Here at the OWC Blog, we’ve posted a lot of advice about backing up your data over the years. However, there’s one thing we’ve never explicitly talked about: how to restore your system from that backup if disaster strikes.

Now, I can hear half of you out there saying, “Pfft! You simply replace the drive and reverse the backup process so you’re writing to the drive you just replaced.” To an extent, that’s true, provided you have a bootable backup and you’re 100% sure there’s nothing corrupted with the system.

However, if you don’t have a bootable backup (e.g., you’re backing up via Time machine) you can’t simply “copy it all back.” Furthermore, installing a new boot drive provides an excellent opportunity to clear out some of the “junk” that’s probably accumulated in your drive over the years. For those reasons, we recommend the “Fresh Install and Migrate” method when upgrading/replacing your system drive, which works for both bootable clones and Time Machine backups. Article Continues…