Qustion regarding installing the OS on new hard drive

[Canonman]

I am installing a new hard drive on a new macbook. I have not installed anything except the updates on the macbook yet as I have been holding off for the hard drive to arrive (and RAM). So my two-fold question...

Can I install the hard drive and then insert the disc that came with the machine and then do the updates again or do I need to do some kind of format first?

Another question just popped in my mind...

The drive that I am removing will be enclosed and used as a backup. Do I format it clean to use it with the time machine?

If these questions are stupid, please forgive me, I just made "the switch" and want to be sure I am doing this right.

 

[BlueRevolution]

Can I install the hard drive and then insert the disc that came with the machine and then do the updates again or do I need to do some kind of format first?

The drive will need to be formatted, but the installer should do it for you.

The drive that I am removing will be enclosed and used as a backup. Do I format it clean to use it with the time machine?

Yes. You could leave it as-is, but you'd be wasting a bunch of space.

Is your new drive bigger than the old one? You may have some trouble using it with Time Machine if that is the case.

 

[JustGretchen]

To clarify, with your "new" external, use Disk Utility to format the drive as HFS+ (Mac OS X Journaled). You will want to do that in order to free the 20gb or so of space that was being used on it from the original OS install.

With the new internal, you can just use your gray restore disk. I'd suggest when you boot to that disk (by holding the C or OPTION key at startup) running disk utility on that disk from the UTILITIES menu once the restore disk as booted.

Reason is, the disk may be formatted FAT32 (windows) when you get it, and you'll want to reformat it to HFS+ (mac format).

Best of luck.