My 3 cents worth on MB hard drive upgrades
I have to copy all my softwares and data from my old harddrive to new one. To do this, I have to format new hard drive before I install it so I can copy or clone my old hard drive to it. What would you suggest? Is it easy to format it before I install it?
As mentioned earlier you'll need some way to attach your new hard drive to your MacBook so you can copy/clone your current disk. An external enclosure attached via USB will work. Hard to recommend anything specific because there are
LOTS of options there.
And don't assume you'll have to pay a lot for an enclosure ... unless you want to. ;-) It's possible to get a perfectly functional ... albeit ugly and perhaps not too durable ... 2.5" USB enclosure for a SATA drive for under $10. Shipped. Here's a
link to some examples. (Just for illustration.
NOT a recommendation. I don't know your situation well enough to go there.)
While many folks are really fond of Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) I also wanted to point out that if you have Leopard (OS X 10.5) or later on your MB, you don't need it just to migrate to a new drive. You can do it all with Disk Utility. (This is how I moved from the 160 that came with my MB to a 500 GB Hitachi about a year ago).
All you have to do is attach the new drive and then open Disk Utility and Restore the drive in your MB to the new new drive. Specify your current MB drive as the "source" and the new drive as the "target" of the restore. You don't have to format the new drive before the restore. It'll happen as part of the "restore" op. (In fact if the new/target drive is already formated, Disk Utility will ask you if you want to erase/reformat it).
FWIW, running Apples diagnostics against the drive before and after you install might not be a bad idea. While they aren't conclusive, they are better than nothing and if a drive is going to fail you'd want it to fail
before you are really invested in using it, no?
One final note. While changing the hard drive is very easy, I think the hardest part of the process is finding/buying the right sized screw drivers to complete the task. Google around for online instructions for replacing the drive in your MB and get a consensus on what screw drivers you will need and then make sure you have them before you begin.
NOTE:
Always handle a 2.5" drive by its
narrow edges.
Never squeeze or otherwise put any pressure on the flat, wide section of a drive.
Compressing the platters and/or the drive heads is a risk not worth taking.
(I always wonder if the folks who are always complaining about their drives being DOA just didn't bother to handle them with the pragmatic gentleness you'd think anyone with 1/2 a wit would use.
)
-irrational john
