transfering hard drives... how do i do it?? please help!

[djmuggs]

my current macbook's hard drive only holds 80gbs.. i have 700mb left open on it, so i need a bigger HD. i recently bought a 160gb internal hard drive that iam ready to install.

but i CANT reinstall everything on my new HD, and i NEED to find a way to transfer over 70gbs worth of music, programs, applications, settings to my new HD..

does anyone know a quick inexpensive way to do this?

 

[hmai18]

1. Buy a cheap external enclosure and plug your old hard drive into it. An enclosure with firewire is recommended if you have an older macbook as the migration will move along much faster.

2. Install your new hard drive, reinstall OSX and when it gets to the part where it asks you if you want to migrate stuff, chose "From another Mac," plug in your external and move everything over.

 

[bozz2006]

my current macbook's hard drive only holds 80gbs.. i have 700mb left open on it, so i need a bigger HD. i recently bought a 160gb internal hard drive that iam ready to install.

but i CANT reinstall everything on my new HD, and i NEED to find a way to transfer over 70gbs worth of music, programs, applications, settings to my new HD..

does anyone know a quick inexpensive way to do this?

cheap... well, you should have a backup, because not having a backup is very costly. so, buy USB external case like this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817816001
and download a program like superduper. put your new drive in the external case, partition it and format it for your mac, then use the program to copy your internal drive to the external. upon completion, remove the drive from your macbook and install the new drive.

 

[ibglowin]

I have used the apple migration assistant a couple of times and it works great. I have also used Carbon Copy Cloner which is sharware and it worked perfect as well.
CCC will copy everything from the old drive to the new one. No need to install Leopard or any other files. The Apple migration assistant will need to be on a fresh install of Leopard on your new drive. It will move all your apps and files including all your music.

The hardest part is getting the new drive installed and formatted.

You will need an external case like the others have said. USB will work just fine and they are cheaper and easier to find.

 

[NC MacGuy]

If you're running Leopard, a quick fix is to make a Time Machine backup using a cheap ext. HDD from current drive, deinstall old one, pop in new one, load Leopard and when it asks for migration info. choose Time Machine backup. If you check all boxes, your new computer will look exactly like your old one with everything in place as it was.