Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Best way to Clone and upgrade HDD

K

kaitak98

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 3, 2006
22
2
I just bought a Toshiba 250GB drive to upgrade my 2.0Ghz CoreDuo Macbook which is running Leopard and WinXP installed via Bootcamp. I did a clean install, not an upgrade when moving to 10.5.

So, what I want to do is put the Toshiba drive in an external SATA/USB enclosure, format and partition it using Disk Utility and then use CCC or SuperDuper to clone both partitions to the new drive. Then I would swap out the drives.

I have read a number of pages that say to remove the current drive,put it in the external enclosure, install the new drive in the laptop and then boot to the install DVD. Next they say to use Disk Utility to clone the drive back to the now internal drive.

This seems like an extra step to me.

Can anybody see a problem with my plan?

Thanks
 
This sounds like a good plan. I don't think SuperDuper is up and running for 10.5 yet so use CCC. Also, I'd make sure you can boot to the external with the new drive in it before you do the switch. -GDF
 
Or use an external HDD with Timemachine. Then after you put the new HDD in your MBP you can restore your previous system from the TM backup.
 
Last I checked, CCC will not clone the Windows partition. I thought a separate program is used for that.... One is called "Winclone." I've never used it though. (I've used CCC extensively, but not recently).

Also, your plan has the extra step of installing the new drive twice (1st into the enclosure, second into the laptop) while the other procedure only has it installed once. So it doesn't seem less complicated than the other procedure if you intend on leaving the old drive in the enclosure.
 
Here is how I would do it

- Put old drive in enclosure
- Boot up leopard, open Disk Utility
- Format new drive (1 partition if you want boot camp to take over partitioning)
- Restore OSX partition from old drive, using Disk Utility
- Eject old drive
- Use Bootcamp to make windows partition
- clone old windows partition to new windows partition, perhaps with Winclone.


Winclone can compress XP into a really small disk image! But if your windows partition is NTFS (>32GB windows partition), then you cannot write to it without additional tools.
 
Hey folks-

Just wanted to say thanks for all the tips...

I finally ended up using CCC to move my Leopard partition to the new drive. I'll deal with the Windows issues later if it comes to that. My XP install was FAT32 for interoperability so the cloning solutions out there wouldn't work for me. I rarely use XP so I'm going to see if I can live without it. If not, I'll just reinstall using BootCamp or experiment with converting my XP install to NTFS via a USB enclosure and cloning it later.

Thanks again-

KT98
 
This is how I did it on my MBP.... (went up to a 200Gb disc)

- Install new disc in an external USB caddy
- Formatted the new disc
- Run SuperDuper to clone my hard disc onto the USB
- Swapped hard discs
- Done.

Was really easy in the end. The nice thing about this method is you never touch your original disc; I can simply swap it back into the MBP when it needs to go in for repairs (which it will for the damn buzzing inverter).

There's some great step-by-step hardware instructions on the web.

Main tips:
  • Make sure you've the right tools; the Torx (6?) and the Phillips. I bought a mini-screwdriver kit for the job.
  • The only fiddly bit is separating the case. It wasn't that hard in the end as you can run a fingernail between the top and bottom.
  • Give yourself time and space
  • Don't mix up the screws
  • Use standard static precautions
  • You'll need plenty of light
 
before going through all the work of swapping drives. try to boot off the new drive first in target disk mode to make sure SD or CCC made a bootable clone. just a thought i guess
 
I've used Super Duper in Tiger and CCC in Leopard and both have worked great at accomplishing this task!
 
I did this about 2 months ago with my iMac. I bought a new hard drive as well as a USB enclosure. I ran CCC, pretty much too all night to copy over my 140gigs through USB2. I replaced the old with the new and it started right up like nothing was different. It was actually very unclimatic the first time I started up with the new hard drive. Everything was exactly the same, down to my "most recently used" application.....CCC. I haven't had a problem yet.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back