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hard drive upgrade; process question

D

Dcentuori

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 19, 2011
25
0
Cleveland, OH
I have a 13" white, early 2008 MacBook 4,1 ; 2.4 GHz

I'm about to bump up the original memory from 2GB to 4GB. And I am also ready to upgrade the original 160GB hard drive with a new 750GB WD Scorpio Blue. I've been using Time Machine to back up my files for ages and I just downloaded Carbon Copy to clone my hard drive. I have an enclosure, so I plan to clone the old drive into the new one and then do the physical transplant.

My question is this: of course I will back up my drive with TM right before this procedure, but when I have the new hard drive in the laptop, will TM still back this up as a continuing process, or will I see a break when I go back to restore files pre-upgrade? I want to make sure there isn't anything else I need to do. I'm assuming that it won't matter to TM, but I can't seem to find the specific answer to this question I have.

My wife relies on the MacBook and I really need to be sure.

Thanks,
Dante
 
Do a Time Machine backup, install new HDD in MacBook and then use the DVD's for the operating system to do a restore from TM backup. It will be like nothing changed expect having more storage space with the HDD.
No need for carbon copy unless you don't have install disks....
 
That could be why several "how-to" pages tell you to use CC or something similar--assuming you lost your discs! I still have Snow Leopard somewhere.

Bottom line is that no matter which way, TM will just do the next back up showing more HDD space. I won't have two TM files to look for if I need to restore something from a few months ago. Right?

Thanks,
Dante
 
Dcentuori said:
I have a 13" white, early 2008 MacBook 4,1 ; 2.4 GHz

I'm about to bump up the original memory from 2GB to 4GB. And I am also ready to upgrade the original 160GB hard drive with a new 750GB WD Scorpio Blue. I've been using Time Machine to back up my files for ages and I just downloaded Carbon Copy to clone my hard drive. I have an enclosure, so I plan to clone the old drive into the new one and then do the physical transplant.

My question is this: of course I will back up my drive with TM right before this procedure, but when I have the new hard drive in the laptop, will TM still back this up as a continuing process, or will I see a break when I go back to restore files pre-upgrade? I want to make sure there isn't anything else I need to do. I'm assuming that it won't matter to TM, but I can't seem to find the specific answer to this question I have.

My wife relies on the MacBook and I really need to be sure.

Thanks,
Dante
Click to expand...
Dcentuori said:
That could be why several "how-to" pages tell you to use CC or something similar--assuming you lost your discs! I still have Snow Leopard somewhere.

Bottom line is that no matter which way, TM will just do the next back up showing more HDD space. I won't have two TM files to look for if I need to restore something from a few months ago. Right?

Thanks,
Dante
Click to expand...

When you clone your internal 160 GB HDD to the new 750 GB HDD in an external enclosure, everything will be copied, thus after the swap, the TM drive will be used again normally and you will be able to access the TM drive as you were before.
No need to worry.

Btw, TM backs up to one folder, not a file. That folder will be used again when you boot from the new 750 GB HDD.


esmith said:
Do a Time Machine backup, install new HDD in MacBook and then use the DVD's for the operating system to do a restore from TM backup. It will be like nothing changed expect having more storage space with the HDD.
No need for carbon copy unless you don't have install disks....
Click to expand...
There may be no need, but cloning is actually much faster than restoring from a Time Machine backup, which also makes the computer unusable for the time being. When you clone the HDD, you still can use the Mac you clone.
 
I have done this several times but with Snow Leopard onwards there is a change to the way it behaves.

Time Machine works using the UUID of the hardware (in this case the hard disk) and if you clone your existing disk to a new disk the UUID changes.

The first time you ask Time Machine to backup, after you have installed the new disk, it realises something has changed and will offer to do a complete backup of the new disk and not an incremental backup.......

So assuming you are using 10.6 or higher then just make sure you have enough space on your Time Machine disk for another complete backup. You will still be able to access your current backups and as far as I know restore files or whatever from there.

From memory 10.5 works as if nothing has happened.
 
This is all very helpful--thanks everyone.

Regarding having enough space on my TM drive. I am currently using a 1TB external drive that is partitioned so that I"m using 500GB for TM and 500GB for my "archive". With the new hard drive, I won't need an archive anymore (or at least not for a long time) so I will move all my archived files back to my laptop. Can I un-partition the drive so TM can use the full 1TB w/o erasing my TM folder?

Thanks again,
Dante
 
Dcentuori said:
This is all very helpful--thanks everyone.

Regarding having enough space on my TM drive. I am currently using a 1TB external drive that is partitioned so that I"m using 500GB for TM and 500GB for my "archive". With the new hard drive, I won't need an archive anymore (or at least not for a long time) so I will move all my archived files back to my laptop. Can I un-partition the drive so TM can use the full 1TB w/o erasing my TM folder?

Thanks again,
Dante
Click to expand...

One or two problems - the main one is that Time Machine will want to backup the archived files unless you copy them back to a folder on your laptop that you have excluded form the Time Machine backups - or turn Time Machine off while you are copying the files. Or maybe you want to include them ?

Once you are happy that you have at least one copy of your archive then use Disk Utility to resize the partitions - just drag the slider down to expand the size of the Time Machine and leave a very small "Archive" partition.

That is probably the safest way.
 
So it sounds like I can use Disk Utility to resize my partitions w/o affecting the contents. If that is the case, then this is what I think is the order of what I should do:
1. clone old 160GB HDD to new 750GB HDD in external enclosure
2. final TM back up of old 160GB HDD
3. resize partitions so I will have enough room for a complete back up in TM on my external drive
4. install new 750GB HDD into MacBook
5. do first TM backup of new 750GB HDD; complete backup
6. copy archive files from external drive back to MacBook with new 750GB HDD
7. TM back up again, this would be first incremental backup of new HDD
8. When I"ve confirmed my archived files are safely back in the MacBook and backed up, I can erase them from the external drive and resize partition even more when I need more space for TM

Sorry if I'm sounding OCD on this, but I"m not the primary user and I need to minimize my margin of error. :D

Thanks,
Dante
 
That sounds fine - though I would reverse 1 and 2.

In Disk Utility you will be able to see how much space has been used in each of the partitions and is easy enough to drag the slider between the partitions to give you enough room for the full backup.

I was not sure whether you wanted the archived files back on the laptop permanently or not but you obviously do. Your method will get them back on the laptop and then be included within subsequent Time Machine backups.
 
Complete! So far, so good; and this morning my wife got iLife '11 too!

Question about TM though. I resized the TM partition to be 750GB and just like I was told, the first back up after the new drive was installed was a complete backup. Also moved my archives and then backed that up to and it was incremental. I still have 145GB room in the TM partition. But today after getting iLife '11, I did a back up and it ended up deleting old backups and then some function (I forgot what) and is now backing up 110GB of I don't know what! I know iLife can't be that big and I know my wife didn't download that much stuff (she'd still be doing it too!)

Any ideas what is going on? I didn't expect it to be deleting old backups already, but then when I saw it backing up that big chunk, that is probably why.

Thanks,
Dante


13" white, early 2008 MacBook 4,1 ; 2.4 GHz; 4GB; 750GB HDD
 
You must have a pretty big iPhoto library - iPhoto '11 has a different format and presumably Time Machine has noticed and is backing up the "changes"...
 
That's it! My wife takes a lot of photos. iPhoto library was over 100GB--60% of the old 160GB HDD, one reason we got a larger one! And that is why I have that other post--I'm trying to get back some iphoto images I exported to the archive, but exported wrongly and can't get it out in the final edited form from TM.

Thanks,
Dante
 
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