Transfer 2-partition HDD in iMac into new setup SSD+HDD. How?

[Flipz]

Hi,

I am planning to put a Samsung 830 128GB SSD in addition to my WD 500GB HDD in my 2011 21.5 iMac. Currently my HDD is partition 190GB for the Mountain Lion OS and the Applications folder and the rest is in a partition called Files which contains everything else.

I would like the current setup to be kept across the SSD and HDD with the SSD having all the data from the one partition and the HDD keeping the data from the second partition.

What is the best/recommended method to do this transfer? I currently have a 160GB Time Machine which I used to backup the OS, Applications and Settings.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Flipz]

Nobody has done it or has any suggestions?!?

 

[Pakaku]

Assuming you can obviously use both drives at once…

Plug in the SSD however you plan to use it, boot up your Mac from your old drive, load Disk Utility, and then make a clone of your OS partition to the SSD:

Afterwards, set the SSD as your startup drive in Preferences, and reboot.

When that's over, you could just delete the old partition, but I would keep it around if only for an extra backup. When your files partition gets full, that's when I would consider deleting the old partition.

 

[CASLondon]

Hi,

I am planning to put a Samsung 830 128GB SSD in addition to my WD 500GB HDD in my 2011 21.5 iMac. Currently my HDD is partition 190GB for the Mountain Lion OS and the Applications folder and the rest is in a partition called Files which contains everything else.

I would like the current setup to be kept across the SSD and HDD with the SSD having all the data from the one partition and the HDD keeping the data from the second partition.

What is the best/recommended method to do this transfer? I currently have a 160GB Time Machine which I used to backup the OS, Applications and Settings.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

I'm not used to working with Time Machine, so I'll tell you how I do it (just did an iMac and my Macbook Pro with dual SSD/HDD). I make bootable clones before the upgrade. You just need a spare temp drive with two partitions.

Carbon Copy Cloner each respective drive. Then you could just clone back to the new pair of drives respectively. It would be a four click move, pretty much.

However, I'd probably take the time to do a clean install of the OS on the SSD, make a temp user, use migration assistant to move applications to the SSD, then use it a second time to move the user folder to the second drive or use carbon copy cloner to just clone the second drive, and go back to the SSD to point to the user on the HDD and throw away the temp user.

 

[Flipz]

The best case scenario in my opinion is to make a clean install and then reinstall all the apps, it would not be much of a deal, I have only about 15-20 of them but what I would definitely want to keep is the settings that's why I was thinking of doing the Time Machine restore into the SSD but my concern is whether the settings will work with the new setup as now it has the boot partition and the Files is logically in /Volumes/Files/ and when I have 2 drives if the SSD is the boot one and I name the HDD Files would it have path reference as /Volumes/Files or the path would point to a different location?

 

[Pakaku]

my concern is whether the settings will work with the new setup as now it has the boot partition and the Files is logically in /Volumes/Files/ and when I have 2 drives if the SSD is the boot one and I name the HDD Files would it have path reference as /Volumes/Files or the path would point to a different location?

When you had two partitions, technically it was exactly the same as having two separate harddrives. All of your drives are mounted at the Volumes level, so as long as the files drive doesn't change in name or something, you'll be fine.

Do a clone/restore in Disk Utility, and I doubt there will be any problems at all. (If there are, you still have your old drive to revert to.) You'll keep all of your settings and everything, because it's a complete clone.

 

[Flipz]

Just finished the setup. I decided to do a fresh install of Mountain Lion on the new SSD and to copy everything else on top of it.

It went excellent but I am having one issue. My HDD is still partitioned in two and I would like to remove the partition holding the OS + the recovery partition. I got the following error:

Secure erase free space failed

A disk with a mount point is required.

Do you have any idea how I can remove the partition or at lease merge its space to the other one?