Can I just time machine my drive and then plug in the new one and have time machine drop a full image on there after booting from the Leopard CD or will I actually need to install the OS then do the Time Machine restore? Also does Time Machine by default save your whole drive (drivers and all) or does it just back up the contents of your home and application folders?
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How painful is moving data to a new HD?
- Thread starter ayasin
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Format your new drive from an external connection (enclosure) with disk utility using MacOS journaled. It's called "erase" in Disk Utility, but it will format the drive. Then, clone your original drive to the new drive using Carbon Copy Clone or SuperDuper. When the drive is cloned, it should be bootable, and you can test it by actually booting from it before installing it. Once you're sure it works, swap out the drives. If you named the drive the same exact name as the original drive, Time Machine should just keep on backing up the drive as if it were the original, with no problems.
That's just one way, but you get the exact same 'drive' you already had, including all installed apps, prefs, etc... only with more space/speed depending on what your new drive is.
You could just do a clean install of OSX to the new drive, and them use Time Machine to restore your files... but it's not a clone. It all depends on what you want.
I used the 'cloning' method when I replaced my original drive, and it worked perfectly. Some folks have their own way of doing it, so there's no single 'correct' way of doing it. Good luck with it.
That's just one way, but you get the exact same 'drive' you already had, including all installed apps, prefs, etc... only with more space/speed depending on what your new drive is.
You could just do a clean install of OSX to the new drive, and them use Time Machine to restore your files... but it's not a clone. It all depends on what you want.
I used the 'cloning' method when I replaced my original drive, and it worked perfectly. Some folks have their own way of doing it, so there's no single 'correct' way of doing it. Good luck with it.
It's not? I was under the impression that TM can totally restore your machine on a new machine, as if it were a clone. What are the differences between cloning and doing a TM restore? Would it just really effect things in Bootcamp (Windows apps, os etc)?
Would you mind not PMing your solutions?? This IS a forum, please share with the whole class so that everyone can benefit from your immense wisdom and experience. Thanks!
I just did a slightly complicated drive upgrade in my G5.
At the start, I had two hard drives in my machine, the boot disk (a) and second larger disk (b) that held my Time Machine backup in one partition and other files in a second partition. I had a third new disk (c) in an external enclosure.
In the end, (b) was my boot drive, (c) was the time machine backup, both in the G5, and (a) was a new external drive.
My strategy may not have been the best, but it was simple. I ran a Time Machine backup of (a) and the file storage partition of (b) onto (c). I erased (b), then used my Leopard cd to do a Time Machine restore from the external disk to (b). Once I was sure (b) would boot and had all the files consolidated, I opened the machine to swap the drives around.
At the start, I had two hard drives in my machine, the boot disk (a) and second larger disk (b) that held my Time Machine backup in one partition and other files in a second partition. I had a third new disk (c) in an external enclosure.
In the end, (b) was my boot drive, (c) was the time machine backup, both in the G5, and (a) was a new external drive.
My strategy may not have been the best, but it was simple. I ran a Time Machine backup of (a) and the file storage partition of (b) onto (c). I erased (b), then used my Leopard cd to do a Time Machine restore from the external disk to (b). Once I was sure (b) would boot and had all the files consolidated, I opened the machine to swap the drives around.
Format your new drive from an external connection (enclosure) with disk utility using MacOS journaled. It's called "erase" in Disk Utility, but it will format the drive. Then, clone your original drive to the new drive using Carbon Copy Clone or SuperDuper. When the drive is cloned, it should be bootable, and you can test it by actually booting from it before installing it. Once you're sure it works, swap out the drives. If you named the drive the same exact name as the original drive, Time Machine should just keep on backing up the drive as if it were the original, with no problems.
That's just one way, but you get the exact same 'drive' you already had, including all installed apps, prefs, etc... only with more space/speed depending on what your new drive is.
You could just do a clean install of OSX to the new drive, and them use Time Machine to restore your files... but it's not a clone. It all depends on what you want.
I used the 'cloning' method when I replaced my original drive, and it worked perfectly. Some folks have their own way of doing it, so there's no single 'correct' way of doing it. Good luck with it.
This is my preferred way as well just use a small 2.5 enclosure with a firewire 800 is best . Put the new drive in it than format it as mentioned than just use Carbon Copy cloner which is a shareware program and you can donate a few dollars and frankly well worth it too. Now you can buy a enclosure like this http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MSTG800U2K/. It's a little pricey at 88 dollars BUT what you can do after you replace your drive is stick the old drive in this than use it for two things one is storage and/or a backup OS. This is what i have done is partition the old drive in two partitions than use CCC again and back up the OS to one partition than use the other for storage so when you travel you have a backup OS and storage for photos,music or whatever. Now if you don't want to do all that with it than you can get a simple USB 2 one which is slower but 28 dollars http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MOTGSU2/ but obviously it will be slower or even better is a cable device like this for 30 dollars http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer Technology/U2NV2SPATA/. They eventually all will do the same thing but the nice Firewire is actually usable after the fact. Plus there small and easy thrown in your bag for travel. I am not a big fan of migration assistant because sometimes you get some junk when loading a new system and time machine I find actually worthless. I have a complete OS backup and i never keep anything on the laptop itself it all gets put on external devices. I'm a photographer so storage and file handling is king. I never keep anything of value on the laptop in case of theft or machine going down. Images are always backup somewhere else besides the laptop but that is the way I work. Hope that helps but Carbon Copy cloner is a nice program plus you can actually schedule incremental backups to a external drive of your whole system on a daily basis which is something I also do. http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
You could always search and find the post I made a few days ago with full instructions.
I chose to save the OP some time, since HE was the one asking, and PMd him a copy and paste of my post.
I recently reinstalled OSX on my Macbook Pro. Anyway when your installing it gives you an option to restore from time machine. I didn't because I wanted a fresh OS and just install what i needed then grab files I really need etc.
But in general you should be able to do a full restore from time machine.
Also if your moving to a new mac during osx install you can firewire to another machine and it will transfer over everything and your new machine will be setup and have everything exactly like your other machine.
But in general you should be able to do a full restore from time machine.
Also if your moving to a new mac during osx install you can firewire to another machine and it will transfer over everything and your new machine will be setup and have everything exactly like your other machine.
Thanks all for the replies. I'm going to try out the time machine route since I don't have an external enclosure that can hold a drive that small (and I can't justify buying one just to clone the data when there's a potentially free solution with the hardware I already have). I'll report back with any problems/workarounds/gotchas that I discover along the way.
If you don't want to spend $15-20 to buy a usb enclosure to use during this transition, what are you going to do with your original hd once you remove it? The enclosure would certainly come in handy if you ever wanted to use it as additional storage. I'm assuming your dealing with a MBP of some sort...
Anyway, there's no one 'right' way.
I just right clicked on the Macintosh Hard Drive and clicked 'Duplicate.' It made a copy of all 60 GB, and I just copied and psated.
Going through the process right now. It's not necessary to do a full install of Leopard before restoring as it turns out. Here are the steps:
1. Backup your current drive with Time Machine
2. Install the new drive
3. Insert the Leopard restore DVD that came with your Mac
4. After choosing a language, go to the menu bar and drop down Utilities
5. Use disk utility to format your drive if necessary
6. Plug in your Time Machine drive
7. Again from the utilities menu select Restore from Backup
8. Follow the prompts (mine looks like it's going to take 3 hours so I'll report after that if I was successful)
All in all if this works the way it should, then I'll have a fresh hard drive that's exactly like the one I pulled out but bigger. I did get a warning that restoring from backup will erase my drive and replace it with the data in the Time Machine backup so it appears to be a full clone (+ the fact that the Time Machine backup is almost exactly the used space on my old hard drive).
1. Backup your current drive with Time Machine
2. Install the new drive
3. Insert the Leopard restore DVD that came with your Mac
4. After choosing a language, go to the menu bar and drop down Utilities
5. Use disk utility to format your drive if necessary
6. Plug in your Time Machine drive
7. Again from the utilities menu select Restore from Backup
8. Follow the prompts (mine looks like it's going to take 3 hours so I'll report after that if I was successful)
All in all if this works the way it should, then I'll have a fresh hard drive that's exactly like the one I pulled out but bigger. I did get a warning that restoring from backup will erase my drive and replace it with the data in the Time Machine backup so it appears to be a full clone (+ the fact that the Time Machine backup is almost exactly the used space on my old hard drive).
I don't really need another USB/Firewire drive, I may at some point buy an external enclosure, but I'm considering just trying to sell the old drive (after wiping it of course)...it's still a very good drive (320 GB) just too small for my needs.
I guess I spoke too soon. Mail did not correctly (or at least seamlessly) transfer over. When I started mail it wanted to import stuff. I went ahead and let it import from the /<user home>/library/mail folder and then moved the mails to the correct places (from import to the main areas). This seemed to work ok. I'll let you guys know if there were any more quirks.