How to Ghost a Mac

By Bennett Gavrish

i Brand X Pictures/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images

If you want to transfer all of the data from your Mac laptop or desktop to another Apple computer, the easiest way is to use the Disk Utility tool to create an image of your internal hard drive. This imaging process is sometimes referred to as ghosting, because the Norton Ghost application performs the same functionality for Windows-based computers. Since Norton Ghost is not available for the Mac OS X operating systems, Mac users must use Disk Utility to ghost their computer.

Step 1

Connect the external hard drive to a USB port on your Mac computer.

Step 2

Insert the Mac OS X installation DVD into your computer's disc drive.

Step 3

Reboot your computer, and hold down the "C" key on the keyboard when you see the Apple icon appear.

Step 4

Select what language you want to use, then press the "Continue" button.

Step 5

Open the "Utilities" menu at the top of the screen, and select "Disk Utility."

Step 6

Highlight your computer's internal hard drive from the list of disks on the left side of the window. In most cases, the hard drive will be labeled as "Macintosh HD."

Step 7

Go to the "Restore" tab within the Disk Utility window.

Step 8

Drag and drop the internal hard drive icon to the "Source" field.

Step 9

Drag and drop the external hard drive icon to the "Destination" field.

Step 10

Press the "Restore" button to ghost your Mac computer by creating a full disk image of the computer and saving it to the external hard drive.

References

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