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Clone or Time Machine for New HD Install?

Designer Dale

Designer Dale

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Mar 25, 2009
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I'm going to be swapping the 250 GB drive in my 2008 MBP Penryn (17) for a Seagate Momentus 500/7200rpm drive. There are two ways to go. One is to put the new drive in an enclosure and use SuperDuper or CCC to clone the main HD and then swap them. The other is to use Time Machine. That means installing the new drive blank, boot from the OS disk and format. Then go to the most recent TM state and restore.

Any preferences? My available external HD is the FW800 Western Digital Studio. It has space for a partition big enough for the cloning. The case coming with the Seagate is the Other World Express USB2.

I have good pdfs on the install procedure. Need to remember to print them, first...:)

Dale
 
I used time machine, but both work. Time machine is pretty much idiot proof and painless though.
 
Cloning the system > if you have a corrupted system, errors are transferred to the new machine

Time Machine Backup > System is freshly polished, only your files/settings are copied.


If you get a new drive, go for time machine. Cloning makes little sense, unless you need a bootable drive right away.
 
Constantine1337 said:
Cloning the system > if you have a corrupted system, errors are transferred to the new machine

Time Machine Backup > System is freshly polished, only your files/settings are copied.


If you get a new drive, go for time machine. Cloning makes little sense, unless you need a bootable drive right away.
Click to expand...

All a matter of preference

I used Carbon Copy Cloner for my HD swap and it was flawless
 
Cloning +3
Time Machine +2

Maybe I'll just toss a coin. Time Machine will make use of FW 800, while cloning will be forced to USB2.

Nice to know that there are equal options for this.

Dale
 
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