Any convenient way to upgrade startup disk?

[StephenCampbell]

I've recently gotten new internal storage drives for my tower, but my startup disk remains the same one I've had for the past four years, because I never feel up to the hassle of changing startup disks. I know that I could use Disk Utility to just paste my current startup disk onto a new one, but that misses the point kind of because all the things that have gone corrupt with time in the OS, etc, will get pasted over, and I don't end up getting a fresh start.

Is there an easy way to get everything transferred seamlessly onto a new startup OS if I want to get a new drive, install the OS, and go from there?

 

[miles01110]

Migration Assistant

 

[Mal]

Migration Assistant

This. It'll come up during the Setup Assistant that will run on the new system, and you can pick and choose what to transfer. I'd suggest not transferring the "System" portion (it's not the OS, just system settings, but 9/10 times that I've had transfer problems, it's been during that stage). Because you'll be going drive to drive within the same computer, it'll be a quick transfer too.

jW

 

[StephenCampbell]

Great! So, I would be installing the OS on the brand new drive first? Before using migration assistant? How would I do that without creating a new user on the new drive? I only want there to be the user that I'll transfer over from the old drive.

Will this transfer Everything? Mail accounts, calendars, address book, web browser bookmarks, iTunes (maintaining its link to the media library on a separate drive), etc?

 

[Mal]

Yes, install OS X on the new drive. During the Setup Assistant that runs the very first time you start up from that drive, before the step where you would normally create a user account, you'll be asked if you want to transfer data from another drive. It will transfer everything, unless you tell it to exclude something (you'd have to do that manually, so if you don't, it'll get it all).

jW

 

[StephenCampbell]

Thanks.

Could there possibly be any problems that arise during this process due to the OS on the new drive being 10.6.3 at the time of the migration, and the OS on my old drive being 10.6.8?

 

[StephenCampbell]

Anyone know anything about my last question?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Thanks.

Could there possibly be any problems that arise during this process due to the OS on the new drive being 10.6.3 at the time of the migration, and the OS on my old drive being 10.6.8?

Anyone know anything about my last question?

You could circumvent that problem via updating the new Mac OS X version from 10.6.3 to 10.6.8 via Software Update, or is there a problem upgrading from 10.6.3 to 10.6.8?

Btw, the easiest way to migrate data from an old HDD to a new HDD is to clone it via CarbonCopyCloner, which would be the fastest way.
You can still do that by booting into 10.6.8 and using CCC to clone to the new HDD.