New SSD...How to move the OS?

[GrantMeThePower]

Hi all-
I've done a clean install of windows a bunch of times in the past, but this will be my first go around in OSX. Let me break down my situation-

I have a 2011 21.5" iMac. I just bought an SSD. I want to install the SSD to run the OS and apps to speed things up. I figure this is a good time to do a clean mountain lion install as this computer came with Snow Leopard and i've done the upgrade installs for both lion and ML.

I also have a Windows 7 Bootcamp install on my current HD. I have a 2TB external HD for time machine. I have all of my music and pictures on my HD right now, backed up to the time machine drive. The OS and all of my Apps (photoshop/lightroom/steam/games/etc) are all on the HD.

I have found all of the install kits and videos from OWC and iFixit for how to do the hardware part of the install, but I haven't been able to get a step by step guide for what to do once i put it all back together. As I understand it, when i boot it up, the SSD will essentially be a new hard drive (empty).

Can someone point me to, or even write up for me, a step by step process of what I need to do to get the system running as well as possible?

Thank you!!!!

 

[WesCole]

What I would do is do a fresh install on your current hard drive using the recovery partition. Then, clone it to your SSD using Carbon Copy Cloner or something similar. Then you can choose your SSD as your boot drive and reinstall whatever apps you like to it.

 

[GrantMeThePower]

Thanks, Wes. How do I do a clean install using the recovery partition? What would that do to my Windows install partition?

 

[WesCole]

Here is how to do the recovery: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718

You would lose your windows installation, though. I thought you wanted to start over from scratch, including your windows partition. If you don't, there is a program called WinClone that works pretty well for migrating bootcamp partitions from what I hear, but I have never used it. I use Parallels for Windows, so when I do a clean install, I just have to copy the .pvm file after the install and I get my Windows back.

 

[hfg]

I just did a complete dual boot image transfer from a small SSD to a larger SSD on a Macbook Pro today.

I installed the new SSD in the machine, and put the old SSD in an external enclosure (I used a Thunderbolt one, but a FireWire would work too, just slower). Next I booted from the external (old) SSD and partitioned and formatted the new drive into 2 partitions for OS X and Windows. I used CarbonCopyCloner (CCC) to clone the OS X installation (it created the ML recovery partition as well), then I used WinClone to clone the Windows partition.

Everything is working perfectly so far...

Good luck with your project!



-howard