I'm almost ready to buy and install a new hard drive on my MacBook Pro, and I was wondering how I can get an exact copy of my current HD onto the new Hard Drive. I do own an external drive, if that makes it any easier and/or cheaper.
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Best way to transfer hard drive
- Thread starter ghall
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Make a copy of your current drive onto the external with Carbon Copy Cloner and then either manually drag your files and settings to the new drive when you have it, or use Migration Assistant (if the external connects via Firewire) in the Utilities folder to get OSX to migrate the data for you.
When buying a new hard drive, it's a good excuse to reinstall your apps and reconfigure your settings from scratch. Either method I mentioned should give you the opportunity to migrate only the data you want. I'd recommend migrating just the basic data such as documents, music, videos and photos. Then, I'd go about reinstalling the apps from their various disk images (internet) and CD/DVDs. From here, I'd then reconfigure them as I please and go about setting up printers and network settings. It's safer than migrating this sort of data.
When buying a new hard drive, it's a good excuse to reinstall your apps and reconfigure your settings from scratch. Either method I mentioned should give you the opportunity to migrate only the data you want. I'd recommend migrating just the basic data such as documents, music, videos and photos. Then, I'd go about reinstalling the apps from their various disk images (internet) and CD/DVDs. From here, I'd then reconfigure them as I please and go about setting up printers and network settings. It's safer than migrating this sort of data.
try the disk utility and do a backup of the the hdd to another storage device with enough free space. that's it. now boot from the new one.