Today I wanted to move existing APFS-resident macOS Catalina installation to a new disk. I upgraded my late 2014 Mac Mini with a shiny new 1TB SSD. This took way too many hours of my life I will never get back. Hope this saves some time to you.
Good news:
- it is possible to create a DMG image from existing APFS container with macOS Catalina installation including metadata needed for complete restore (the DMG contains OS, OS Data, Preboot, Recovery and VM volumes)
- it is possible to restore this DMG image into empty APFS container and get a bootable copy of the original system
This information is relevant for Catalina (I'm currently running macOS 10.15.1).
