Swapping out hard drive - Time Machine vs Super Duper vs Carbon Copy

My advice would be to make sure you don't have more than 750GB used on your original 1TB drive....make a bootable clone using CCC, test that it'll boot and you're done.

fhall1 said:

make a bootable clone using CCC, test that it'll boot and you're done.

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I second this, the advantage over time machine being 'bootable'.

Taking in account.....

only my personal experience, CCC performs faster and with less errors than TM. Again, that is my user experience.

markmcrobie said:

I'm about to swap out my 1TB Toshiba 5400rpm hard drive from my Mid-2010 17" MBP, and replace it with a brand new 750GB Seagate Momentus XT one.

I have a full Time Machine backup.

Is there any advantage/disadvantage to using Time Machine over, say, SuperDuper or CCC to migrate the drive across?

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I always use Disk Utility. Copies hard drives just fine.

You have three drives anyway: The old drive, the new drive, your Time Machine backup. (If you don't have a Time Machine backup, do that first). You could just restore from the Time Machine backup to check that your backup is fine. And worst case you always got the old hard drive.

Migration Assistant

Here's what I did when swapped out my mid-2007 mbp HDD for a Seagate Momentus last year:

1) swap drives

2) put old drive in external SATA/USB. (They are very cheap to purchase.)

3) press option while turning your machine on, and boot from the external drive

4) install OSX

5) run migration assistant

The only problem I had was that MS Office wanted my serial number key, which I had somewhere.

sbcole said:

...run migration assistant...

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I second that comment. It seems to make the smoothest transition. Just did a swap last week for the CEO's wife so it had to work smoothly.

markmcrobie said:

I'm about to swap out my 1TB Toshiba 5400rpm hard drive from my Mid-2010 17" MBP, and replace it with a brand new 750GB Seagate Momentus XT one.

I have a full Time Machine backup.

Is there any advantage/disadvantage to using Time Machine over, say, SuperDuper or CCC to migrate the drive across?

Click to expand...

Here's a simple approach:

1. Buy an external enclosure and put your old drive in it.
2. Install your new drive in your Mac.
3. Boot from your old (external) drive by holding the Option key on startup.
4. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the old (external) drive to the new (internal) drive.
   You can use version 3.5.1 ($40) or 3.4.7 (free, and works well on OS X 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8).
5. Boot from the new internal drive.
6. Your now running on your new internal drive and your old drive is now an external drive, useful for backups or additional storage.

CCC will clone the entire drive, including the OS X recovery partition. SuperDuper won't. TM can't make a bootable clone at all.

Here's but one more recommendation to use CCC and let T.M. be.

CCC will create a bootable, cloned backup that you can TEST -- BEFORE you go through the trouble of installing the drive.

And once you take the old drive out, you can use CCC to do incremental backups to your "old" drive. Best way to handle the old drive is to get a USB/SATA docking station, it will allow you to add/swap _other_ drives in/out of the dock, as well.

Got a question on TM.

What exactly is "weekly backups for all previous months"?
I thought TM could only do hourly backups

Another vote for CCC. It just makes more sense to create a bootable clone of the drive, then swap them. Simples

I'll add to the CCC votes. When I installed my SSD I used CCC to clone my drive to the SSD attached externally. I then booted form the external SSD to verify that it was ok. I then swapped the drives and put the old drive in my fire safe.

Ddyracer said:

Got a question on TM.

What exactly is "weekly backups for all previous months"?
I thought TM could only do hourly backups

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To save disk space, it keeps hourly backups until it acquires over a week's worth, then saves only one per day of the oldest "days", then once it has a few week's worth of daily backups starts saving one "weekly" backup and deletes the other older daily backups.

CCC is all good and nice, but a new installation of the OS in combination with migration assistant lets you use a freshly installed system, if you don't mind the extra time it will need.

fhall1 said:

To save disk space, it keeps hourly backups until it acquires over a week's worth, then saves only one per day of the oldest "days", then once it has a few week's worth of daily backups starts saving one "weekly" backup and deletes the other older daily backups.

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Wow, that makes no sense. Yeah, definitely going for CCC.

Super Duper Works Well

I have used Super Duper to clone a number of drives as part of a replacement / upgrade of the HD in both laptop and desktop computers. The publisher provides clear instructions in the user guide. I highly recommend the program.

Ddyracer said:

Wow, that makes no sense. Yeah, definitely going for CCC.

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It does when you think about it.....you don't need hourly backups going back 6 months....or daily backups going back a year. Just wasting disk space. If you need to restore a file or folder from 6 months ago would any one from July 1st suffice or do you really need the one from July 1st at 9AM vs. the 10AM one?

fhall1 said:

It does when you think about it.....you don't need hourly backups going back 6 months....or daily backups going back a year. Just wasting disk space. If you need to restore a file or folder from 6 months ago would any one from July 1st suffice or do you really need the one from July 1st at 9AM vs. the 10AM one?

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No, that's not the problem. It's just not a weekly backup like it says, it saves hourly backups and then slows down and eventually saves a week worth. Don't like that.

I rather have it just update once a week and stay that way. Oh sure it's handy, but it sounds like it slows your system down.

MoodyM said:

Is there any advantage/disadvantage to using Time Machine over, say, SuperDuper or CCC to migrate the drive across?

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CCC's GUI is not as polished as Time Machine, but I find it to be more reliable.

Ddyracer said:

No, that's not the problem. It's just not a weekly backup like it says, it saves hourly backups and then slows down and eventually saves a week worth. Don't like that.

I rather have it just update once a week and stay that way. Oh sure it's handy, but it sounds like it slows your system down.

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Actually, I use a utility (3rd party) called "Time Machine Editor" and set it to only do TM backups 4 times a day (6AM, 12PM, 6PM, 12AM) but you could set it to do once a day or once a week if you like. I've used it since OS X 10.5 days and it's been a great tool for those of us that don't need hourly backups.

fhall1 said:

Actually, I use a utility (3rd party) called "Time Machine Editor" and set it to only do TM backups 4 times a day (6AM, 12PM, 6PM, 12AM) but you could set it to do once a day or once a week if you like. I've used it since OS X 10.5 days and it's been a great tool for those of us that don't need hourly backups.

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I heard about it. Sounds like TimeMachineScheduler which is a hack. Rather not take the risk even if isn't. I don't trust it, because i also don't trust TM not to screw something up.

CCC is the way for me.

Transferring Data From HHD to SSD

I needed to get some help, assistance, and advice with this. I have just finished my install and upgrade. I removed my optical drive and put a SSD drive in its place. I have also installed a clean copy of mountain lion as well on the SSD drive.

Q. What is the best and cleanest way to to get all of my information over from the HHD to the SSD?
Q. I really also need third party application to come over as well.

1. Restore lastest backup from time machine
2. Use Migration Assistant
3. Use Carbon Copy Cloner - I already know my parallels/windows virtual machine will not transfer over using this option.

I never used CCC but I'm a heavy SuperDuper! user. I create bi-monthly bootable backups to a dedicated internal hard drive. I also use Time Machine for incremental backups just in case I need a file or directory from a different time period.

If you're swapping hard drives, I recommend using SuperDuper! (or CCC) over Time Machine. It works great and everything will be just as it was.

cledet said:

If you're swapping hard drives, I recommend using SuperDuper! (or CCC) over Time Machine. It works great and everything will be just as it was.

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The one drawback to using SuperDuper! is that it will not clone the recovery partition, whereas CCC will.