Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

How to change HD on MBP without OSX Disc?

J

Jtuner77

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 15, 2008
112
17
So i have a 17" MBP and i have the OEM 160G hard drive, its dam near maxed out. I upgraded to Leopard but don't know where the disc is.

So i am wondering if there is a way I can connect my MBP to an external HD. Carry over all the data to the external.

Removed the old HD, install the new HD and plug in the external and boot the comp of the external drive and then swap over the data.....

Is this possible?
 
You can put the new hard drive in an enclosure and connect it via USB or FireWire and the clone the contents of the drive onto it. That will provide your desired result, I have used Carbon Copy Cloner to do just this before and it worked great.
 
Yes as the others have indicated this is very doable.

You install the new drive into a external enclosure (USB or Firewire).

In OSX with the external dirve attached, run Disk Utility, locate the new drive in the list on the left (select it), the select the Partition tab. At the Volume Scheme: click pull down window and select the number of partitions (usually one). Then select the Options button found near the bottom - insure that the GUID Partition Table is selected, click okay. Add a Name for the drive such as MAC-HD-New. Verify or select the format; should be "Mac OS Extended (journaled)". Click Apply and provide the password at the prompt to proceed with the formatting.

When this is done, you exit Disk Utility and use Carbon Copy or SuperDuper to clone the internal to the external and make the external bootable. Before swapping drives, boot to the external drive (hold the Option key during the restart so that you have a choice of which drive to boot).

Now if you have never cracked open your 17" MBP, you should search the web for directions. Make sure you have the correct two screw drivers and take your time. Or get your buddy that has already done this to do it or advise.

Neil
 
You actually don't even need to have a cloning utility like CCC or SuperDuper, or even the startup disk, but you'd need an enclosure for your old drive if you don't. Just take the old drive out, put the new drive in, and put the old drive in your external USB or FW enclosure. Startup from your old disk by holding down option when you restart and select the external drive, then just go into Disk Utility and format your new HD and copy the old to the new like others have said above. It's really easy and I did a friend's this way who had no backup or install disk.
 
^^^You say start up from Old disc as in old hard drive or the actual old OSX disc?

Is their no way to just transfer all my files onto an External HD/storage from the old HD while it is still in the laptop and then removed the old drive, install the new one. Format the new one then move the files back off the external HD onto the newly installed HD?
 
Jtuner77 said:
^^^You say start up from Old disc as in old hard drive or the actual old OSX disc?

Is their no way to just transfer all my files onto an External HD/storage from the old HD while it is still in the laptop and then removed the old drive, install the new one. Format the new one then move the files back off the external HD onto the newly installed HD?
Click to expand...

I mean the old hard disk. To transfer all the old files to another HD you can definitely do it, but to make it a bootable copy you need to use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!, because for some reason just copying it over using Finder won't make it bootable...some hidden files won't be transferred I believe. SuperDuper! is only $28 and well worth it. I use it exclusively now instead of Time Machine, as I trust it more than Time Machine, and find it far more useful (your job is a case in point, you can't boot up from a Time Machine backup).
 
packgrad2000 said:
I mean the old hard disk. To transfer all the old files to another HD you can definitely do it, but to make it a bootable copy you need to use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!, because for some reason just copying it over using Finder won't make it bootable...some hidden files won't be transferred I believe. SuperDuper! is only $28 and well worth it. I use it exclusively now instead of Time Machine, as I trust it more than Time Machine, and find it far more useful (your job is a case in point, you can't boot up from a Time Machine backup).
Click to expand...

so basically do what the other people were saying but in reverse.
 
Yes, and sorry to say this could have been answered with a search... use super duper or carbon copy cloner.
 
aaronw1986 said:
Yes, and sorry to say this could have been answered with a search... use super duper or carbon copy cloner.
Click to expand...

Or the Restore function in Apple's Disk Utility. One time I had trouble with Carbon Copy Cloner; applications like that and Super Duper do not copy all file over. Some logs, etc. are excluded. After a Carbon Copy Clone transfer, I had strange problems with Adobe software. When I used Disk Utility instead, no problems...
 
Thiol said:
Or the Restore function in Apple's Disk Utility. One time I had trouble with Carbon Copy Cloner; applications like that and Super Duper do not copy all file over. Some logs, etc. are excluded. After a Carbon Copy Clone transfer, I had strange problems with Adobe software. When I used Disk Utility instead, no problems...
Click to expand...

that's interesting that you had that problem with CCC. never used it myself but Super Duper is my cloning app of choice. i just recently did a clone for my new HDD with the master CS4 suite and had no problems. never had any problems with Super Duper. actually the app i have had issues with is Disk Utility. just my own personal experience tho.
 
on my way to go buy an enclosure and either a seagate or western digital 500g internal drive, then I'm going to install old hd into the enclosure and boot from disc utility then transfer files with disc utility.
 
Jtuner77 said:
on my way to go buy an enclosure and either a seagate or western digital 500g internal drive, then I'm going to install old hd into the enclosure and boot from disc utility then transfer files with disc utility.
Click to expand...

You don't boot from Disk Utility, you just hold down the "Option" key while starting up, and a nice like interface comes up, asking which HD you want to boot from. The fact that you can boot from an external HD is another thing that makes Macs so great and there are many uses with it.
 
I find that after doing a clone of my hard drive from one to another, the OS doesn't boot as fast. When I switched hard drives in my MacBook pro, my boot time went from like 30seconds to 1minute after using Carbon Copy Cloner.

The boot time annoyed me so I did a clean install and my boot time went back to 30 seconds like it was before.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back