Resolved A few questions about cloning to a SMB drive

[Diogones]

Hi all,

I have a 2006 Mac Mini Core Duo with a 80GB hard drive. Only about 37GB is filled on the drive, but I decided I would like to upgrade my hard drive size, and I have a 250GB 2.5 inch SATA laptop drive laying around that I thought would be perfect for the replacement. However, since I don't have a hard drive enclosure to directly connect the drive to the Mac, I have instead opted for a more, shall we say, involved solution.

I hooked up the drive to my PC, and used MacDrive to format the drive as a GUID partition scheme with a single HFS+ partition. I then attached the two computers - Mac and PC - directly with an Ethernet cable, since I know Gigabit Ethernet transfers are going to be MUCH faster in this case. Once I had both computers on the same ad-hoc LAN, I mounted the 250GB drive on my Mac, and then ran CCC to clone to the drive. So far, so good, but I have some concerns.

Since I am not going to be installing the drive internally into the Mac, but rather have someone else do it, I want to make sure that it will boot correctly. Unfortunately, CCC warned me that the drive would not be bootable, because it is not formated as HFS+. I know that is because - even though the drive is formatted for Mac - the Mini recognizes it as an SMB drive. So if I back up to a networked drive, would it lose the ability to boot, despite the fact that it is formatted HFS+? Would I lose any other file-system properties, such as ACL and POSIX permissions?

I do have Firewire 400 on both computers, so could I somehow boot the Mini from the 250GB drive in the PC? I know that they are not both Macs, so using Target Disk Mode is out of the question, but if I could select the disk from the Mac's Startup Disk option, then I would be in luck, right?

I suppose I'm somewhat confused as to whether I will be able to use the drive I have cloned to as a replacement for the 80GB drive. I want to know before I swap the drives out and find out that it didn't work.

 

[philipma1957]

look you are trying to do it really hard. just pick up a toaster type dock like a thermaltake n0028usu


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Thermaltake-N0028USU-BLACX-HDD-Docking-Station-Case-/280563267982?


then clone it with ccc or superduper.

 

[Diogones]

Thanks for your reply philip, but that wasn't what I had in mind. My question was, if I clone my Mac to a network mounted drive, will the drive be a usable bootable Mac drive, or do I have to connect the drive directly, like you recommended?

 

[philipma1957]

the answer is the network drive may boot or not boot it depends on a long list of factors. Many of them you can't control. The router you are using may not support it. If you have a wireless connection dropouts are common. It would be my last choice.

a usb a firewire or a t-bolt mounted drive will boot. If you pull the clone you made via the net and boot it in a usb drive it should boot with no loss of data.

That is why I said you need an empty external. It is really easy to use and handy for testing out ideas like the one you are trying to get to work.

 

[Diogones]

I think you're dead right, philip; the fact that there are so many variables to consider when booting over a network really resorts it to an unappealing choice.

I followed your advice, and I managed to get my hands on a USB external hard drive. Could I attach that to the Mini, create a disk image on it with CCC, swap my 80GB drive for the 250GB drive, boot up to the Snow Leopard install disc, and restore the disk image with Disk Utility to the new internal drive?

 

[Ruahrc]

If you can swap the hard drives in the USB enclosure, you can just put the 250GB you intend to use internally into the USB enclosure, clone your 80GB to it, and then install it into the mini.

Otherwise, just clone the 80GB to the USB drive, then install the 250GB internal drive in the mini, boot off of the external USB drive, clone it onto to the new 250GB internal, then boot off that going forward.

Basically if you can hook up the 250GB drive to the mini directly using the USB enclosure you got, you only need to do the clone operation once. Otherwise you have to do it twice. The end result should be the same though.

 

[Diogones]

Thank you for your helpful reply Ruahrc. Alright, I'll just stick with the external clone strategy, simply because the external is a hermetically sealed enclosure, and not a swappable one that you can normally exchange drives in and out of. The external will solve my problem however, so I'll mark this thread as solved.