Help! We'll be replacing the 160gb hard drive on my girlfriend's MacBook Pro with a 320gb internal hard drive. Is there a way to move EVERYTHING (including the OS and all apps) from the old hard drive to the new one?
I second the motion ^^^. Get Carbon Copy Cloner and clone your (existing hard drive) TO your target hard drive. Remove existing hard drive and replace with new one and voila, its as if nothing happened.
You can clone the original hard drive. What's usually done by some folks is: 1. Get a cloning program like Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper (Google them) 2. Place the new HD in an enclosure. Connect to Mac. 3. Clone current HD into new HD that is in the enclosure. 4. Once done, swap current HD with new HD. 5. That's it. New HD will have everything as is. Then just place now-old HD into the enclosure-- format it and you now have an external HD. The lazy way to do this would be: 1. Have the store where you're buying the new HD do all of this for you. Usually, they'll do it for free if you bought the HD from them.
HWOO! thanks! that was quick! just downloaded both carbon copy cloner and super duper to make two backups on an external drive but we'll still be asking the shop if they can do the cloning for us. we just want to have our own backups just to be 200% sure nothing gets lost. been a mac user since the rainbow-colored logo and this is the first time i've had to deal with a hard drive replacement. i'm glad the mac community here is growing and the people are quick to answer cries for help! thanks philmug!!!
when charlie originally posted about the new 500gb hdd's he was offering at dw, i think it was mentioned somewhere in the thread that the store staff would take care of transferring your data for you. of course, if you have sensitive personal data on your existing hdd, you might want to clear that out onto another storage device before leaving your mac at the store... :O
I find it easier to install the new drive into the mac, put the old one into the enclosure connect it to the mac pro and just back up from there....kinda like connecting your old mac to a new mac, that way they system is fresh and it won't be copying old bugs that was in your system before...
I've used SuperDuper many, many times when migrating across systems even from an MBP and MB then back (I'm on Leopard). Some preferences needs to be reapplied, esp those in System Preferences like keyboard shortcuts and bluetooth devices. Otherwise, I haven't noticed any big problems every time I did this. Even my custom dock and icons are there.
the guys at dw. wont clone your xp or vista partitions. last time i had it done i had to do that part myself. they didnt clone the windows partitions only the osx. i ended up cloning my osx and windows myself. I just had them install the hd since i didnt wanna open it all the way and maybe loose some screws
Pardon for reviving the thread, but I also just used Disk Utility just now. I used the restore function, copying the original HDD, still installed, into the new HDD, attached as an external. I'm already using the new HDD now and it's working just fine, without any need to fix preferences, etc.
Click here. Adding memory (DRAM, VRAM) or other user-installable upgrade or expansion products (i.e. hard disk drive, etc.) to an Apple computer is not considered a modification to that Apple product. Therefore, it is not necessary to obtain Apple's written permission to upgrade or expand an Apple computer. While Apple strongly recommends that you retain the services of an Apple Authorized Service Provider to perform any product upgrades or expansions, you will not void your Apple warranty if you choose to upgrade or expand your computer yourself. However, if in the course of adding an upgrade or expansion product to your computer, you damage your Apple computer (either through the installation of, or incompatibility of the upgrade or expansion product), Apple's warranty will not cover the cost of repair, or future related repairs. I just upgraded my MBP with a 500 GB 7200 RPM hard drive. So far, so good.
Revise method to eliminate one step(redundant). 1. Get a cloning program like Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper (Google them) 2. Replace old hardrive with new one 3. Put old hardrive in enclosure 4. Boot from enclosure 5. Clone from enclosure to hardrive installed You only have to swap once. Make sure to tick make cloned drive bootable
I used SuperDuper before and it worked very well. Then for some reason it couldn't clone my Snow Leopard installation. I did not get around to solving the problem. Instead, I started using Time Machine backup. I had restored several time already and I must say that the restoration was 100% of the original. That included updates and hacks. I reinstalled 10.6. After restoration, it was a fully functional 10.6.3.
Would you guys still recommend superduper and ccc? I'm planning to upgrade my hdd as well. @Mad Mac what version of SuperDuper did you use? Was it version 2.6.2?
I used SuperDuper 2.6.2. Except for the significant boost in space and speed, it's like I didn't change my hard drive at all.
