Transfer or Reinstall?

[Kirkle]

I apologize if this has been asked 100 times already, seeing as it is kind of a noob question, but what is the best way to set up an external drive as a boot drive?

Should I copy everything from my internal hard drive to an external drive or install OSX (and everything else) on the external drive fresh? In other words, can I copy everything from the internal boot drive onto an external drive and then tell the bios to boot from the external drive without any problems, or do I need to re-install everything in order to prevent problems?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

You use CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper! to clone the internal HDD to the properly formatted* external HDD and then go to System Preferences > Startup Disk to select the external HDD to boot from.

* How to format a new HDD to install Mac OS X onto (or make a bootable copy onto)​

PS: Macs do not have a BIOS, they have EFI.

 

[Kirkle]

PS: Macs do not have a BIOS, they have EFI.

Oops... Sorry, I actually knew that, slip of the tongue.

Thanks for the information. This answers my question then: I don't have to re-install everything -- a copy will work.