Upgrading Macbook

[xisforextreme]

Hi everyone, been a while since I've been around here but you guys always seem to be have the answers

Ok, here's the situation - I bought a Macbook when they first came out, but in my poor-student mentality I decided that a 60 GB hard drive would suffice and that I could take advantage of the user-replaceable hard drive of the MacBook later.
Well, one year and 50 hard fought GB later that time is now.
I've managed to get a 120GB hard drive that will fit and am ready to roll but I have realized that I have a MAJOR problem.
During the course of my MacBook's life I must have downloaded many GB of updates from Apple, but if I replace the HD and reinstall OSX from my MacBook discs I will lose this!
Moving music/files/movies across is no problem but these updates are! I really need them, but my internet is EXTREMELY poor right now, and there is no time for me to re-download before I leave to sea for nine months....
Is there any way of transferring the downloaded updates from one Mac installation to another or saving them somehow?
Any ideas are welcomed....
Thanks in advance!

 

[M@lew]

I have 2 solutions.

1) Get an external HD (that is free and has nothing on it you need) and use SuperDuper to create a bootable image of your current HD. Then swap HD's in your Macbook, Boot Up from the CD and use Disk Utility to format the new HD and transfer all the data back over.

2) Instead of getting SuperDuper, get a HD enclosure and use that instead of a bootable image from an external.

 

[Schroedinger]

I would find a new internet source. Do the fresh install, go to your local coffeeshop and use their wireless to get the upgrades. If the internet problem is internal to your laptop, this obviously will not work. If that's the problem, go to a friends house and just use ethernet with their network.

Good luck

 

[shipdestroyer]

Yeah, this would be a lot easier with an external HD. Maybe the Genius Bar can help you out with this.

 

[CrzyCanuck72]

buy an external enclosure with the HD and use Carbon Copy Cloner to completely clone your old HD to the new one. Then swap them and it will be exactly as you left it, but with the extra space.