Clone HDD to SSD in OSX Yosemite - the right way

[bernikm]

Hi

I have 1TB HDD in my iMAC running OSX 10.10.5. I want to replace it with a Samsung EVO 850 500GB SSD so that all data and apps will remain.

Is this the right way or am I missing something
- shrink OSX partition from 1TB to less than 500GB
- connect new SSD via USB 3.0 cable to iMac and format it and create a new partition
- restart OSX and boot into recovery mode, selecting disk utility and copy/clone HDD to SSD to copy all data from the old HDD to a new SSD drive
- remove HDD from iMac and replace it with SSD
- do I enable TRIM on SSD (sudo trimforce enable) or is it best to leave it disabled ?

Thank you in advance
Mike

 

[keysofanxiety]

Hi

I have 1TB HDD in my iMAC running OSX 10.10.5. I want to replace it with a Samsung EVO 850 500GB SSD so that all data and apps will remain.

Is this the right way or am I missing something
- shrink OSX partition from 1TB to less than 500GB
- connect new SSD via USB 3.0 cable to iMac and format it and create a new partition
- restart OSX and boot into recovery mode, selecting disk utility and copy/clone HDD to SSD to copy all data from the old HDD to a new SSD drive
- remove HDD from iMac and replace it with SSD
- do I enable TRIM on SSD (sudo trimforce enable) or is it best to leave it disabled ?

Thank you in advance
Mike

I'd shrink to less than 500GB and backup with Time Machine. From there you can restore the Time Machine backup to the fresh SSD.

Personally I wouldn't enable TRIM but there are many many people here who would recommend doing that. From Samsung's website:

"TRIM is only supported for Apple’s OEM SSDs and is not supported for Samsung’s (or any other manufacturers’) aftermarket SSDs. Users of older Windows operating Systems (Windows XP, Windows Vista) may use Magician’s built-in “Performance Optimization” feature to manually pass the TRIM command to the SSD on demand (or via user-specified schedule)."

Although this isn't strictly true because TRIM can be enabled with the Terminal command, they still don't recommend doing it. I don't use TRIM on mine (840 EVO) and we've fitted 50+ Crucial SSDs in Macs at work over the last ~1 year - as of the time of writing I haven't had any failures or reports of issues.

 

[bernikm]

I'd shrink to less than 500GB and backup with Time Machine. From there you can restore the Time Machine backup to the fresh SSD.

Personally I wouldn't enable TRIM but there are many many people here who would recommend doing that. From Samsung's website:

"TRIM is only supported for Apple’s OEM SSDs and is not supported for Samsung’s (or any other manufacturers’) aftermarket SSDs. Users of older Windows operating Systems (Windows XP, Windows Vista) may use Magician’s built-in “Performance Optimization” feature to manually pass the TRIM command to the SSD on demand (or via user-specified schedule)."

Although this isn't strictly true because TRIM can be enabled with the Terminal command, they still don't recommend doing it. I don't use TRIM on mine (840 EVO) and we've fitted 50+ Crucial SSDs in Macs at work over the last ~1 year - as of the time of writing I haven't had any failures or reports of issues.

Hi keysofanxiety

Thank's for your reply. So doing backup with Time Machine is the same as doing disk-utility clone directly from HDD/SSD? I'll go with disk-utility clone, since I don't use TimeMachine, and also doesn't have any extra hard drive to put backup on it.
I'll leave TRIM disabled, have read that it could delete all data on a new cloned SSD after enabling it ?

Regards,
Mike

 

[keysofanxiety]

Hi keysofanxiety

Thank's for your reply. So doing backup with Time Machine is the same as doing disk-utility clone directly from HDD/SSD? I'll go with disk-utility clone, since I don't use TimeMachine, and also doesn't have any extra hard drive to put backup on it.
I'll leave TRIM disabled, have read that it could delete all data on a new cloned SSD after enabling it ?

Regards,
Mike

Yeah you can just clone the drive and it'll do the same.

Enabling TRIM on an active partition won't necessarily delete all data. Just sometimes horror stories will happen, much like when you're updating the firmware.

 

[bernikm]

Yeah you can just clone the drive and it'll do the same.

Enabling TRIM on an active partition won't necessarily delete all data. Just sometimes horror stories will happen, much like when you're updating the firmware.

Thanks !

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

DON'T OVER-THINK THIS.

Just use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to clone one drive to the other.

The only proviso is:
You can't clone more than (roughly) 480gb of data to a "500gb" drive, because some of the space is consumed by the initialization process.

Other than that, just "clone and go".

One other benefit of using CCC:
CCC has the ability to "clone over" the recovery partition as well.
VERY useful feature.

CCC is FREE to download and FREE to use for the first 30 days in fully-functional mode.
I suggest you give it a try...

 

[MacDawg]

I <3 CCC

 

[Weaselboy]

Hi

I have 1TB HDD in my iMAC running OSX 10.10.5. I want to replace it with a Samsung EVO 850 500GB SSD so that all data and apps will remain.

Is this the right way or am I missing something
- shrink OSX partition from 1TB to less than 500GB
- connect new SSD via USB 3.0 cable to iMac and format it and create a new partition
- restart OSX and boot into recovery mode, selecting disk utility and copy/clone HDD to SSD to copy all data from the old HDD to a new SSD drive
- remove HDD from iMac and replace it with SSD
- do I enable TRIM on SSD (sudo trimforce enable) or is it best to leave it disabled ?

Thank you in advance
Mike

Yep... looks like a good plan. Disk Util will clone over everything including the recovery partition just fine. No need for third party utilities.

Only step you are missing is once you boot to the SSD, go into System Prefs and in the Startup Disk pane select the SSD as the boot drive.

Now that Apple has provided an official method to enable TRIM, I see little reason not to enable it.

 

[bernikm]

OP:

DON'T OVER-THINK THIS.

Just use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to clone one drive to the other.

The only proviso is:
You can't clone more than (roughly) 480gb of data to a "500gb" drive, because some of the space is consumed by the initialization process.

Other than that, just "clone and go".

One other benefit of using CCC:
CCC has the ability to "clone over" the recovery partition as well.
VERY useful feature.

CCC is FREE to download and FREE to use for the first 30 days in fully-functional mode.
I suggest you give it a try...

Thanks. But why using 3rd party app for cloning since disk-utility will do the exact the same ? Or am I wrong ?

Regards,
Mike

 

[randomgeeza]

OP:

DON'T OVER-THINK THIS.

Just use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to clone one drive to the other.

The only proviso is:
You can't clone more than (roughly) 480gb of data to a "500gb" drive, because some of the space is consumed by the initialization process.

Other than that, just "clone and go".

One other benefit of using CCC:
CCC has the ability to "clone over" the recovery partition as well.
VERY useful feature.

CCC is FREE to download and FREE to use for the first 30 days in fully-functional mode.
I suggest you give it a try...

I'm also an advocate of CCC. I t has saved my bacon so many times and I have repeatedly used it to clone the entire contents back and forth.

If you do use it, once the clone is complete, reset the PRAM before enabling Trim. It will speed the boot process up and clean out the old PRAM settings.

 

[bernikm]

I'm also an advocate of CCC. I t has saved my bacon so many times and I have repeatedly used it to clone the entire contents back and forth.

If you do use it, once the clone is complete, reset the PRAM before enabling Trim. It will speed the boot process up and clean out the old PRAM settings.

Hi randomgeeza

What is reseting PRAM good for ? Do I need to do this only when cloning with CCC or also when doing clone with disk-utility ? I'll go today with disk utility, if something goes wrong the second option is useing CCC.

Thanks !

 

[randomgeeza]

Hi randomgeeza

What is reseting PRAM good for ? Do I need to do this only when cloning with CCC or also when doing clone with disk-utility ? I'll go today with disk utility, if something goes wrong the second option is useing CCC.

Thanks !

When you clone with CCC after if completes the boot process can be slow as the PRAM is still attached to the old OS. Resetting it refreshes it to the new cloned version and reinitiates a speedier boot. As for Disk Utility, I don't know whether it would help or not. However, it would not do any harm whatsoever. A PRAM reset is a non invasive action.

 

[bernikm]

When you clone with CCC after if completes the boot process can be slow as the PRAM is still attached to the old OS. Resetting it refreshes it to the new cloned version and reinitiates a speedier boot. As for Disk Utility, I don't know whether it would help or not. However, it would not do any harm whatsoever. A PRAM reset is a non invasive action.

Thanks !