17" Macbook Pro Upgrades...

[ravencr]

Hello,

I have a 17" Macbook Pro with 2.93 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB of Ram, and I'm running 10.6.3 OS. I just purchased a 500GB 7200 RPM harddrive and the 8 GB Ram upgrade from OWC. My question is, do I need to do anything to my computer's settings to run 64 bit and maximize the use of my new additional RAM? I do photo and video editing on this computer a lot, and I'm really hoping the combination will help speed things up a bit. I use Premier CS4 and Photoshop CS4 mostly, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I bought an external firewire case for my existing harddrive. Anybody know the easiest way to get the operating system and all my software, and files onto the new internal harddrive?

Chris

 

[Hellhammer]

You don't need to boot into 64-bit mode, 32-bit kernel can utilize and take advantage of 32GB fine.

Just put the old drive in enclosure and boot from it by holding alt while booting and then clone it with CCC or SuperDuper into the new drive

 

[ravencr]

Thanks for the prompt reply. Isn't there some speed gains to be had by using 64 bit instead?

Chris