Carbon Copy Cloner and Catalina VM

S

ScottS40

Bit poster
Hi,

Has anyone been able to successfully create a clone of a physical Catalina machine and run as VM?
I'm not after a VM version like that created using migration assistant. Those tend to be missing some applications and look and feel of the old machine.

I can boot from my clone in Parallels but once I use CCC to create a restore disk to a second blank HD in Parallels things won't boot.

I tried this approach:
1. Create new Catalina VM (actually I used the version from migration assistant)
2. I added a second HD to the VM
3. I formatted the second HD to GUID and named as Clone
4. I ran CCC to restore the bootable clone to the new second HD in Parallels
5. In Apple Settings I swapped my startup disk to the new Clone HD
6. I shut down the VM and did not allow restart after swapping startup disk
7. I deleted the initial HD0 so only the HD1 cloned drive remains
8. I tried to boot and things hang at the apple logo with progress meter at the end.

Any thoughts on how to resolve?

Thank you,
Scott
 
Resolved: After trying many different approaches, here is information on my successful method for anyone else looking to make this work assuming your physical machine is still functional:

A. Create Source for the Clone:
1. Attach a USB drive large enough to match the existing machine's drive in use
2. Boot into Recovery mode by holding CMD-R at startup.
3. Start Disk Utility in Recovery Mode
4. Format/Erase the USB disk or a partition to be used using the APFS format
5. Highlight the Clone destination in Disk Utility, Press Restore and choose Macintosh HD as the source for replication.

B. Move clone to destination VM:
1. Create a new Catalina VM in Parallels or copy an existing one. This process will eventually delete the original OS HD disk and related HD - data disk anyhow.
2. Once a Catalina VM is functional, shut it down.
3. In VM settings:
a. add an additional second hard drive.
b. select the option to choose boot order at startup which is required to boot into recovery mode
4. It might not hurt to start the VM and confirm the second drive was added successfully.
5. Reboot VM into recovery mode by choosing the recovery partition at boot
6. Start Disk Utility in Recovery Mode
7. Format/Erase the second VM hard drive using APFS format. Choose a name like Clone to keep drive names clear.
8. Attach the USB source clone to the VM
9. Highlight the Clone destination in Disk Utility, Press Restore and choose the USB Clone 'Machintosh HD' from A above as the source for replication.
10. Once Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data have been replicated, restart the VM
11. Go to Settings, Startup Disk and select the newly created VM cloned drive, DO NOT choose/allow the default restart option here.
12. Shutdown the VM
13. In VM configuration remove/delete the first original hard drive.
14. Restart the VM and it should function with the look and feel as your original computer including any 3'rd party apps etc.

In my case I created two backup VM's. I have one built from a Time Machine Backup and a second one using the Clone approach above.
 
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