Backing Up Mac Applications...

[lukefinch]

Hello everyone

I am pretty new to macs, but feel i know my way around them pretty well.

I got my first mac, a White 2.0GHz Macbook, for christmas last year so i haven't had it long, however i am getting a new hard drive because the one i have is only 80GB and it isn't large enough.

Now what i want to know is when i have my new hard drive set up in my macbook, is there a way of transferring all of my applications such as microsoft office, photoshop etc. to from my old hard drive to my new one?

I was thinking maybe putting the applications into mobile me and transferring them from one hard drive to the other over the internet? Do you think this would work?

Also i was wondering what you would actually save when you are doing this? Would you just save the application somewhere, for example to a folder in mobile me, like you do when you move an application from a .dmg file to your applications folder, or are there additional files that you have to save too for the application to work?

I really hope you can understand this and any help is much appreciated!

 

[bozz2006]

very simple. get an external case for a 2.5" HDD, if you don't already have an external drive.

download a program called SuperDuper!, which is backup software. it allows you to clone a drive. You will use this program to clone your current drive to your new drive.
put the new drive into the external case. go to disk utility, and format it and partition it Mac OSX extended (journaled).
open superduper and clone your current drive to the new one.
remove both drives, and put the new one into your macbook.
done.

 

[spinnerlys]

Get an external USB enclosure for 2.5" SATA drives, put the new HDD into it, connect the enclosure via USB to your MacBook, format it with Disk Utility with HFS+ and use CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to clone your old HDD to the new HDD.

When cloning/copying is finished, exchange he old HDD with the new HDD, put the old HDD into the external USB enclosure for further storage or backing up your documents/files....

 

[lukefinch]

great, that sounds like a fairly simple solution however i need to also back up the applications for when i install snow leopard onto my macbook.

So how could i back up the applications from my old hard drive, format and install snow leopard onto my new hard drive and them move the applications from my old hard drive onto the new one?

Thanks for the replies so far!

 

[lukefinch]

Also, is something like this what you meant?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2.5"-OMATA-Lu...itemZ270417788829QQcmdZViewItem#ht_2239wt_982

 

[bozz2006]

yes that enclosure is what we're talking about. and why do you need to back up all your data then install snow leopard and then move the apps from old to new? do you have a reason why you want to do it this way? doing OS upgrades doesn't need to be this complicated. the easiest way is to just install the OS. the next way which takes a while but is equally easy is archive & install. These options are both given to you when you initiate the upgrade.

your proposal makes the upgrade WAY harder than it needs to be.

 

[lukefinch]

i thought that when you install a new OS, in this case snow leopard, it deletes everything that was already on your hard drive off of it?

Are you saying that if i install snow leopard straight onto my hard drive, all of my applications will still be there after the install?

 

[spinnerlys]

Mac OS X usually offers three options during install:

1. Erase and Install Mac OS X: It erases all data on the chosen HDD and installs Mac OS X.

2. Update Mac OS X: updates the current version of OS X to the one you want to install, not applications, libraries, documents and files get deleted. At least not the one you created. Libraries will be updated though, and therefore have to be overwritten.

3. Archive and Install: Mac OS X is installed fresh, the old install will be moved to a separate folder, so you can access it later for whatever you want to do with it.

 

[lukefinch]

so which one do you recommend i choose when the time comes?

 

[bozz2006]

i do archive and install. it's a little paranoid, but if there are any bad habits from the old OS, they won't transfer to the new. for 99.9% of users though, Update and install is the way to go. if you go archive and install, it imports all the "stuff" from your old system.