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Hard Drive swap-out and transfer advice

P

pkts

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 29, 2007
96
9
Hi,

I have a first gen macbook 2.0Ghz. I need more hard drive space so I'm going to buy a bigger 5400rpm drive. Couple of questions:

1. What's a good manufacturer? Hitachi is good right? Anyone else?

2. I use bootcamp in addition to OSX. What is the easiest way to do this transfer. I don't want to have to reinstall both systems and all my programs. Can I just log into OSX and drag the hard drive partition onto the new drive (connected with a firewire enclosure I guess?) and then log in to Vista and do the same thing? Or do I need a software program?

3. Any recommendations on firewire enclosures to use my old drive as an external?

Thanks for any advice!

Toby.
 
You can clone your OS X to your new drive if you put it in an enclosure (as you already suggested) using SuperDuper! Basic functionality (cloning, manual backups etc) is free.

I've never backed up a windows partition, but people have been asking this question ever since BootCamp was released - eg. http://forums.macnn.com/104/alternative-operating-systems/300299/how-to-clone-xp-boot/

That's XP though. I'm not sure about Vista.

Edit: Eldorian, does NetRestore work with Vista? I was going to mention it, but its webpage mentions only XP
 
plinden said:
You can clone your OS X to your new drive if you put it in an enclosure (as you already suggested) using SuperDuper! Basic functionality (cloning, manual backups etc) is free.

I've never backed up a windows partition, but people have been asking this question ever since BootCamp was released - eg. http://forums.macnn.com/104/alternative-operating-systems/300299/how-to-clone-xp-boot/

That's XP though. I'm not sure about Vista.

Edit: Eldorian, does NetRestore work with Vista? I was going to mention it, but its webpage mentions only XP
Click to expand...
You have a point since the boot loader is different in Vista.

I've only imaged OS X only machines with it. I suggest checking into the Software Discussion Forums @ Bombich.com or Google for a more definite answer.
 
Eidorian said:
Just a reminder that WinClone will only clone your Windows partition.
Click to expand...

OK Thanks...I'll guess I'll use Winclone for that and Bombich or Superduper for the OSX part? I searched and a poster says you need a torx t-8 screwdriver to remove the housing on the existing hard drive. Is that correct?

Thanks!
 
pkts said:
OK Thanks...I'll guess I'll use Winclone for that and Bombich or Superduper for the OSX part? I searched and a poster says you need a torx t-8 screwdriver to remove the housing on the existing hard drive. Is that correct?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
That is correct.
 
Recomendations

pkts said:
1. What's a good manufacturer? Hitachi is good right? Anyone else?

3. Any recommendations on firewire enclosures to use my old drive as an external?

Thanks for any advice!

Toby.
Click to expand...

I really like the Western Digitial I picked up not to long ago. 250GB @ 5400. I have also had good experiences with Toshiba in an ibook. As far as enclosures go, I picked up a Macally enclosure with firewire. But Macally has a good selection of small encolures off all types.:)
 
El Cid said:
I really like the Western Digitial I picked up not to long ago. 250GB @ 5400. I have also had good experiences with Toshiba in an ibook. As far as enclosures go, I picked up a Macally enclosure with firewire. But Macally has a good selection of small encolures off all types.:)
Click to expand...
I've never seen a 2.5" SATA enclosure with FireWire connections.
 
Eidorian said:
USB will work fine on an Intel Mac.
Click to expand...

Yeah I know I know, I kinda implied using the OR statement that E-SATA wouldn't without a PCI card or some kind (or is that PCI-E these days with Mac Pros?). I did consider using an external caddy through USB 2.0 but with a 320Gb HDD I have plenty of space at the moment.
 
Southern said:
Yeah I know I know, I kinda implied using the OR statement that E-SATA wouldn't without a PCI card or some kind (or is that PCI-E these days with Mac Pros?). I did consider using an external caddy through USB 2.0 but with a 320Gb HDD I have plenty of space at the moment.
Click to expand...
eSATA would work but you'd need a MacBook Pro or Mac Pro to get eSATA ports.

Otherwise you'd be using a eSATA to USB adapter. :rolleyes:
 
Thanks for all the responses.

I just want to recount what I did.

I swapped the drives. Put my old drive into a USB 2.0 enclosure and booted up from it using option startup. Then I downloaded super duper and ran the copy to my new drive (I had to format it first). That worked great but I couldn't get the win partition software to work...it was taking forever and it seemed like it was stalled. I tried running it off the USB startup disk as well as by rebooting with the new drive. So I ended up reinstalling Boot Camp (I had an older version anyway) and just copying across my programs and settings. I did have to go thru 32 windows updates!!! The whole windows installation process reminded me of how much I dislike using it. But now I'm off to see how the Orange Box runs. Fingers crossed!

BTW, the super irritating high pitched beep my Macbook used to make every two seconds is now gone...guess it was the old drive. Unfortunately I couldn't get a Hitachi or Seagate or Toshiba so I bought a Fujitsu 160 GB.
 
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