Clone MacBook (not Pro) HDD to Mid 2012 MacBook Air

[Azzin]

Gurus,

A friend of mine has an aging Unibody MacBook.

It's got a 1TB Seagate Hybrid Drive in it (less than 250GB used) and she wants to replace it with a Mid 2012 MacBook Air.

So, the question I have is can we clone that drive and put it on the Air's SSD (the Air she's looking at will have a 512GB SSD)?

She's also got a Time Capsule with regular backups if that helps, but either way, is it possible to put a MacBook image onto an Air?

Thanks.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Since the 2012 MBA came with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion 10.7.4, 10.7.5 should be the lowest version of Mac OS X installed on the Unibody MacBook. OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and OS X 10.9 Mavericks will be fine too.

To clone, you remove the HDD from the MB and put it in a USB 3.0 enclosure for 2.5" S-ATA HDDs, such enclosures cost between 15 to 30 USD.

Once that is done, you connect the enclosure to the new MBA and upon pressing the power key to start the MBA, you hold down the OPTION/Alt key to get the Boot Selection Screen, where you decide to boot from the HDD instead of the SSD.

After that, you go to Disk Utility and format the flash storage of the MBA and use CarbonCopyCloner (version 3.4.7 is still free and available for download here and works with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion) or SuperDuper! to clone the HDD to the flash storage.

After that is done, you reboot the Mac and remove the HDD from the USB port.

How to format a new HDD to install Mac OS X onto (or make a bootable copy onto)​

 

[Azzin]

Right, firstly, thank you for that.

Secondly, she's just rung me and said she's going to go for a mid 2012 MacBook Pro, with a 750GB HDD.

So, is it just a case of swapping the Seagate HDD into the MBP, as both are SATA drives?

 

[jaseone]

Just restore the new laptop from the latest Time Machine backup of the old one, that is exactly the kind of thing that Time Machine was designed for.

 

[Azzin]

Thanks folks.

 

[hallux]

Or, if there's no TM backup, link both on a network and point the new one to the old when going through the setup and it prompts for a location to migrate data from. If you have an external enclosure, even better, plug the drive from the old Mac in and point to that one as the "old Mac".

I would try to avoid installing the HDD from the old Mac as the primary/boot drive in the new one. While OS X may handle things better than Windows does, I could see you still ending up with issues related to doing that since you're making a huge jump in hardware generations.

 

[Azzin]

Or, if there's no TM backup, link both on a network and point the new one to the old when going through the setup and it prompts for a location to migrate data from. If you have an external enclosure, even better, plug the drive from the old Mac in and point to that one as the "old Mac".

I would try to avoid installing the HDD from the old Mac as the primary/boot drive in the new one. While OS X may handle things better than Windows does, I could see you still ending up with issues related to doing that since you're making a huge jump in hardware generations.

I've got a SATA caddy, so that's an option, it's just that we'd like to use the Seagate Hybrid drive from the old machine, as it was (is) a nice quick drive (plus it's a 1TB drive, as opposed to the 750 the machine will come with).

 

[brdeveloper]

Just restore the new laptop from the latest Time Machine backup of the old one, that is exactly the kind of thing that Time Machine was designed for.

I never tested, but does Time Machine restores applications not installed in /Applications? For example, are MacPorts apps restored by Time Machine?

 

[Azzin]

Update time!

Well, I tried doing a "last" backup of the MB with the Seagate Hybrid HDD to her Time Capsule and the MB just kept shutting down and/or rebooting.

It got to 989Kb of 250Gb and that was the end of that.

I was praying that it was a fault with the MB, rather than a fault with the drive, when I swapped it into the MBP that turned up earlier...

And lo and behold it's behaving perfectly! *touches everything wooden*

I've run an ethernet cable straight into her TC and the initial backup is taking place as I type this.

Once that's completed and I can breathe a sigh of relief, I'll post back, but so far, so good.

Out of interest, does anyone have any idea of what could be causing the problem in the MB?

It's just like a failed HDD, in that it just grinds to a halt, or reboots/shuts down when you do something like fire up Skype, but clearly the HDD is ok, as it works fine in the MBP.

Thanks everyone.

 

[Azzin]

I spoke too soon.

I just popped a USB drive in to get a *.dmg file off of it, pulled it out without ejecting it and BOOM-reboot.

Logged back on again, reconnected to TC and backup (that was saying 6 hours to go), now seems to be stuck on 51Kb of 287.72GB...

[Edit] - I've shut down the MBP and restarted it and unplugged the TC from the mains and restarted it too.

I've just logged back on to the MBP and started the backup, but it seems to get to 99Kb and just sit there.

[Edit] - It's just crept up to 109Kb.

If I put the original 750GB drive back in this MBP and boot it up, can I use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the Hybrid Drive from a USB caddy?

Running out of ideas now...

----------

What colour should the TC icon be when you click on System Preference>Time Machine?

Currently, it's blue, with a wifi symbol on it.

[Edit] - Just removed and reselcted the TC and now the icon is a green colour, with the directional arrow on it.

Clicked "Backup Now" and it turned back into the blue icon with the wifi symbol on it...

 

[Azzin]

Ok, something is not right here.

I'm going to grab the 750GB drive this MBP came with and use CCC to clone it and see what happens.

Maybe there is a problem with these Hybrid Drives in MacBooks/MacBook Pros (or maybe just this drive)?

It performs fine apart from this.

[Edit] - I just glanced over at it and where it was stuck backing up at 14Kb, it's now on 650MB and counting...

[Edit 2] - 5.35pm and it's currently on 1.81Gb of 287.72Gb...

[Edit 3] - 5.37pm and it's currently on 2.88Gb of 287.72Gb...

 

[Azzin]

[Edit 3] - 5.37pm and it's currently on 2.88Gb of 287.72Gb...

5.52pm and it's currently on 11.31Gb of 287.72Gb, 10 hours remaining...