Hard Drive Shuffle...

[Snowy_River]

Okay, so I'm about to embark on an ambitious endeavor. For those who noticed, my wife's PB took a dive recently. Well, it does seem to be back up and running, but as a precautionary measure I want to swap out the hard drive. Currently, she has an 80GB HD in her PB, with probably about 20GB free disk space. On the other hand, I have an 80GB HD in my PB with free disk space that fluctuates between about 8GB and <1GB free.

So, I've ordered a new 120GB HD and an external enclosure. They should arrive today. What I want to do is copy (clone) my HD onto the 120GB drive, then swap the 120GB drive into my computer, then format my old drive and clone my wife's drive onto it, then swap my old drive into my wife's computer. My wife's old drive would then take up permanent residence in the external enclosure and act as a back-up drive for her, thus seeing less activity and prolonging its life, if there's anything wrong with it after the fall.

So, here's the question... I know that SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner will both clone a disk completely, but I don't know how they handle cloning an 80GB disk to a 120GB disk. Is there any issue with this? Will the resulting disk be bootable without any problems? Is one program better then the other? (I have no problem spending the $28 for SD if it's the better choice, even if getting CCC for free is attractive...)

Of course, I will try to boot off the cloned disk before I start surgery, but I thought I'd try to draw on the immense wisdom stored in the brains of all the wonderful people here on the forums before launching into this endeavor.

Many thanks!!

 

[MaaseyRacer]

Go with carbon copy cloner. It is much simpler, and it works much better if there is any corupt data.
I recommend taking the computers to a Authorized service provider, it should be no more than an hour of labor to swap the drives (No software installed, per machine). This way you are not to blame if something goes wrong.
However, there should not be any issue with the drive size. The number one thing to do is organize. Go get a small plastic screw case to organize all your screws. Do one machine at a time, and do them in one sitting so you do not loose track of where things go.

 

[Snowy_River]

Thanks for the advice.

The installations aren't worrying me. I actually removed my wife's HD after the crash and installed it in an external enclosure to create a manual backup of the data, because her computer wouldn't start up (turned out to be a loose airport card ). Plus, I've taken her computer (used to be mine) apart on at least two other occasions. I've also stripped my old PB3400 all the way down to bare plastic. So, I can find my way around the innards well enough.

I've just never used one of these cloning apps before, and I want to end up with bootable copies, not just data backups (which is what one gets with a manual backup).

Again, thanks!

 

[Snowy_River]

Well, I've now cloned the HD in my computer. My first attempt with CCC didn't work. For whatever reason, the drive didn't end up bootable. Two attempts, and I decided to try SD. Worked first time.

I will try CCC again with my wife's HD, as that's the drive with the possible errors. However, if it doesn't do better in that instance, I'll set my sights back to SD.

Wish me luck!

 

[Snowy_River]

Stage one complete! A new HD in my PB, and my wife's PB is now cloning its HD. So far everything is working according to plan! Yay!

 

[Aniej]

how's the solo convo

Karate chop.

 

[Snowy_River]

Well, CCC failed to produce a bootable clone from my wife's HD overnight, as well. Not sure why, so I've gone back to SD again. It's cloning right now. Should be ready to strip her computer down in just a couple of hours, now...

 

[Snowy_River]

Final post...

The surgery was a success. Something that I'm not sure I mentioned before is that the procedure on my wife's computer included completely replacing the bottom case, as it had become deformed in the fall. And, to make a long story short, she now has a computer that is almost completely restored (there's a spot on the plastic trim that was also deformed, but not too badly).

So, the verdict is that SuperDuper did a great job, whereas Carbon Copy Cloner failed to create bootable copies. I'm not sure why, probably something unique to my (and my wife's) set-up. From everything that I've heard, it's a great program. However, I went ahead and invested the $28 for SD, as it did its job like a champ.

Thanks for your attention!