Move OS X from one drive to another?

[wct097]

I've upgraded my early 2011 MBP to Lion, and now am having issues with partitioning. My intention was to resize my Bootcamp partition. I did this many times under the previous release, but Lion just doesn't want to play nicely.

I deleted my bootcamp partition and resized my OS X partition. Now I'm unable to create a new partition, or resize the OS X partition. I get a variety of errors ranging from "failed verification" to "not enough space".

I think I'm going to have to blow away the boot drive and start from scratch.

My boot drive is a 120gb SSD that's been backed up. I also have a 1tb HDD that I've been using for data. Is it possible for me to copy all of the system files from the SSD over to the HDD and boot from the HDD, giving me the ability to delete all of the partitions on my SSD and start over from scratch?

 

[blodwyn]

Is it possible for me to copy all of the system files from the SSD over to the HDD and boot from the HDD, giving me the ability to delete all of the partitions on my SSD and start over from scratch?

Sure, you can use SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner, or Disk Utility to clone your current system disk to another drive/partition (which will erase it). Then you can boot from it by holding down the Option key when you reboot. Then you can partition your SSD how you want it, and clone back to it.

 

[wct097]

Sure, you can use SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner, or Disk Utility to clone your current system disk to another drive/partition (which will erase it). Then you can boot from it by holding down the Option key when you reboot. Then you can partition your SSD how you want it, and clone back to it.

That's not what I was looking for, as it would require me to erase my data partition. Maybe I can manage to create a new partition on my HDD to image the SSD to, then go back.

 

[wct097]

I can't get the disk utility to clone my drive, even when I boot to the recovery partition. Doing an OSX Lion install to a memory stick right now... hopefully I can boot from the memory stick, partition the drive, then reinstall OS X and/or restore from time machine.

Not really happy right now. Never had these problems before Lion.

 

[wct097]

I can't get the disk utility to clone my drive, even when I boot to the recovery partition. Doing an OSX Lion install to a memory stick right now... hopefully I can boot from the memory stick, partition the drive, then reinstall OS X and/or restore from time machine.

Not really happy right now. Never had these problems before Lion.

Abandoning that as the "19 minutes" took an hour to get to "10 minutes" to install Lion on my memory stick. Disk Utility still acts strange, but one of the 'repairs' I did must have fixed the partition issue as I was able to extend my OSX partition again and then run Bootcamp Assistant.