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Need to back up (hard drive replacement)

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xavious85

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 17, 2009
20
0
So I'm going to replace my MacBook Pro hard drive with a 320 gig 7200 RPM drive and I need to back up my current hard drive and replace it on the new drive.

I have an external 1TB drive connected through USB 2.0 so hopefully that will do.

Can someone explain the steps or point me to an article of what I need to go through to make a back up on my 1TB drive to ghost over when I have the 320gig installed?
 
Do you have data on the 1TB external drive? If so, be very careful about cloning your MB's drive onto it. Cloning utilities like SuperDuper and CarbonCopyCloner will wipe the destination disk.

You could partition the 1TB with an additional partition the same size as your internal drive and clone to the new partition. You can do this with Disk Utility. However, although the partitioning is non-destructive, there's a small chance that repartitioning could wipe all your data. It's a very small chance, and it's never happened to me, but I would be very reluctant to do this if I only had one copy of my important data.

So, to be safe, if I were you I would get a 2.5" USB enclosure or a SATA connection lead (like the one from OWC) and put the new drive into it. Then download SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner, and clone your internal drive to it.

Then, this is an important step, reboot into the clone and check that it works.

Then just swap out the drives. You could use the old drive for extra storage if you clone using an enclosure.
 
Are you running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard? If so, what you can do is to make a Time Machine backup to the external drive and then, using the OS install disc, restore that backup to the new drive.
 
Yes, Time Machine is an option, but I avoid it (actually, don't even consider it) since it involves two copies (to Time Machine and back) whereas cloning to the new drive and swapping them over is a single copy.

Edit: Although going to buy an enclosure takes time ... but then you can do that while purchasing the new drive
 
Yes my 1TB drive has important data as all of my master videos are on that drive along with project files.

Anyone happen to know of a place in New York City I can pick up an external enclosure from? I kind of wanted to do this today as its my one free day and I don't really want to wait on shipping. If it comes down to it I guess I will though.

So, I get an external enclosure, make a back up using Time Machine (Don't know how to do this) and then make sure it can read off the external before swapping it into the laptop? With this external enclosure, won't I have to get on that uses a power supply and not one that is bus powered simple because the drive I want to replace is 7200 RPM? Or will bus power only make it spin at 5400 RPM, thus allowing me to make a back up until I get it inside the computer?
 
I'm not sure if you've done this already (it's 8pm in NYC now) but I hardly ever buy computer components in a brick and mortar store. I've bought from www.newegg.com and www.macsales.com since it's generally cheaper.

I did have to buy a new laptop hard drive a couple of weeks ago, and got it in BestBuy, for $20 more than it would have been in New Egg. But I couldn't wait.

So if you haven't done this yet, and can wait a few days, I'd just get a drive from enclosure from New Egg. I really wouldn't recommend you use your 1TB drive for this.

As for the cloning process - using Time Machine will create a back up of your drive that can be used to restore a Mac, but it's not bootable, and you can't use it directly as a replacement for your current drive. Clone your internal drive onto the new drive with SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner.
 
Sorry, I may have left out a step. If you have your new drive connected, you may need to format it using Disk Utility. Unfortunately I can't remember if you have to do this with SuperDuper.

When you run SuperDuper, select your internal drive in the Copy drop down, the external in the "to" drop down, and "Backup - all files" in the "using" drop down. Then click "Copy". See if this works.

If it doesn't work, you need to format the drive select the external drive, then the Partition tab. If everything is grayed out, select the Volume Scheme -> 1 Partition, set the name, Mac OS Extended (Journaled), then in Options select GUID partition table.

You'll definitely be able to clone to a drive formatted like that. Actually it might be best to do that anyway. It takes a minute or less to do. Ensuring it's a GUID Partition Table ensures it'll be bootable.
 
Thanks for the reply, but I went to check out Carbon copy cloner and it was more straight forward and easier. Its copying everything over as we speak. I did make sure to format it already as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), thanks for the heads up though.

I'll reboot to make sure everything is ok on the 320 gig and then start the "surgery" wish me luck!!!
 
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