After removing the iTunes and iPhoto libraries, the drive reported 53GB of data to transfer. Recently, one of our staffers tried cloning over a notebook to a new drive. The problem is that it doesn’t always work that way. Then, when you reconnect, it transfers the data over and deletes it from your internal drive. If you need more space in the “visible” portion of the drive, the OS deletes the older backups. When your Mac laptop isn’t connected to your Time Machine drive, it still keeps track of changes and saves them to a hidden folder on your hard drive.

One of the infrequently-mentioned additions to Lion was “MobileBackups,” which is is effectively internally-saved Time Machine backups. Well… maybe not that second one anymore… Cloning can bring over stuff you don’t want. It’s great for performing backups and makes transferring your system to a new drive a snap… Cloning… it’s a time-honored way of transferring all your system files from one drive to another and ending up with a bootable copy identical to the original.

Check mac hard drive space 10.7