how to upgrade to a new hard drive

[mwxiao]

I may get a larger hard drive for my MacBook this holiday.

My question is, how to copy all the stuff to my new HD?

I don't want to install OS X on the new one, I just want to have all the stuff on my old HD.

Thanks!

 

[skybolt]

Here is what Apple has to say: http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/MacBook_13inch_HardDrive_DIY.pdf

 

[ZFuzzy]

I just use Carbon Copy Cloner at http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html to create an exact copy of my drive and then put the hard drive in. Works great! Its donation-ware, so if you find it useful, throw then some $$

 

[mwxiao]

I just use Carbon Copy Cloner at http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html to create an exact copy of my drive and then put the hard drive in. Works great! Its donation-ware, so if you find it useful, throw then some $$

Do you need to put the new hard drive in a external enclosure?

Thanks!

 

[ZFuzzy]

Do you need to put the new hard drive in a external enclosure?

Thanks!

Well, if you have one computer - then yes an external enclosure would be ideal. I purchased a 2.5" SATA enclosure recently for $15. You can put either one in there, but what I usually do is first put the new hard drive in the enclosure (or at least connected to the enclosure's board) and hook it up via USB (or firewire if you have a firewire enclosure). Then I plug that into the macbook, and disk utility will want to intialize (format) it or if you have leopard it will ask if you want it to be used for time machine. At this point, I usually use Disk Utility and erase the drive and create a GUID partition. Make sure you use GUID, as you have a macbook (if others are reading this and have a ppc based mac use don't use GUID, use the other partition type). Then run Carbon Copy and select the drive to and from (just make sure you have the correct source and destination!). And let it go. I upgraded by 100GB drive to a 250GB drive - and cloning a 100GB drive took me a couple of hours (depending on how much data you have). Then before you swap out the hard drive on the macbook, I would reboot - and press OPTION key during boot up (or you can also use OPTION-COMMAND-SHIFT-DELETE) and select the external drive to boot up from. It'll be a little slow booting from USB, but its worth it to make sure it boots up.

Then you can upgrade the hard drive on the macbook..I'm assuming you know how to do that? Its fairly straight forward (two screws, remove L bracket and pull out hard drive, remove it from the tray - use a Torx screwdriver)....and done.

Enjoy your upgrade - i love the space mine provides!

 

[ZFuzzy]

Sorry - one other thing that I do is run "verify" and "repair" permission on the new drive - just in case But usually it doesn't find any problem.

 

[Nermal]

Which OS are you using? With Leopard, you can boot from the DVD then restore a Time Machine backup.