RE: Upgrading HDD
RE:
"Have I left anything out or can this be done a different way w/o excess cost?"
I think you're doing it the wrong way.
I would never never NEVER trust a Time Machine backup for a critical job like that.
There's a BETTER way, that's also absolutely FREE.
1. Have your external enclosure ready to accept the old [currently internal] drive.
2. Download SuperDuper from here:
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
Put it on your internal drive.
3. Remove the old internal drive, put it into the external case. At the same time, install the new internal drive.
4. With everything closed up, boot with the Option key held down. Keep holding it down until you invoke the "startup manager".
5. You should see your OLD drive in the startup manager. Click on it to select it, then press enter or return.
6. The Mac should now boot from your OLD internal drive (which is now in the external enclosure).
7. When you get to the Finder, go to Disk Utility and initialize the NEW internal, and get it set up as you wish it to be.
8. Now launch SuperDuper. You should set it up to "clone" the contents of your OLD external (which you are booted from) to the NEW, initialized drive. Although you must register SuperDuper to use all of its features, it will let you do this withOUT having to register it.
9. SuperDuper will create an exact, bootable copy of the contents of your OLD drive to the NEW one. When it's done, you will actually have TWO copies of what was on the old internal.
10. Now you can go to the StartupDisk pref pane and re-designate your [new] internal drive to be the boot drive. Boot up from it to test it. You may want to run a permissions repair after booting. My guess is that it will look EXACTLY like the drive that was replaced.
11. You can then use the external for backups, or whatever. I strongly suggest that you eschew Time Machine backups in favor of a regular "dupe" with SuperDuper. If you register it, you can then do "incremental" backups which will go much more quickly than a "full clone". And you will ALWAYS have a fully-bootable backup drive close-at-hand if you encounter problems with the internal. You CAN'T do that with Time Machine.
- John