Paragon Drive Copy for Mac OS X

Discussion in 'Paragon Early Adopter Program' started by Paragon_MA, Feb 27, 2014.

  1. Paragon_MA

    Paragon_MA Paragon Moderator

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    Paragon Software Group proudly announces the beta testing program for our new product, Drive Copy for Mac!

    Drive Copy allows to copy disks or partitions in a simple, user-friendly interface. Feature highlights:
    • Support for HFS+, NTFS+, and several other filesystems.
    • Ability to copy to and from virtual containers.
    • Dynamic size adjustment and space redistribution.
    • Ability to copy the system partition.

    Join the testing program, and get your free copy when Drive Copy is officially released!

    Product page: http://www.paragon-software.com/support/betatesting/dc-mac-beta/index.html
    Look for the download and manual links.

    We’ll be grateful for your feedback. The product is in early beta; your suggestions will help shape its future!

    How to give feedback.
    Post a comment in this thread, or send feedback to beta-test@paragon-software.com.

    When reporting bugs, please provide the logs from Drive Copy. To get logs, launch Drive Copy, click Help > Collect Log Files > Collect Logs. It will generate a .zip. Attach it with your email or make available by cloud storage when making a forum post.

    Known issues (being fixed, please don’t report):
    • The system partition is “frozen” while being copied. All other disk operations are postponed, and the system becomes unresponsive. Future versions will use volume snapshotting to avoid this.
    • Kernel panic occurs if you try to copy the system partition to a virtual container located on it. Future versions won’t allow this scenario.
     
  2. Paragon_MA

    Paragon_MA Paragon Moderator

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    The product page is now online. We’re sorry for the delay.
     
  3. dandersen

    dandersen Registered Member

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    Doesn't seem to support Fusion Drive

    Drive Copy doesn't seem to properly support Apple's Fusion Drive. Trying to select an EFI Partition and the "Macintosh HD" partition is not possible. I can select EFI and the neighbouring Core Storage partition, but that would yield incomplete data... see screenshot... https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2355078/Paragon/FusionDrive.png

    I can select the "Macintosh HD" partition, but presumably without a Boot, or EFI partition, the volume would not be bootable.
     
  4. carlomacchiavello

    carlomacchiavello Registered Member

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    Thanks to add me like beta tester
    some first note

    1) is important to read name of destination HD, if you have more than one disk on computer, like me that i have 5 HD, is important to be sure that you choose right destination disk.

    2) the button next step is too small, you can read "Next St"

    3) to work easely could be good thing build a bootable USB like win version, be cause i first is faster than os loaded.

    4) with disk on raid card app cause freeze of OS (mountain lion 10.8.4).
     
  5. F Svoboda

    F Svoboda Registered Member

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    Received the information today and installed as per instructions. The icon in the application folder has a O with a / across it and when I click the icon it opens up with a rotating progress circle which just continues to turn after 5 minutes. Hard to proceed. The OS is 10.6.8 and there is a windows 7 partition on it. Need help to proceed! Also confusing is the manual says OS ver 10.6 works and the home page says 10.7 and above works.

    UPDATE:

    I upgraded to X Mavericks and now the program starts. I think the problem is I had MAC OS 10.6.8 which the manual says is OK but somewhere Paragon changed the minimum to 10.7 and forgot to change the info in the Manual.

    Also the email link Paragon said to use for this beta resulted in the emails being returned by the server, so there must be some issues with the links!

    Frank
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2014
  6. matthoff

    matthoff Registered Member

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    I am running OS 10.9.2 on an iMac. There is a 1TB internal hard drive and 3TB USB drive attached to the computer. The internal drive has 4 partitions (EFI, Macintosh HD, Recovery, and Bootcamp.

    The Disk layout window in Drive Copy does not behave properly. The proportion bar does not show correct proportions and dragging the bars isn't working (the bars pop back to their original positions after the mouse button is released).

    The Mac partition is 838GB with 271GB used. In the Disk Layout bar, it is shown as 587GB. The Bootcamp partition is 161GB and has 89 GB used. In the Disk Layout bar it is shown as 2TB.

    If I drag the bar from the far right (Bootcamp end) to the left, the bar pops to show 2TB free and no Bootcamp partition at all. The only way to get the Bootcamp partition to appear again in the bar is to click on the "Fit partitions to size of the...." check-box.

    With the problems in the Drive Layout bar, I am not willing to actually do a backup to the external drive.

    I can supply log files if needed.
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2014
  7. ogger151

    ogger151 Registered Member

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    I have 3 Macbooks. So far I have tried to do a drive copy on the first one which is a 13" late 2007 with Os X 10.7.5 and Bootcamp with Win8.1. It has a 160gb HDD and I copied it to another HDD of the same size. It will boot to Os X but not to Win8.1. Although the Win8.1 partition shows when I boot into Os X and I can see all the data is there it will not boot to it. When I boot up and hold down the option key I only have one icon that says EFI which boots to Os X. It used too have 2 icons one for Os X boot and the other for Windows. I did not choose partitions to copy I selected the whole drive. I have successfully cloned this drive before but had too use two different software programs. I was hoping for a one step solution. Strange thing was Paragon HDM 14 shows 4 partitions on this drive and Paragon Drive Copy for Mac OS X only shows 3.
     
  8. TheSchmangle

    TheSchmangle Registered Member

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    When saving to the hdd format the file extension is given as .hhdd, should this not be .hdd?
     
  9. random4t4x14

    random4t4x14 Registered Member

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    There is definitely room for UI improvements. Like the previous poster, I am seeing a button labeled "Next St", which I believe could simply be shortened to Next. Also, to those experiencing issues attempting to boot from BootCamp once you've duplicated a disk, you need to boot into Recovery Console on the new duplicated disk, and then open Disk Utility. You should then perform a "Repair Disk Permissions", as well as "Repair Disk". The last option, "Repair Disk", will update the boot entries, which is what is needed to resolve this issue, you should then be good to go.

    Try as I might, I have yet to find a scenario where I am unable to duplicate a disk. Not only does this application work as advertised, but it's got a few additional features that other applications like "Super Duper" and similar, do not have. The other applications I have mentioned are dependent on Filesystem type, something that I am happy to report, this product simply does not have such limitations. No matter the filesystem type, this application allows for exact byte to byte duplication. While I understand that Apple Fusion disks do not duplicate properly, I believe that this isn't an issue with Paragon Drive Copy, and more an issue with the way that Mac OS X handles "Apple Fusion" disks. For those that don't know, Apple Fusion disks aren't actual disks, but are multiple disks, in a sort of soft RAID environment, even the best disk utilities will see these as two separate disks (with the exception of Apple's own Disk Utility).

    I have used many Paragon applications, everything from low-level Filesystem drivers for Mac OS X, to low-level Filesystem drivers for Windows. I have used these applications in both a personal and professional capacity, and I highly recommend Paragon Soft products more than any others. Paragon's support is top notch, and their products just work. If only more application developers were this good.

    Other than the few issues I've outlined, this is a rock solid beta product, and I cannot wait for the final release. Paragon's products have always been a cut above, and this application is no exception!
     
  10. Dirk Heslinga

    Dirk Heslinga Registered Member

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    On my Mac running OS 10.6.8 and fusion it won't run. Keeps spinning, nothing happens.
    On my mac running mavericks it runs sometimes. I think the software has troubles when other software is running.
    It 's not mac likely. I prefer a mac for its performance and multitasking. Drive copy doesn't add something.
    There is beta software 'FTK imager' that runs better (still poor).
     
  11. LB575

    LB575 Registered Member

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    Overall, I found Paragon Drive Copy to be a very useful product. I like the program for two primary purposes. First, it is a great way to upgrade a hard drive when replacing a smaller drive with a larger drive. Second, I prefer a cloned or copied disk as my backup. By using a bootable disk as a backup, it is a simple matter to swap out the copied HDD without the need to restore the operating system followed by data and applications.

    I used Paragon Drive Copy to upgrade a Mac Book Pro with a 750GB drive to a 1000GB drive through a Thunderbolt adapter. The Mac Book is running OS X Mavericks with a Windows 7 Bootcamp partition. The process was very easy and straightforward. I let Drive Copy expand the partitions proportionately figuring I could used Camptune X to change the size later if necessary. I found the UI easy to use and noticed no problems other than the Next St button mentioned above. The copy took about 3 and a half hours and the progress was well documented on screen as the program went through its process. Drive Copy checked for bad blocks and fragments and verified data after copying each partition. All four partitions (EFI, OSX, RECOVERY, BOOTCAMP) were copied to the external drive. After the copy, I booted to the external drive with no problems and everything worked as it should. Finally, I replaced the internal drive with the copied drive and everything is working great.

    The last time I went through an HDD upgrade process with a bootcamp partition was a hassle, using one program for the OSX partition and another program for the bootcamp partition. Drive Copy was much easier and straightforward!!

    What would make the program ideal as a backup solution is to add functionality allowing subsequent copies to copy only the changes that have occurred since the previous copy. This would speed up the process when using Drive Copy as an ongoing backup strategy. If you can implement that, it will be perfect. Thank you.
     
  12. trifygri

    trifygri Registered Member

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    I just installed Drive Copy but want to give you my feedback of what I found so far:

    Version is Beta_0.134

    - After mounting the disc image I started with openening the Manual but get the Message “Manual is an application downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure you want to open it?" This is not what a user expects to see when trying to open a file that has the document icon of a pdf-file. Better put an alias to the pdf-file inside the application bundle. Added benefit is to be able to make the Manual also available form inside the application by selecting the help menu.
    - Main application window should be resizable.
    - The drive list should group physical disks with logical together (i.e. drawing a frame enclosing both) so that a user is able to recognize that a core storage partition on one physical is shown as a second “physical” (logical in reality) on the same list (source or destination). Having a FileVault2 encrypted SSD as a boot drive I see a "Samsung SSD 840 EVO 1T (1TB)" and a "(999 GB)" line in my drive list.

    I have a special "drive copy" problem that has to do with the UUID of discs. Here is a link to a discussion of the topic. Is this possible with the software?
     
  13. Al Ferguson

    Al Ferguson Registered Member

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    I have just installed Beta 0.478 on my Mavericks System. First impression
    • You really should get a developers certificate and sign the App. Mavericks prevented it from installing until I went into the System's Preferences. This was not covered in the email or Beta Signup page (you should give a heads up, but an App like this really needs to be signed).
    • Nice clean, simple interface.
    More to come.
     
  14. ogger151

    ogger151 Registered Member

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    I have just tried V Beta_0.478 on the same MacBook and this version worked. The only issues I had was now when I boot up and hold down the option key it gives me 2 options to boot into. Which is normal except for the name of the choices. One choice is EFI Boot (it used to say OS x) the other is Windows. EFI boot boots to OS X and of course the Windows option boots to Windows. Really kind of insignificant but never the less it happened. The other issue was when I booted to Win8.1 for the first time the Windows bootloader menu came up first and gave me 2 choices boot to Windows Vista (TM) Business (recovered)? or Windows 8.1. I chose Win8.1 and it booted to Win8.1 normally. Other than that Both OS's boot up and work. So now if you boot to Win8.1 and go to control panel Startup and Recovery it lists 2 OS's to boot into. Win Vista Business and Win8.1. So I opened up msconfig and under the boot tab I deleted Vista as a boot option. Now everything boots the same as it was.
     
  15. dougdingle

    dougdingle Registered Member

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    Before deploying the product, I'd like to know if it's capable of copying a larger drive to a smaller drive.

    A very typical scenario these days is to have a MacbookPro with a larger drive (500-750GB), and wanting to install a smaller sized SSD instead. In my case, I'd like to move from a 750GB spinning drive to a 256GB SSD. The 750GB drive has roughly 60GB used on the OSX side, and 80GB used on the Windows7 side.

    Is this possible with Paragon Drive Copy for Mac OS X?

    And if so, will the resulting SSD be bootable as before to both OSX and Windows7?
     
  16. dougdingle

    dougdingle Registered Member

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    I note there hasn't been a post here from anyone from Paragon in almost two months.

    Do they answer any of these posts, or are we just talking into the wind?
     
  17. dougdingle

    dougdingle Registered Member

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    So I got my 750GB HD to transfer over to a new 256GB SSD, preserving the dual boot with OSX Lion and Win7/64 like this:

    I tried using this beta first as a disk to disk copy but it said it needed to reboot to get it done, and after a reboot, nothing happened. Tried twice, same thing.

    So I used CarbonCopyCloner to copy the OSX part of the drive to the SSD (which was in a USB2 external enclosure). By doing that, it also copied over whatever bootloader BOOTCAMP needs to work. Verified I could boot OSX from the copy.

    Then I used the OSX disk utility to partition the SSD, making room for Windows. The stupid OSX Lion disk utility will only format FAT32, not NTFS, so I had to move the SSD over to a Win machine and use Win 7's Disk Manager to reformat the newly created partition to NTFS. Moved the SSD back to the MAC.

    Then fired up this beta, used the 'copy partition' function to copy the BOOTCAMP (win7/64) partition from the 750 GB drive to the SSD. It had no problem copying about 80 GB of data from a 350 gig partition to a 120 Gig partition.

    Once that was done, I put the SSD into the MAC, and damned if it didn't boot right up and work just fine for both OSX and Win7/64. Everything was just like on my old drive, but much, much faster.

    Using this program to do the entire thing in one step would have been much nicer, of course, including the ability to resize the partition split (which can't be done when copying a partition).

    The procedure did leave this tiny stub of partition or nothingness space between the OSX and Win partitions that nothing I own can identify - a bit weird.

    Hardware was a late 2008 MacBookPro with 8 GB memory running Lion and Win7/64, a 750 GB internal drive, a 256GB PNY SSD, and an external USB enclosure.
     
  18. baerenjagd

    baerenjagd Registered Member

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    It might be worth looking at an other fine pice of Paragon software: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/
    I bought it a few months ago and it integrates just fine in OSX... with this installed you can format any drive to NTFS via DiskUtility!
     
  19. dougdingle

    dougdingle Registered Member

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    Thanks. I'll have a look.
     
  20. JohnnyRoy

    JohnnyRoy Registered Member

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    I currently have a 2008 Mac Pro with a 250GB SSD boot drive and it also has a 200GB Bootcamp partition on a second HDD. What I want to do is move my OS X boot drive to a 480GB SSD and then move my Bootcamp partition onto it so that Windows is also on the SSD.

    I just got Beta 0.478 and I successfully copied the 250GB SSD to the 480GB SSD by adding the new SSD to an empty drive bay and it copied very quickly. Then I took out the original 250GB SSD and replaced it in drive bay 1 with the 480GB SSD. It booted correctly but when I hold down the Option key to boot into Windows, I use to see the Mac Drive, Windows Drive, and Recovery Drive. Now I only see the Mac Drive and the Windows drive but not the Recover Drive. If I hold Command + R when I boot it does boot into the recover partition so recovery works; it just doesn't show up on the Option boot screen anymore.

    I wanted to report this because it sounds like a possible bug since the copied drive does not behave exactly like the old drive did.

    I'm going to try and move the Bootcamp partition from the HDD onto the SSD next. Can Drive Copy do this? (I'm going to find out) Thanks for letting me beta test. This looks like a really great program.

    ~jr
     
  21. dougdingle

    dougdingle Registered Member

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    Are you certain it's booting into the recovery partition? I'm not a MAC person by any means, but I remember reading that after a certain OSX revision, Command+R actually downloads and executes the recovery files from an Apple server in real time, then deletes them when you reboot. If you turn off your Internet connections, does Command+R still load the recovery files?

    I'd be surprised if it booted to Bootcamp after doing that since your original Bootcamp loader pointed to another drive. I have no idea how to easily change that.

    Just so we're clear, I'm much more of a Windows person, and my limited MAC experience is with MacBookPros, not the towers. I know nothing about the towers except for being wildly envious of the number of Thunderbolt ports the newest ones have. So while I probably did more research than I should have in my quest to install a smaller SSD and retain everything in my MBP (there is a TON of bad info out there, BTW), once I was successful I moved on to other stuff.
     
  22. JohnnyRoy

    JohnnyRoy Registered Member

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    Good point! It's actually both after a certain OS revision and Hardware revision. My 2008 Mac Pro is not capable of performing the Internet recovery even though it's running OS X Mavericks 10.9.3. This is why it's so important for me to have the Recovery partition working. By comparison, I rebooted my 2012 MacBook Pro while holding down the Option key and it showed me a Macintosh HD, Recovery HD, and Network option. When I opened the Disk Utility in Debug mode on my cloned Mac Pro disk, I can see the Recovery HD and when I start with Command+R it boots into Recovery Mode so it appears to be working even though it no longer shows up on my Boot Manager screen like it did before and does on my MacBook Pro.

    Understood and I appreciate your help. My next task is to move the Bootcamp partition off of my HDD and onto my SSD. Since I'm beta testing this software I don't want to use any other software but I didn't see any way to move a partition between drives automatically without wiping out the target partition. It looks like I need to manually use Apple's Disk Utility to shrink my Macintosh HD partition to leave room for the Bootcamp partition and then clone the old one to the new one. At least this is the approach I am going to take but I wonder if non-technical Mac users will know how to do this? Wish me luck! lol :)
     
  23. JohnnyRoy

    JohnnyRoy Registered Member

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    Well... it didn't work. :(

    I used Apple's Disk Utility to shrink my Macintosh HD disc and left free space for the Bootcamp partition. Then I use Paragon Drive Copy to copy the original Bootcamp partition from the HDD into the free space on the SDD. When complete, Disk Utility showed that I had a new Bootcamp partition on my SSD. I shut down, removed the HDD with the original Bootcamp partition, rebooted holding the Option key and the Windows partition did not show up. I booted into OS X and use the Startup Disk utility to restart from the Bootcamp partition. The Mac restarted and booted the new partition only to see a black screen telling me that no Operating System can be found. So the disk wasn't bootable which is probably why it didn't show up on the Boot Manager screen.

    So it looks like either a bug, or Drive Copy cannot be used to move a Bootcamp partition from one drive to another. Very dissapointing.
     
  24. dougdingle

    dougdingle Registered Member

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    In my situation, both partitions (OSX and Bootcamp) were on the same disk, so when I cloned the OSX partition the appropriate boot loader pointing to the Bootcamp partition came with the cloned version. Then it was a matter of shrinking the volume to create a new partition, and copying the old Bootcamp partition to the new using Drive Copy (because I was coming from a 360 GB partition to 120 GB).

    In your quite unique configuration, the same bootloader on the new SSD with OSX continues to point to the other disk that contained Bootcamp, and not to your newly created partition.

    I have seen your problem solved the LONG way around like this:

    -using the bootcamp utility in OSX, set your SSD up the way you'd like, and install (I assume) Win7 onto the new Bootcamp partition. Don't bother to configure or update it.

    -once that's up and running, use Drive Copy to copy your original bootcamp partition from the external drive to the SSD's Bootcamp partition. Not usable yet.

    -Now boot from the Win7 install disk, choose "Repair", let it find the installation on the Bootcamp partition, and repair it. After that, it should boot.

    Your mileage may vary ;-)
     
  25. JohnnyRoy

    JohnnyRoy Registered Member

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    I got it working but I had to cheat and use another program to mark the drive as bootable. I feel that Drive Copy should have done this i.e., if it's copying a bootable partition from one disk to another it should be a bootable partition on the other disk. Perhaps this is a bug in the beta? This is one of the reasons why I did not create the new partition. I just left it as free space so that Drive Copy would be in complete control.

    One strange thing is that I now get a different Windows boot logo! I use to see the Windows logo but now I see a green horizontal bar that just says, "(c) Microsoft Corporation". This new partition does not behave like the old one did yet it seems to boot fine and is a lot faster now that it's on an SSD drive.

    So my beta feedback so far is:

    Scenario 1: Copy a HDD to an SSD = PASSED

    Scenario 2: Copy a Bootcamp partition from one drive to another and have it bootable = FAILED!

    It would be nice to get some feedback from Paragon on what we are finding.

    I'm going to play with making virtual disks next and see if I can boot them with VMware Fusion 6. Thanks for all your help.

    ~jr
     
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