Migrating data: Upgrading an Early 2009 White Macbook 5.2 2.0Ghz 2gb RAM 120gb HD

[YvonneUK1]

I am planning to upgrade my MacBook (spec as above) with Crucial 4gb RAM and SSD.

It is currently running Leopard which came preinstalled, no discs.

I have used Super Duper and have an up to date clone on an external hard drive as well as Time Machine doing updates to another external hard drive. I also so have a memory stick with all my essential docuyments/photos on.

My questions centre around the best way to get the OS and my data onto the new SSD.

I was planning to put the SSD in an external caddy and clone the existing harddrive to it using Super duper and then install the SDD and RAM and job done. I have also ordered Snow Leopard which I then planned to install on the new SSD and then hopefully upgrade to Mavericks. I have checked and my Macbook is compatible.


A friend who is a Microsoft Engineer said if he was doing this on a PC he would use Ghost; and he questioned whether cloning that is running on the system it is cloning the same time it is cloning it would be totally reliable to use as the way to get the OS on the new SSD. He talked about bit by bit copying at the level of 0's and 1's.


Questions


Is their some software for Mac that does the copying at the level my friend talks about?


Would I be better just putting the SSD in and Installing Snow Leopard from the discs and then migrating my data by hand from one of my various backups? If so would I just go ahead and install or would I need to format the SSD first?


Would I need to get original install discs of Leopard from Apple first? Or will the Snow Leopard just install?


Anyone running Mavericks on this spec of Macbook? Would I be better sticking with Snow Leopard? I want to get the App store and be able to run Google Chrome. I note some apps seem to need higher than OS X 10.6


Any thoughts/help?

 

[MacUser2525]

A friend who is a Microsoft Engineer said if he was doing this on a PC he would use Ghost; and he questioned whether cloning that is running on the system it is cloning the same time it is cloning it would be totally reliable to use as the way to get the OS on the new SSD. He talked about bit by bit copying at the level of 0's and 1's.

Totally reliable my current install dates back to Leopard I have no clue really how many times I have upgraded my system drive got to be six or seven perhaps even more times and until I upgraded to Mountain Lion I always used the Diskutil Restore function to clone my Operating system to the new drive it has never failed. Mountain Lion and I think Lion (never used it) want you to boot the recovery partition to use diskutil to clone it now requires you to not be running the live system when cloning.

Questions


Is their some software for Mac that does the copying at the level my friend talks about?

dd it gives you byte by byte identical copy of whatever is on a drive. That is not what you want here though SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner and the already mention Diskutil will do you.

Would I be better just putting the SSD in and Installing Snow Leopard from the discs and then migrating my data by hand from one of my various backups? If so would I just go ahead and install or would I need to format the SSD first?

No need to migrate by hand OS X will take care of your data migration with no problems. With any new disk you need to partition first before you can format. You want the GUID partition type HFS+ case insensitive for the formatting on the partition for your OS.

Would I need to get original install discs of Leopard from Apple first? Or will the Snow Leopard just install?

If you bought full retail version then it will just boot (hold c key on startup to boot it) and let you install. Now since you have mentioned external enclosure you can do the install on it from your running system you just need to open Diskutil to do the partition/formatting. Once done put in the SL disk choose the external as the destination let it install. Reboot hold down Option key to select new install to boot from it and migrate your data from the laptops internal drive to new.

Anyone running Mavericks on this spec of Macbook? Would I be better sticking with Snow Leopard? I want to get the App store and be able to run Google Chrome. I note some apps seem to need higher than OS X 10.6


Any thoughts/help?

No clue never owned a MacBook.

 

[YvonneUK1]

Thanks for your reply, much appreciated. Out of interest what is 'dd' ?

If anyone else has thoughts on best OS X version for this macbook please post.

 

[MacUser2525]

Thanks for your reply, much appreciated. Out of interest what is 'dd' ?

If anyone else has thoughts on best OS X version for this macbook please post.

Your welcome. dd is a unix utility that will exactly copy the input it is feed to the output specified, it can be used to make a duplicate of a drive to another if you knew that your new drive had exactly the same size as old you could use dd if=/dev/rdisk0 of=/dev/rdisk1 in a Terminal window to clone everything on the drive including the partition table, bootloader literally everything..

 

[madmacfan]

Thanks for your reply, much appreciated. Out of interest what is 'dd' ?

If anyone else has thoughts on best OS X version for this macbook please post.

Mavericks should run pretty well on your Macbook. I've upgraded a few Macbook 6,1 models to mavericks, and it does seem very responsive, with no signs of slowdown. As for copying the contents of your hard drive, Carbon Copy Cloner (ccc) will also do the same thing as dd. It allows you to copy the entire contents of your hard drive on onto a new hard drive or SSD.

 

[MacUser2525]

Carbon Copy Cloner (ccc) will also do the same thing as dd. It allows you to copy the entire contents of your hard drive on onto a new hard drive or SSD.

No it does not they are not the same thing CCC copies over your data on the drive partitions, dd literally copies the entire drive so if the partition table on the first input drive is not right for the second you can end up with unbootable drive or lost space if the new drive is bigger.