Moving to new HDD

[aeolyn5601]

Hey Guys. I just got a 500GB Seagate Momentus drive for my Macbook Pro 13". I have a 1TB external hard drive with a current backup of my current hard drive (the stock 160GB drive), specifically the 120 GB OS X partition (I don't care about the Windows partition). I cannot find the discs for OS X and the apps that came with my computer so I can't reinstall OS X on the new drive and restore from Time Machine. How can I get all my data to the new drive without loosing anything? Would SuperDuper work and still et me keep everything intact and also expand the partition to fill that entire 500GB? Thanks guys!

Edit: Will I need to reinstall OS X since i am cloning the drive? I mean will it be exactly the same as my current drive...just larger? (To oversimplify it). I really don't want to have to try and find those discs....

 

[spinnerlys]

SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner will make an exact copy of the 120GB partition onto the new 500GB HDD, thus the new 500GB HDD will be bootable and usable as new system HDD.
SD and CCC will not create a 120GB partition on the 500GB HDD, it will just use the partition you provided. Thus if you have 90GB on the 120GB partition, it will be 90GB on the 500GB partition after the cloning.

Format Your Hard Drive Using Disk Utility
Partition Your Hard Drive With Disk Utility

 

[aeolyn5601]

Alright, I will go ahead and try it. Thanks a lot. I'll post later how it goes

 

[Hans Brix]

I've used the Carbon Copy Cloner application suggested above without problems.

 

[RandomMacBob]

Anyone who can tell me what the difference between programs like SuperDuper/CCC is compared to taking a system image?

 

[spinnerlys]

Anyone who can tell me what the difference between programs like SuperDuper/CCC is compared to taking a system image?

How do you take a system image? Does it result in one big file?
If so, then the difference between SD/CCC and an image is, that SD/CCC copy all files to another HDD or partition and making that HDD/partition bootable and an exact copy of the source.
The image will not be bootable and has to be mounted via other means, an OS has to be present and the risk of the image getting corrupted and losing all the files is bigger than with a clone.