I am sure this is a fairly common question but I am having a hard time finding out a straight answer to it. So I own a Mid 2009 15 MacBook pro and I love it, performance wise it is great with a 2.8 Core 2 Duo, 4 Gb of DDR3 1066 and the 9400/9600 GT Graphics are plenty to run my 30 monitor at 2560 x 1600 with ease. But of course there is a huge bottleneck in this machine and that is the Slowwwww 5400 RPM 500 Gb Fujitsu Hard Drive. I want to replace this drive with an 80 GB Intel X-18 SSD that I have acquired from an HP laptop that no longer needs it. The drive is a 1.8 micro SATA drive, but I purchased a 1.8 to 2.5 Caddy from NewModeUS for $35
http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=17&products_id=300
This not only takes care of the interface/power conversion it supports 3.3 Volt drives, which almost all SSDs are, but it also makes the 1.8 drive the exact same dimensions of a typical 2.5 drive. I have already tried it out in my desktop and it benchmarks just as this drive should, super fast! 80 Gb is plenty of storage for me on a laptop, I will keep all my media on the 500 Gb which I am going to put in an external enclosure and carry around in my bag at all times. So for right now I have most of the logistical hardware stuff figured out but where I need a little help is the migration.
Sure I could reload everything from scratch but I would honestly rather not do that and the honestly the thought of doing it makes me put this project off every time just because I need the machine for work and cannot really afford to have it down for a few days, making this a weekend project. I am very particular about how my machines are setup as well and usually do a decent amount of customizations and tweaks to make the OS easier to use for me. In order to avoid a fresh start I was first very excited about the thought of cloning my existing drive onto my SSD using SuperDooper
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
This seemed like the perfect solution, in theory everything would be the same when I installed the SSD and booted up, all my data, installed applications and settings would be untouched! Yay right, well then I started reading on some forums that for whatever reason cloning a mechanical drive onto an SDD in a no no and could cause issues, therefore the best bet to is to start with a fresh install of OSX. Damn! Can anyone prove that theory wrong? Has anyone cloned to an SSD before without any issues that you know of? Because I would love to go this route, but if not my plan B is to use my Time Machine back and restore that to my new install.
Now this brings me to the question in the title of this thread, what exactly will Time Machine restore if I have a full up to date backup of my machine and I do as it runs regularly and backs up to a 32 GB SD card (For now until I outgrow it) that is always in my machine. I dont have a ton of data; in fact my HDD only has 31 Gb used, while my Time Machine backup drive has 26 Gb used. That leads me to believe that most of the data is in that backup, I mean it does take a snapshot of your entire system so I dont see why it would not be able to put that data back just as it backed it up, like a system image. While I know all my data and personal files will be restored what about installed applications? Will I need to reload all of them? Not the end of the world as I always save the installer but it does take time, esp. with things like the Adobe and Office Suites. How about settings, are certain ones remembered? I am talking about things like monitor configurations, wallpapers, dock shortcuts, color labels, background colors, Safari and Chrome Bookmarks, ect. The list could go on but I really just want to know what to expect if I install OSX fresh and then choose to restore from a Time Machine backup, I am sure it will save me a lot of time but may not be as ideal as using SuperDooper or CarbonCopy Cloner.
http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=17&products_id=300
This not only takes care of the interface/power conversion it supports 3.3 Volt drives, which almost all SSDs are, but it also makes the 1.8 drive the exact same dimensions of a typical 2.5 drive. I have already tried it out in my desktop and it benchmarks just as this drive should, super fast! 80 Gb is plenty of storage for me on a laptop, I will keep all my media on the 500 Gb which I am going to put in an external enclosure and carry around in my bag at all times. So for right now I have most of the logistical hardware stuff figured out but where I need a little help is the migration.
Sure I could reload everything from scratch but I would honestly rather not do that and the honestly the thought of doing it makes me put this project off every time just because I need the machine for work and cannot really afford to have it down for a few days, making this a weekend project. I am very particular about how my machines are setup as well and usually do a decent amount of customizations and tweaks to make the OS easier to use for me. In order to avoid a fresh start I was first very excited about the thought of cloning my existing drive onto my SSD using SuperDooper
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
This seemed like the perfect solution, in theory everything would be the same when I installed the SSD and booted up, all my data, installed applications and settings would be untouched! Yay right, well then I started reading on some forums that for whatever reason cloning a mechanical drive onto an SDD in a no no and could cause issues, therefore the best bet to is to start with a fresh install of OSX. Damn! Can anyone prove that theory wrong? Has anyone cloned to an SSD before without any issues that you know of? Because I would love to go this route, but if not my plan B is to use my Time Machine back and restore that to my new install.
Now this brings me to the question in the title of this thread, what exactly will Time Machine restore if I have a full up to date backup of my machine and I do as it runs regularly and backs up to a 32 GB SD card (For now until I outgrow it) that is always in my machine. I dont have a ton of data; in fact my HDD only has 31 Gb used, while my Time Machine backup drive has 26 Gb used. That leads me to believe that most of the data is in that backup, I mean it does take a snapshot of your entire system so I dont see why it would not be able to put that data back just as it backed it up, like a system image. While I know all my data and personal files will be restored what about installed applications? Will I need to reload all of them? Not the end of the world as I always save the installer but it does take time, esp. with things like the Adobe and Office Suites. How about settings, are certain ones remembered? I am talking about things like monitor configurations, wallpapers, dock shortcuts, color labels, background colors, Safari and Chrome Bookmarks, ect. The list could go on but I really just want to know what to expect if I install OSX fresh and then choose to restore from a Time Machine backup, I am sure it will save me a lot of time but may not be as ideal as using SuperDooper or CarbonCopy Cloner.
