Moving everything to new hd, changing boot drive

[shinji]

I have a Raptor from another computer and I want to transfer everything on the Seagate that came with my Mac Pro (including my os x installation, parallels installation, all apps, etc.) to the Raptor.

Can I just put the Raptor in and use Disk Utility to do this with drag/drop? Or it's better to do this all in super duper? And once either one is done, all I do is change the startup drive with system disk in prefs?

 

[CanadaRAM]

Yes. Use SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner, then change the Startup Disk System Preference. That's it.

However, make sure you check through your Dock icons and aliases, to make sure you are launching your applications or data files from the correct drive.

 

[mkrishnan]

I'm not sure if SuperDuper can handle it if your Parallels installation is in a partition of its own? I think it copies a mounted volume. If you have it as a disk image, though, you should be fine.

Once you do the duplication in SuperDuper, though, and change the startup disk, you should be golden. Once you feel safe, you can disconnect / reformat / whatever the old drive.

 

[shinji]

Thanks, and is there a way to disable NCQ in OS X? Been googling around and haven't found it yet?

 

[shinji]

Anyone? Does OS X even support NCQ?

 

[mkrishnan]

I'm sorry... I didn't even know what NCQ was until you asked, and there seems to be very little about it on the net, particularly for OS X.

The only things I found that might be of relevance to you...

1) The SATA controllers on at least some Macs (e.g. Mac Pro) are NCQ compliant (reference), but it's not clear that they all are... it seems that the Intel designs all do (e.g. MB and MBP). I didn't find any evidence the G5s do.

2) The NCQ appears to work in OS X (reference).

3) The NCQ appears to not work in Windows under Bootcamp, apparently either with the add-on driver for XP or with native Vista support, because of an issue related to the way Macs with EFI boot on Windows (which does not support EFI). (reference). Based on the argument, I'd presume this also rules out EFI for Linux on a Mac Pro.

 

[shinji]

Thanks...my understanding is that NCQ can hurt single-user apps and is only really beneficial for servers. I know in Windows you can disable it though.

Maybe I will just leave it and see.

 

[zagato27]

I'm not sure if SuperDuper can handle it if your Parallels installation is in a partition of its own? I think it copies a mounted volume. If you have it as a disk image, though, you should be fine.

Once you do the duplication in SuperDuper, though, and change the startup disk, you should be golden. Once you feel safe, you can disconnect / reformat / whatever the old drive.

I'm thinking of getting a new hard drive for my G5 (currently running Tiger) and installing Leopard on it. Can I use SuperDuper or CC to transfer all my apps and files even if it's from one OS to another? Thanks

 

[mkrishnan]

I'm thinking of getting a new hard drive for my G5 (currently running Tiger) and installing Leopard on it. Can I use SuperDuper or CC to transfer all my apps and files even if it's from one OS to another? Thanks

Not exactly, no. CCC (which is in beta right now, AFAIK, be forewarned) and SuperDuper (which I use) both are mostly designed for making complete copies of the drive (including the OS).

What you would probably do would be one of the following two things:

1) Install the new drive, partition and erase it, install Leopard on it, copy over whatever you want from your old drive (primarily documents and media, but to some extent, applications are okay too). You don't need SuperDuper for this.

2) Clone the old drive onto the new one and then after you do that, run the Leopard disc and upgrade the installation. You probably would use SuperDuper (or CCC) for this.

Does that make sense?

 

[shinji]

Do I need to change the name of the new drive to Macintosh HD afterwards, and OS X will figure that all out itself?

 

[mkrishnan]

Do I need to change the name of the new drive to Macintosh HD afterwards, and OS X will figure that all out itself?

You can call the drive by any name you like. In System Preferences -> Startup Disk, you simply identify it as the boot drive and hit the restart button; thereafter, it should boot preferentially from that drive.

 

[shinji]

Just to update this in case anyone has to deal with the same problem...after I changed the startup disk and rebooted, my dock icons were still pointing to the files on the old drive. So going by a super duper FAQ question, I booted up with the original drive, then renamed the new one the same as the old one, and then booted into the new drive- now it works perfectly.

 

[bonk]

problems creating new boot drive

I'm attempting to upgrade my mac pro - switch to a 10k raptor drive for the OS and a RAID-0 of 2 500gb for a photoshop scratch disk. I used superduper to clone my startup disk onto the raptor, but when I try to boot from it, it gets to the apple and sits and spins. I can still boot to the original system folder by holding option. disk utility says there's nothing wrong with the new drive. does it matter which bay the startup drive is in? I assume it's smarter than that. any other thoughts? I zapped the PRAM and it booted - but I think it defaulted to the original drive - when I tried restarting again from the raptor, it just hung.

 

[Jebaloo]

A question to do with Raptor drives.

If you only had 1 raptor drive, should you a) stick your OS on it and use it as your boot drive, or b) use it as your scratch disk?