Can I do this? Hard Drive Swap

[BuckWright]

First, I have a 2 GHz Intel Core Duo with 2 GB ram and 80 GB hard drive.

I want to replace the current hard drive with a Hitachi Travelstar 200 GB HDD, 7200 rpm etc. I'm also planning to upgrade to Leopard. What's the best way to do this?

Can I just take out old drive, put in new one. Boot from old one (now being used as external) and copy old to new and then upgrade to Leopard?

OR is it better to load Leopard on blank new drive and move items from old using Target disk mode?

That way if I don't like leopard I can always go back to the old OS until the kinks are worked out.

I've never upgraded any hardware before, nor have I ever upgraded an OS, so I'm a little apprehensive about the whole thing.

I've seen other posts about this, but not about doing it the way I'm suggesting, so I'm just looking for any advice on what's the best way.

 

[GfulDedFan]

I did it your first way and I had no problems.

Copy old/Swap/Copy Back/Upgrade

Reason: I used SuperDuper as my cloner and read about incompatibilities with Leopard so I wanted to get it out of the mix before Leopard entered into the picture.

Here's a great tutorial for the switch: How to Upgrade Your MacBook's Hard Drive

For the purpose that you need SuperDuper for this, you can use the free/trial version.

Hope this helps.

 

[BuckWright]

Copy old/Swap/Copy Back/Upgrade

Hope this helps.

So, just to be clear, my physical old hard drive, once put into an external case, cannot be used to boot the system? Do I have to use SuperDuper! (or some other app) and another external?

I currently don't own an external drive and thought I could kill two birds with one hard drive by converting the old one.

Again, sorry to be so ignorant about these things. Just trying to save a little money and recycle my old HD in the process...

 

[pkoch1]

yes, you can put your old hard drive in an enclosure and use it via firewire.

So, just to be clear, my physical old hard drive, once put into an external case, cannot be used to boot the system? Do I have to use SuperDuper! (or some other app) and another external?

I currently don't own an external drive and thought I could kill two birds with one hard drive by converting the old one.

Again, sorry to be so ignorant about these things. Just trying to save a little money and recycle my old HD in the process...