clone to new HD: SuperDuper vs. Disk Utility?

[shecky]

i know this is less complex that i think it is, but can someone check/verify me on this? i do not want to mess anything up:

i have a new 320GB drive for my MBP; i need to clone my current installation to it. I have SuperDuper. The plan is to clone to the new drive while it is inside an external USB enclosure before i install it into the MBP so i do not lose any time in case its a bad drive.

so the question is, any reason to use the Disk Utility "restore" feature instead of SuperDuper?

In SuperDuper i would have the new drive mounted, and set it to "Erase new drive then copy" from my current drive to the new drive. this would make a ready-to-go clone that i would test by booting onto the new drive in the external enclosure and making sure it all worked. I am using Leopard on an Intel mac. And yes, i am aware that a USB drive will be kinda slow

Looks like i can do basically the same in Disk Utility by booting off the Leopard DVD and choosing "restore" and selecting my current drive as the source and the new drive as the destination?

i was planning on using superduper unless i am wrong?

 

[Queso]

This is exactly the sort of task that SuperDuper! was written for and I have personally used it successfully for this purpose. Don't bother with Disk Utility.

 

[~Shard~]

I'd say just stick with SuperDuper since you've got it. If you didn't have it and didn't want to have to spend money, then I'd say explore using Disk Utility, but since that's not the case, I'd just stick with SD. Great application!

 

[shecky]

thats what i thought! just wanted to have someone tell me i am not missing anything.

So i am correct in my SuperDuper settings as well?

Have the new drive in the external case mounted on the desktop, open superduper, set it to erase the new drive then copy the old drive to it, after it is done boot into the new drive to verify and then install the new drive in the MBP? my understanding is that the new drive will then be identical to what i have on my old drive (applications, emails, documents, settings, etc...) right?

me = nervous about screwing this up and loosing time and data.

thanks for the advice!

 

[~Shard~]

From what it sounds like you have things set up correctly. That's just another reason SuperDuper is so great - it's easy to use and very intuitive.

 

[sickmacdoc]

In addition, Carbon Copy Cloner will do the same job and some people prefer the interface on it. I use them both and find that both do a fine job.

If you are planning to use SuperDuper for future use (backups, etc.) be sure to pay the $27 (?) to register it as it unlocks the incremental backup mode (among other things) that are locked on the freeware version and will save you a TON of time on backups.

Carbon Copy Cloner is available for download with no features disabled. Donations are suggested by it, but are not required for full use.

 

[Neil321]

CCC or SuperDuper is the way to go

 

[shecky]

thanks everyone, this worked great. @sickmacdoc: i have actually been using a paid version of SuperDuper for a while, just never to do this

just to recap (maybe this can help someone else?) i did the following steps:

1) i put the new 320GB drive into a USB enclosure (from OWC) and, after plugging it into my MBP only to hear "click..beep...click...beep", i used another USB port and it worked fine. i used Disk Utility to format the drive.

2) i then used SuperDuper to "erase, then copy" to the new drive from my old drive in my MBP. that took about 2 hours or so. I also used Winclone to clone my windows bootcamp installation onto a separate FW400 drive as well. (the windows partition has all my business' quickbooks data - very important!)

3) i rebooted into the new drive in the USB enclosure to make sure it worked, which it did.

4) i then swapped the drives, putting the new into the MBP and the old into the USB enclosure. this was very easy except getting the top off of the MBP was nervewracking as it feels like you are breaking it when you pop the clips. this went fine other than a small 1/32" gap above my DVD drive i cannot seem to close up. whatever.

5) machine booted up just fine. all was identical except the name of my hard drive was different, changed that and everything was ducky.

6) used bootcamp assistant to make a partition for windows. when it asked "do you want to install windows now" i clicked no.

7) attached my FW400 drive with the Winclone image on it and used winclone to restore to the bootcamp partition.

8) started up windows and it did a disk check and worked great!

yay! now i have a 320GB 7200RPM drive that already feels crazy fast compared to my 160GB 5400. on top of which i now have 167GB free instead of 10GB.