool for X" is asking for a product recommendation. It's a question of narrow interest which will go out of date quickly, and be prone to opinion based answers and tend to attract spam product advert answers. Sep 3, 2015 at 16:40

4 Answers 4

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I would not recommend imaging their computers in the traditional sense... this is NOT Windows...

In terms of backups, the Time Machine backup solution built into the OS is capable of full images of a MacBook Pro. It is an entirely sufficient backup workflow for an individual computer.

Make sure the users have a dedicated backup drive. Even a portable USB solution would be reasonable for this purpose.

This allows them to retain their applications/settings across computers and provides a solution for new devices.

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  • Time Machine doesn't quite do a full backup -- by default it skips items in the trash, cache and temp folders, and log files. But you're right, as long as you haven't done any additional exclusions, TM can do a bare-metal restore of a full bootable system. Also, if you're backing up to direct-attached storage (USB, Thunderbolt, etc) it includes a bootable recovery system on the backup drive, so you can boot from that to run the restore. Sep 4, 2015 at 5:08
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= On-Board: Disk Utility and DMG's =

I wouldn't see a problem in creating a Hard-Drive Disk-Image from within Disk Utility and have that as an emergency solution. This is because OS X itself, instead of Windows, isn't really bound to the hardware it was installed / configured to run on. It holds all the necessary drivers for all the Macs it's designed to run on.

To do that, you have to boot into either the OS X installer from for example an USB-Stick, or the rescue partition / downloadable RAM-disk, which is shipped / enabled on relatively new Macs.

After that you can open Disk Utility from the Utilities-Menu, select your Hard-Drive Partition (typically called "Macintosh HD") and then click on "New Image". Save it to an appropriate location, but keep in mind: You are not on your main OS X installation, therefor drive-names & paths might be swapped.

The process of creating the image could take a while, but after that you have an rescue-image you could use incase of a malicious program or hard-drive failure.

= The all-rounder: Homebrew =

Now the, in my opinion, more elegant solution. Write yourself a little Terminal-Script, which installs "homebrew" (a nice Command-Line package manager for OS X) and "homebrew cask", a utility for homebrew which installs GUI- (normal OS X applications), and then, finally, all the applications you wish to have on your Mac(s).

This has huge advantages over the first method, as the then installed software will always be up-to-date and can be updated with a command as simple as "brew update; brew upgrade".

= A word about Time-Machine =

Additionally, I would strongly advise you to use Time Machine, as it provides a very good solution to recover lost data in case of an hardware-failure. System-files and programs are backed-up too. It can be used solely or in a combination of one the two other methods.

= Summary =

If you are interested into this "homebrew"-thing, I could write a shot article about how to write such a Terminal-Script.

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I'd personally recommend Carbon Copy Cloner - I've been using it for over a decade.

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For initial rollouts, according to Apple's support documentation, you need to configure a machine, just as you would Windows, with the initial configuration and software, and use their Disk Utility to clone, and later to restore. Existing users should use Time Machine though as mentioned above.

See Also https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202652

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