Backing up a MacBook Pro completely

[br0adband]

I've got a client and, well to be honest I haven't been keeping up with changes in the Mac market the past 2 years or so, and she has a late 2010 model 13.3" MBP with a 250GB drive in it. I recently put Windows 7 Pro on it for her using BootCamp and evenly split the drive down the middle with half for OSX and half for Windows 7, of course.

She's really kinda pissed with the lackluster performance of the stock 5400 rpm drive (which is actually pretty bad) so I've suggested that she get a better one. Since she needs the space, the only real option for a decent price is the Seagate Momentus XL hybrid 500GB drive, which she ordered a few days ago and should arrive next week.

When it arrives, I'll be the one that transfers her current setup from the 250GB to the 500GB but I'm wondering what tool might be a good choice for doing this operation. It's basically a simply cloning job from the smaller to the larger with proportional resizing of the partitions, but Disk Utility doesn't seem to be capable of this operation. I know there's a few third party utilities like Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper!, and others, but I must get this right the first time out. Apparently CCC can't handle NTFS from what I've read at the website.

Since it's got the stock OSX installation, and BootCamp, and Windows 7 with a ton of data and personal files, it's got to be done right the first time and I'm used to using Windows-based cloning tools (True Image, etc) but none of those will handle HFS+ partitions properly.

So the question is:

Can anyone recommend a tool or utility that can get this job done, cloning the current 250GB drive to the newer larger faster 500GB drive cleanly and without any issues (if possible)? I know that Disk Utility can be used to clone the HFS+ OSX partition, but I cannot find any useful info that says it can do the entire disc including the BootCamp files/information and the entire Windows 7 NTFS partition as well, and again, do all this without any problems if possible.

Just need to end up with everything "moved" to the 500GB drive, split down the middle, and ready to roll...

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

 

[Hellhammer]

Use CCC for cloning OS X and WinClone for Windows.

 

[cashman112]

Hi br0adband,

I use SuperDuper! with my MBP and really love it. I have BootCamp as well and have my external HD partitioned to somewhat mirror my MBP HD sizes. To be honest, I'm not aware of any program that will do the entire thing in one step (ie both partitions together) unless you use a non-local based tool like Easeus or CloneZilla. I don't have experience with either one, but seems like it's more what you're looking for (sector by sector copy rather than based on another logic).

So, check SD! faq's and see if they mention it (it's a solid product and good support) or maybe one of the others.

 

[br0adband]

Use CCC for cloning OS X and WinClone for Windows.

Looks like that might be the winning 1-2 punch-solution I suppose. Thanks for the info... and to you as well, cashman112.

 

[gnasher729]

She's really kinda pissed with the lackluster performance of the stock 5400 rpm drive (which is actually pretty bad) so I've suggested that she get a better one. Since she needs the space, the only real option for a decent price is the Seagate Momentus XL hybrid 500GB drive, which she ordered a few days ago and should arrive next week.

1. There have been people reporting problems with this hybrid drive with certain Mac models.

2. On any rotating drive, the first gigabytes of data will be the fastest. By using two large partitions, you ensure that the second partition will use the slower parts of the disk. If you want a very, very fast 250 GB drive, buy a 750 GB 7200 rpm drive and use two 125 GB partitions.

3. Check how much RAM there is. A computer that doesn't have enough RAM will use the hard drive a lot more.

 

[br0adband]

1. There have been people reporting problems with this hybrid drive with certain Mac models.

2. On any rotating drive, the first gigabytes of data will be the fastest. By using two large partitions, you ensure that the second partition will use the slower parts of the disk. If you want a very, very fast 250 GB drive, buy a 750 GB 7200 rpm drive and use two 125 GB partitions.

3. Check how much RAM there is. A computer that doesn't have enough RAM will use the hard drive a lot more.

1. Yep, well aware of it.

2. True, but the hybrid nature of this Momentus XL (physical platters + small amount of solid state storage, 4GB) still allows it to outperform other drives in it's size range including the Hitachi 7K500 500GB (the reigning performance champ) and the Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB model as well. There's no reason to split the drive three ways from Sunday for all this, a single split leaving two partitions is the best option for this customer.

3. Stock 13.3" MBP, 4GB of RAM, so not an issue either (and yes she's got Windows 7 Pro x64 to make use of all of it as well).

Was considering setting her up with Windows 7 Pro running in Parallels at one time but, she's not that familiar with virtual machines and I'm not interested in being tech support every single time she's got a minor issue or question so, BootCamp is still her best option hence that is the solution she was provided with.

Thanks...