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Upgrading a MB HD myself

W

wwwdotcomdotnet

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 27, 2007
91
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If I were to purchase an upgraded harddrive for a MB what would I have to do on the software end of the swap? I have a handle on manually switching it, but I would have to transfer OSX onto the new drive first, correct? If this is the case, how is that done? If not, what is the process?
 
Use either SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the old drive to the new drive. To do this you'll need some way to mount the new drive whilst booted from the old drive. A cheap USB2 2.5" enclosure works well for this...
 
wwwdotcomdotnet said:
Do these programs come with the MB or are they freeware?
Click to expand...

They are not included with the MB or MBP. Both can be used for free. Not sure about CCC (I don't use it) but the paid for version of SuperDuper! is only useful if you use it to make periodic bootable backups: the free version is identical for creating a one-off bootable copy.
 
wwwdotcomdotnet said:
If I were to purchase an upgraded harddrive for a MB what would I have to do on the software end of the swap? I have a handle on manually switching it, but I would have to transfer OSX onto the new drive first, correct? If this is the case, how is that done? If not, what is the process?
Click to expand...

I use Superduper to migrate the data from one drive to another. Sometimes I swap the drives first and use an external housing to hold the old drive for the copy and sometimes I do the copy first, by placing the new drive in an external housing.

Cheers,
 
I don't understand the purpose of a HD enclosure. Even internal HDs are enclosed in a casing and if I simply put it on the desk next to my MB and do the clone wouldn't that be enough?
 
wwwdotcomdotnet said:
I don't understand the purpose of a HD enclosure. Even internal HDs are enclosed in a casing and if I simply put it on the desk next to my MB and do the clone wouldn't that be enough?
Click to expand...

How are you going to connect it to the laptop? The enclosure provides the required SATA<->USB interface.
 
Assuming you have an external enclosure for your drive you can just boot from your OSX install CD and use disk util to copy your harddrive. Although some of these programs mentioned by others might be a little user friendly.

wwwdotcomdotnet said:
I don't understand the purpose of a HD enclosure. Even internal HDs are enclosed in a casing and if I simply put it on the desk next to my MB and do the clone wouldn't that be enough?
Click to expand...

Internal hard drives don't come with an enclosure, unless you mean the casing for the harddrive itself which is the harddrive. An enclosure goes around this.
 
I am going to be doing the same thing in the next couple of weeks. I ordered a 120GB drive for the MB, and an external enclosure to facilitate the transfer. I plan to use the old drive in the enclosure when I am finished, to have an external drive for use with Time Machine.

Other World Computing (www.macsales.com) had good pricing on the SATA drives (approx $80), as well as the SATA external enclosure (approx $35).

Here is my plan:

1. Install the new drive it the external enclosure
2. Initialize the drive with Disk Utility & verify partition format
3. Use CCC to clone my internal drive to the external drive
4. Pull the new drive from the external enclosure and install it in the MB
5. Keep my fingers crossed and reboot

If all looks good, and everything survives the transfer, then I will install the old drive in the external enclosure and initialize the drive for use with time machine.

Back in the day, I did this several time with SCSI drives and a PowerMac 8600 with additional drive bays. This is the first time I have tried this with an external enclosure and a MB.

Seems like it should work though...

Worst case, I will put the old drive back in the MB and I am right where I started...
 
I have a similar question about this but didn't want to start a new thread.

I have a 60 GB hard drive, and I'm wanting to get a 200 GB drive. I have a 100 GB external drive that I use to back up the MacBook via Time Machine.

Would I be able to use the Time Machine data on the external drive to load up the new internal drive? Or am I risking losing everything?
 
I would think the issue to be:

"Does time machine recognize this new HD as the one that needs to receive the information previously stored for the old HD" and the question being: "are the operating systems information going to be the same to handshake properly"

I would focus the question towards time machine's capabilities rather than the issue of the new HD. Apple support forums would likely give you a definitive answer.
 
You can boot your install cd and use disk util to perform the disk copy. No need for any third party program.
 
good work! :)

Charliekid21 said:
it worked =) i now have a 160 gb HD
is there a way to get my bootcamp files back on here though?
Click to expand...

hmmm thats a tough one. i would recommend redoing boot camp. but there is a mac app that can clone a boot camp partition i think its called winclone. ive had no experience with this app so i dont know how hard it would be though.
 
My package from OWC arrived last night with the new hard drive and external USB/SATA enclosure. It took about 90 minutes for CCC to clone about 50GB from my drive to the new drive, but it worked flawlessly.

I was able to install the new drive and reboot from it.

This is WAY easier than you would think...
 
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