best way to wipe a hard drive?

[happle]

ok so im buying my mbp friday or saturday and im getting it with the 128ssd. i will be purchasing an aftermarket 'optibay' and getting a 750gb scorpio black. but for now i cant afford the scorpio, so im just going to use my backup drive in the optibay for now so i can store my music and other files.

now, heres what i want to do. since im selling my current macbook, i need to back up my apps, music, documents, etc.

i want to wipe my backup drive clean (i dont need an exact copy of my current mac, just the apps and such), and then just copy my apps, music, etc onto it. then when i get my macbook, i would like to copy the apps from the backup drive (which only has my apps and docs, not a full backup) to the ssd, then delete the apps off the backup drive and plug it into the optibay.

whats the easiest way to do this? specifically deleting my time machine backups and copying over my apps? also, will the apps just copy from hard drive to hard drive just like that and work fine?

 

[heisenberg123]

ok so im buying my mbp friday or saturday and im getting it with the 128ssd. i will be purchasing an aftermarket 'optibay' and getting a 750gb scorpio black. but for now i cant afford the scorpio, so im just going to use my backup drive in the optibay for now so i can store my music and other files.

now, heres what i want to do. since im selling my current macbook, i need to back up my apps, music, documents, etc.

i want to wipe my backup drive clean (i dont need an exact copy of my current mac, just the apps and such), and then just copy my apps, music, etc onto it. then when i get my macbook, i would like to copy the apps from the backup drive (which only has my apps and docs, not a full backup) to the ssd, then delete the apps off the backup drive and plug it into the optibay.

whats the easiest way to do this? specifically deleting my time machine backups and copying over my apps? also, will the apps just copy from hard drive to hard drive just like that and work fine?

Carbon Copy Cloner advertises that you can be specific to what you want to backup

if you dont want to keep anything on the backup drive, use disk utility to format it, then use CCC to backup what you want off you current mac to it, once the new mac arrives use CCC to restore everything you backed up on to it, once you see everything was done proper you can wipe the old mac with a clean install of OS X than you good to go

 

[Mojo1]

I think that you are making this more difficult than necessary and you are limiting yourself by only backing up certain things.

Simply create a bootable clone using either CCC or SuperDuper!, which I prefer over CCC.

Why create a clone? If the internal drive ever dies or simply acts-up enough where you cannot count on it when under a deadline or until it can be replaced, a clone can really save your bacon...

A couple of days ago a friend called me. Her internal drive died but she didn't have a clone on an external drive. Her father recently passed away and she is in charge of creating a slideshow for his memorial service in two weeks.

If she had a bootable clone she could simply work from the clone until she could have the internal drive replaced. But now she has to wait until the internal drive can be replaced before she can use her MBP. (It's a pre-unibody design so replacing the drive is not very easy. The dead drive was installed only two months ago so it needs to be replaced by the local repair shop that performed the installation.)

If your external drive only has your user folder and apps on it, you are potentially facing the same situation as my friend. Since hard drives are so large and relatively inexpensive, it simply makes little sense to me to limit what you backup. The paid version of SuperDuper! ($29) makes it easy to do manual and automatic incremental backups where only changed and new files are copied, so the backups are relatively fast, particularly if you schedule one every day.

 

[heisenberg123]

I think that you are making this more difficult than necessary and you are limiting yourself by only backing up certain things.

Simply create a bootable clone using either CCC or SuperDuper!, which I prefer over CCC.

Why create a clone? If the internal drive ever dies or simply acts-up enough where you cannot count on it when under a deadline or until it can be replaced, a clone can really save your bacon...

A couple of days ago a friend called me. Her internal drive died but she didn't have a clone on an external drive. Her father recently passed away and she is in charge of creating a slideshow for his memorial service in two weeks.

If she had a bootable clone she could simply work from the clone until she could have the internal drive replaced. But now she has to wait until the internal drive can be replaced before she can use her MBP. (It's a pre-unibody design so replacing the drive is not very easy. The dead drive was installed only two months ago so it needs to be replaced by the local repair shop that performed the installation.)

If your external drive only has your user folder and apps on it, you are potentially facing the same situation as my friend. Since hard drives are so large and relatively inexpensive, it simply makes little sense to me to limit what you backup. The paid version of SuperDuper! ($29) makes it easy to do manual and automatic incremental backups where only changed and new files are copied, so the backups are relatively fast, particularly if you schedule one every day.

while i agree with you the OP is in a specific situation, he only needs certain things as his new MBP will be shipped with OS X, he will than want to restore only those certain things then his backup drive will become his secondary store drive in his mbp storing his music and other files so he is only using that backup/restore process once once, but i totally agree using a CCC or SuperDuper make better backups the a time machine

 

[MrGoober35]

When i sell a computer i do not sell it with my hd i always buy a new hard drive and install it and keep my old drive. This my be a little over the top but it is what i do and you dont lose a thing.

 

[happle]

while i agree with you the OP is in a specific situation, he only needs certain things as his new MBP will be shipped with OS X, he will than want to restore only those certain things then his backup drive will become his secondary store drive in his mbp storing his music and other files so he is only using that backup/restore process once once, but i totally agree using a CCC or SuperDuper make better backups the a time machine

yeah this is exactly right. so i guess ill just use CCC to copy only my apps, music, etc. then i can just copy them over to my new ssd? but then how will i delete the apps and CCC so that i just have my music and stuff on the secondary drive?

btw my old mac is going to my friend and he wants my music so im just deleting my files that he wont need. so im not reinstalling osx on my old mac.

 

[heisenberg123]

yeah this is exactly right. so i guess ill just use CCC to copy only my apps, music, etc. then i can just copy them over to my new ssd? but then how will i delete the apps and CCC so that i just have my music and stuff on the secondary drive?

btw my old mac is going to my friend and he wants my music so im just deleting my files that he wont need. so im not reinstalling osx on my old mac.

well it might be a 2 part method

1. backup everything you want on the ssd only than restore it on the ssd

2.format this soon to be secondary drive, than just regular copy all the music,movies and everything else you intended on storing on it

 

[happle]

well it might be a 2 part method

1. backup everything you want on the ssd only than restore it on the ssd

2.format this soon to be secondary drive, than just regular copy all the music,movies and everything else you intended on storing on it

alright whats the best way to format the drive? havent dont it in a while last time i sold my mac i think i had osx write all 0's over everything but idk the best method.

and what if i sell my old mac before i get my new mac. ill need to copy everything i need on my secondary drive apps and files. could i just copy over the apps and then delete them and leave the music etc on it? or would that be a bad practice?