Upgrading Macbook HD

[M@lew]

At the moment I have a 60GB HD which came with my Macbook and I want to upgrade to a larger one. My question is, if were to buy a larger HD and install it, how could I go about putting all the data back onto it? Would I have to manually transfer every single piece of info or is there a program I could use to just copy the whole HD to the current one?

 

[neobrooklyn]

There might be other ways, but if I were to do it, here is what would come to mind:

Buy an external enclosure for your new hd. (Do a search on Google for "osx external notebook drive enclosure" and a few will pop up.) Install your new internal hard drive into the enclosure. Plug your new hard drive into your compatible Firewire or USB connection and setup it up as an external hard drive that appears on your MacBook.

Assuming that you have one partition currently on your internal hard drive and want to copy everything, divide your external hard drive into two partitions. Make the first one the exact same size as your original 60 gb hd and then make the second partition with whatever disk space is remaining. Download and install SuperDuper (a disk backup and cloning tool - http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/). Use it to create an exact bootable copy of your current internal hard drive on the external partition that is set up to be the same size.

Once all the files are copied, setup your MacBook to boot up from the external partition in your System Preferences / Startup Disk to test it. Then reboot the laptop, and see if it starts up from the external partition which is a clone of the internal hard drive.

If all seems to be o.k., then switch out the current internal hard drive, and place the new hard drive from the external enclosure into your laptop. Boot up, and it should work. And now with the external enclosure, your original hard drive can be used as for backup purposes!

Might need to do a little research on which enclosure to get and the SuperDuper software, but this should give you the overall steps involved. I hope this helps.

 

[M@lew]

Oh thanks a lot for that very detailed reply. I'll see what I can do.

But one more question, once I finish this process, could I make the HD back into 1 partition? Or would I be stuck with 2?

 

[neobrooklyn]

I think you don't have the exact same size on the partitions when creating an exact copy of the internal hard drive files during the process so you won't have to end up with one.

But you would need to double-check that - or maybe someone else here would know for sure.

 

[TaylorB]

I sort of have a problem like this also, so I am not going to create a new thread.. I have an 80GB HD on my MacBook Pro, I have a place to put all my current stuff, I just don't know how to go about upgrading my current HD. Could I take it to CompUSA (my Apple store, no actual Apple store in the state) or would I have to do it myself? Could I even send it into Apple to get a bigger HD? Thanks guys.

 

[neobrooklyn]

Found this link:

http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2006/09/7664/

Tells you how to create a clone using SuperDuper with visuals - doesn't say anything about disk or partition size at all.

 

[deadpixels]

Oh thanks a lot for that very detailed reply. I'll see what I can do.

But one more question, once I finish this process, could I make the HD back into 1 partition? Or would I be stuck with 2?

i dont think that you have to partition your new hdd, you can keep it to a single partition. it does not have to be the same size as your internal hdd.

 

[M@lew]

For SuperDuper I partitioned my external HD and it said that it would erase all the data when it made the backup. I was ok with this since I had nothing on it anyway. But if say I did have something on the HD, how could I back up my computer but still keep the data?

 

[SiliconAddict]

Be sure that when you purchase an external cage that it is Serial ATA (SATA) and not Parallel ATA (PATA or IDE). One is compatible with your hard drive. The other will make you a sad panda.

 

[stcanard]

Or you could use Carbon Copy Cloner:

http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

It does an actual copy, but fixes everything to be bootable so you can use different sized drives.