Clone HD from MBP and drop into another MBP?

[rotobadger]

I was wondering if anyone could tell me if it would work to clone my hard drive from my i5 MBP and then take the cloned drive and put it in a C2D MBP? Keeping all my applications, Bootcamp and files intact? In effect, making an identical copy of my primary MBP?

I've never attempted anything like this so any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Theclamshell]

I have swapped HD's from macbooks to macbook pro's and they have all worked fine. I don't see why you would have any problem.

Good luck!

 

[rmbrown09]

I was wondering if anyone could tell me if it would work to clone my hard drive from my i5 MBP and then take the cloned drive and put it in a C2D MBP? Keeping all my applications, Bootcamp and files intact? In effect, making an identical copy of my primary MBP?

I've never attempted anything like this so any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!

No you are going to have different drivers installed. You wil have gt 330m drivers trying to work on a 9600m.

lots of cases like that.

Though this would work if you say wen't from a 2.53 i5 to a 2.4 or maybe even to the i7

 

[rotobadger]

No you are going to have different drivers installed. You wil have gt 330m drivers trying to work on a 9600m.

lots of cases like that.

Though this would work if you say wen't from a 2.53 i5 to a 2.4 or maybe even to the i7

Ah, just the info I was looking for. I was concerned/wondering about that. Are the video drivers my only concern? Could I, technically, do the swap and then fix the drivers?

I see your point though. I guess the simple question is is this idea more trouble than it's worth based on the i5 to C2D scenario?

 

[SpaceKitty]

I took a backup from a 2008 Mac Pro 8 core and restored it onto a 2008 iMac. When the iMac was done, it told me that the copy of OS X could not be used on the computer. It rebooted and started up perfectly without errors. Everything on the iMac worked perfectly for 7 months until I sold it.

I later tried restoring that backup onto my MBP and it failed. The computer wouldn't boot at all.

 

[mdnz]

No you are going to have different drivers installed. You wil have gt 330m drivers trying to work on a 9600m.

lots of cases like that.

Though this would work if you say wen't from a 2.53 i5 to a 2.4 or maybe even to the i7

Wrong. It will simply work since Mac OS X has all the drivers for any of the Mac models (e.g. my Macbook Pro even has Ati5xxx kexts).

 

[cmclaughlan]

Just got my new i7 MBPro 17inch yesterday.
I just used the Migration Assistant with my old MacBook Pro in target mode. Hooked them together with a f/w 800 cable and had all my apps and documents ready to go in a couple of hours. The driver had 350gigs filled on it.

Don't think I would want to clone the drives just because of kexts and other things that I might not anticipate.

Colin

 

[rotobadger]

Just got my new i7 MBPro 17inch yesterday.
I just used the Migration Assistant with my old MacBook Pro in target mode. Hooked them together with a f/w 800 cable and had all my apps and documents ready to go in a couple of hours. The driver had 350gigs filled on it.

Don't think I would want to clone the drives just because of kexts and other things that I might not anticipate.

Colin

So, all your applications transferred over without needing to re-install? They just showed up and worked?

Maybe I should migrate instead.

 

[SpaceKitty]

So, all your applications transferred over without needing to re-install? They just showed up and worked?

Maybe I should migrate instead.

That works good too. I used this to transfer all my apps from my 2008 Mac Pro over to my 2009 MBP. Everything works just as if they were originally installed on my MBP.