Replacing/Cloning my hard drive

HDreplacee · Jan 14, 2014

Hi there, would really appreciate some help with something

I'm replacing the hard drive in my Intel iMac 20-inch early 2008, however i'm unsure about cloning my hard drive to my new one. Does my mac contain the capacity to store two hard drives? if so i presume i can boot on the old one and clone like that.

Also, is it possible to clone my hard drive to an external USB hard drive, and then boot off of that, thus clone that to my new one? As i really can't afford a USB drive adapter.

MacUser2525 · Jan 14, 2014

HDreplacee said:
Hi there, would really appreciate some help with something

I'm replacing the hard drive in my Intel iMac 20-inch early 2008, however i'm unsure about cloning my hard drive to my new one. Does my mac contain the capacity to store two hard drives? if so i presume i can boot on the old one and clone like that.

People have put second drive in Imacs replacing the super drive, it is a fairly involved process you should only undertake if you are comfortable messing around with the insides of your computer if you screw it up you have dead Mac. And yes you can clone that way depending on the operating system used at the moment you may have to boot recovery partition to clone.

Also, is it possible to clone my hard drive to an external USB hard drive, and then boot off of that, thus clone that to my new one? As i really can't afford a USB drive adapter.

Yes again depending on the OS involved you may need to boot recovery partition to clone. You need carbon copy cloner to have the recovery partition cloned over diskutil or other cloning software do not copy that over.

kpgh554 · Jan 14, 2014

HDreplacee said:
Hi there, would really appreciate some help with something

I'm replacing the hard drive in my Intel iMac 20-inch early 2008, however i'm unsure about cloning my hard drive to my new one. Does my mac contain the capacity to store two hard drives? if so i presume i can boot on the old one and clone like that.

Also, is it possible to clone my hard drive to an external USB hard drive, and then boot off of that, thus clone that to my new one? As i really can't afford a USB drive adapter.

easiest way is clone old drive to new drive through usb then just case of swapping over drives in comp

GGJstudios · Jan 14, 2014

HDreplacee said:
Hi there, would really appreciate some help with something

I'm replacing the hard drive in my Intel iMac 20-inch early 2008, however i'm unsure about cloning my hard drive to my new one. Does my mac contain the capacity to store two hard drives? if so i presume i can boot on the old one and clone like that.

Also, is it possible to clone my hard drive to an external USB hard drive, and then boot off of that, thus clone that to my new one? As i really can't afford a USB drive adapter.

Buy an external enclosure and put your old drive in it.
Install your new drive in your Mac.
Boot from your old (external) drive by holding the Option key on startup.
Prepare your new drive by formatting it to HFS+ using Disk Utility
Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the old (external) drive to the new (internal) drive.
Boot from the new internal drive.
Your now running on your new internal drive and your old drive is now an external drive, useful for backups or additional storage.

Some have encountered problems cloning from the internal to the external, then swapping them, which is why I recommend you swap them first, then clone from the external to the new internal. For more info on this: Can't Boot From Cloned External SSD

HDreplacee · Jan 14, 2014

MacUser2525 said:
People have put second drive in Imacs replacing the super drive, it is a fairly involved process you should only undertake if you are comfortable messing around with the insides of your computer if you screw it up you have dead Mac. And yes you can clone that way depending on the operating system used at the moment you may have to boot recovery partition to clone.

Yes again depending on the OS involved you may need to boot recovery partition to clone. You need carbon copy cloner to have the recovery partition cloned over diskutil or other cloning software do not copy that over.

well, this is my first attempt at replacing an iMac hard drive, so i think i'll keep it simple.

also i'm using 10.7.5. I figure it does have this capability, and i will look it up.

really appreciate the prompt response, very kind of you sir! thanks for your help.

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GGJstudios said:
Buy an external enclosure and put your old drive in it.

Install your new drive in your Mac.

Boot from your old (external) drive by holding the Option key on startup.

Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the old (external) drive to the new (internal) drive.

Boot from the new internal drive.

Your now running on your new internal drive and your old drive is now an external drive, useful for backups or additional storage.

Some have encountered problems cloning from the internal to the external, then swapping them, which is why I recommend you swap them first, then clone from the external to the new internal. For more info on this: Can't Boot From Cloned External SSD

See i have absolutely no money to buy an external enclosure, trying very hard to find one i can borrow but it's unlikely i'll be able to.

i'm talking about using an external USB hard drive, cloning my original hard drive to that, replacing my hard drive, booting from the USB drive, then cloning that onto my new hard replacement hard drive.

Elbert C · Jan 14, 2014

GGJstudios said:
Buy an external enclosure and put your old drive in it.

Install your new drive in your Mac.

Boot from your old (external) drive by holding the Option key on startup.

Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the old (external) drive to the new (internal) drive.

Boot from the new internal drive.

Your now running on your new internal drive and your old drive is now an external drive, useful for backups or additional storage.

Some have encountered problems cloning from the internal to the external, then swapping them, which is why I recommend you swap them first, then clone from the external to the new internal. For more info on this: Can't Boot From Cloned External SSD

Shouldn't #4 be "format new drive as HFS+"?
Preparing your backup disk for a backup of Mac OS X

GGJstudios · Jan 14, 2014

HDreplacee said:
See i have absolutely no money to buy an external enclosure, trying very hard to find one i can borrow but it's unlikely i'll be able to.

i'm talking about using an external USB hard drive, cloning my original hard drive to that, replacing my hard drive, booting from the USB drive, then cloning that onto my new hard replacement hard drive.

Yes, you can clone your drive to the existing external drive, then clone that to your new internal drive. Of course, you can still follow the original instructions by putting your old internal drive in the existing external enclosure. You don't need to buy a new enclosure, since you already have one that you can use for this purpose.

Elbert C said:
Shouldn't #4 be "format new drive as HFS+"?
Preparing your backup disk for a backup of Mac OS X

Good catch. I (wrongly) assume everyone would know to format the drive. I've edited my post to add that step. Thanks!

HDreplacee · Jan 14, 2014

GGJstudios said:
Yes, you can clone your drive to the existing external drive, then clone that to your new internal drive. Of course, you can still follow the original instructions by putting your old internal drive in the existing external enclosure. You don't need to buy a new enclosure, since you already have one that you can use for this purpose.

Good catch. I (wrongly) assume everyone would know to format the drive. I've edited my post to add that step. Thanks!

i don't own an external enclosure, what i mean is like an external storage drive. Not sure if i'm missing something unbelievably obvious here, isnt there a difference between an external drive and a hard drive (i.e the kind inside my computer)?

sorry for the absolute amateurness, really appreciate the help.

GGJstudios · Jan 14, 2014

HDreplacee said:
i don't own an external enclosure, what i mean is like an external storage drive. Not sure if i'm missing something unbelievably obvious here, isnt there a difference between an external drive and a hard drive (i.e the kind inside my computer)?

sorry for the absolute amateurness, really appreciate the help.

Do you see the case that your external hard drive is inside? That's an external enclosure. You can open it up, take out the drive that's inside, replace it with your computer's internal drive. Or are you referring to a USB flash drive, and not an external drive that you plug into your Mac with a USB cable? If that's the case, no, you can't clone your drive to a USB flash drive using CCC, as the flash drive doesn't have enough storage to contain your drive's contents. In addition, you can't boot from clones on many flash drives.

Can't get CCC made clone to boot from thumb drive

HDreplacee · Jan 14, 2014

GGJstudios said:
Do you see the case that your external hard drive is inside? That's an external enclosure. You can open it up, take out the drive that's inside, replace it with your computer's internal drive. Or are you referring to a USB flash drive, and not an external drive that you plug into your Mac with a USB cable? If that's the case, no, you can't clone your drive to a USB flash drive using CCC.

ah, so i was missing the obvious. it is an external hard drive. thankyou for clearing that up for me!

Fishrrman · Jan 15, 2014

[[ As i really can't afford a USB drive adapter. ]]

Can you spare $20 ?

Try this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Syba-Docking-...389804235&sr=8-1&keywords=syba+usb3+sata+dock

If you can afford a new drive, you can afford the dock which will make the "prepping" of the drive MUCH easier.

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Replacing/Cloning my hard drive

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HDreplacee

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