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Transferring Hard Drive Data

J

Jwink444

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 14, 2009
30
0
Hello all,

I have a stock Macbook Pro 17in i5 laptop. I just got a new hard drive. I just did a time machine backup (to an external hard drive) of everything on my computer before i switch out the old drive to a new SSD OWC...Is this enough of a back up to where once i get the new SSD drive in i simply go to the time machine and it will put everything back the way i had it on the old hard drive correct? Or is there another step i need to take to make sure i transfer all of my data safely. I cant find my parallels product key nor my Microsoft word product key so i was wondering is this going to be an issue on the new hard drive? will the computer ask for the keys or since i backed everything up in time machine will it come back like normal.

I'm sure these are stupid questions but before i started unhooking everything just wanted to double check.

Thanks again for the time and effort for those who answer.

JPW
 
The best way to do it is to download a program called "Super Duper".

It will make a 1:1 copy of your current drive to your NEW drive. Then you just put the new drive in and turn it on! Bang done.

It is free (as long as you don't want any of the advanced features, which you don't need to do the above).

I just did this on Friday night. Entire process took only 1 hour... mostly because it was a lot of data to copy.
 
Seconded on SuperDuper. Personally, I wouldn't mess around with Time Machine; it's time-consuming as hell and I've never trusted it since it threw a wobbly on me about a year ago.

Use SuperDuper (free to download) instead to clone your drive onto your backup drive and onto the new drive.

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

Once it's cloned, test the backup to see if everything is working properly before cloning again onto the new drive.
 
appreciate the quick responses guys. I just downloaded SuperDuper and am copying the files over now. Hopefully this goes smoothly and stress free :)
 
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