Cloning hard drive

[mariuste]

Hello

I have got an 2011 Macbook pro with an 500 gb internal hd. The processor is 2 GHz intel core i7 with 8 gb RAM, running Snow Leopard 10.6.8. I plan to buy a Glyph gpt50 external hd 1 or 2 tb, with 7200 rpm and FW800, and do a clean install of Mountain Lion on that external drive. When I have had ML up and running for some time, and if it turns out to run smooth, I probably want to clone that drive (or copy osx with all installation and installed data) onto my internal hd (500 gb), and overwrite what is on my internal drive.
I wonder if this solution is a better alternative for me rather than do a clean ML install directly on my internal hd and overwrite what is on it.
With the dual booth setup I still got SL on my internal HD if something goes wrong in the installation of ML on external.
I notice I have only used about 130 gb of the available 500 gb on the internal drive and I cant imagine I will use a lot more than that if I install ML on a external.
My question is: will it be a problem, or will I run into problems when cloning/copying content from a 1-2 tb drive onto a 500 gb drive if I only use under 150 gb of the space anyway?
Do the hard drives need to be of equal size for cloning..
Sorry for this but I dont know a lot about computer systems and I want to be sure before I start the process.

Regards

 

[Apple fanboy]

No the hard drives don't need to be the same size. As long as you have enough room to copy the data you will be fine. Use carbon copy clone or super doper apps to clone your drive.

 

[mariuste]

Ok, that is what I wanted to know, thanks a lot!

 

[crowe-t]

BTW, what's better, Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper? Or are they about the same?

 

[Fishrrman]

CCC can also clone the recovery partition for you, if that's what you wish.

I don't know if SuperDuper can do that.

 

[Weaselboy]

BTW, what's better, Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper? Or are they about the same?

CCC also moves over the recovery partition and SD does not. If you don't want to install any third party software, you can use the included Disk Utility to do a clone and it too will include the recovery partition.