03-15-2011, 10:57 AM

Is there a way to do this other than carbon copy cloner? My hard drive is giving me fits and before I go through with exchanging it I wanted to try a complete reformat and reinstall of OSX.

The problem is some software that I don't have the install disk for. I was once a co-sponsor for the photography club at the high school where I teach. As the so-sponsor, the school could get away with letting me install their copy of the entire Adobe CS3 suite on my computer. I'm no longer sponsoring that club, so I don't know if I can get the install disk again to add the Photoshop CS3 program to my computer.

Is there a way to simply copy software from one hard drive to another? It's about a $1000 program, so I really don't want to lose it!

03-15-2011, 12:49 PM

your best bet, if you are going to be doing a hard drive swap soon, is to use SuperDuper to clone the whole drive. this way it will be as if nothing has changed when you put the new one in.

in order to copy these 1000$ programs you would need to copy a lot of obscure files over, and it would be much easier to just clone the whole drive, so that nothing is lost.

dont make the job hard on yourself.

03-15-2011, 02:56 PM

SuperDuper does the same thing as Carbon Copy Cloner. The only difference really is one is shareware and the other donation ware. You could probably do it with Time Machine although you would have to make adjustments since you would be restoring to a different hard drive.

A point of legality about your copy of CS3: I don't know what kind of licensing arrangement your school had with Adobe. In other words, if the license was a multiple license or for single use. If it was licensed for example to be used on the school's network, it would not be legal to have a copy on a machine that was not attached to that network. You probably need to check with your school's IT folks first.

03-15-2011, 03:01 PM

I don't want to use a cloning program because I'm afraid I may clone the problems onto the new drive. I upgraded my hard drive in January and ever since I've been encountering problems.

I just booted from my original drive (which is now an external) and when I ran all the disk repair utilities some errors were found...this is making me believe my problems may not be with my new drive, but instead were already on my original drive and I cloned them onto the new drive when I upgraded. I guess I just didn't notice it 'til I upgraded the hard drive.

I don't really use photoshop very frequently, but when I do use it I absolutely love it. I suppose I could do a complete wipe of the drive and a fresh install and simply use the copy of photoshop installed on the old drive when needed.

03-15-2011, 03:03 PM

Or you can look for a low-cost Photoshop alternative like Pixelmator to ensure you've got legal software (because right now, your Adobe CS3 suite is not legally licensed) and it solves the problem of needing to clone the software.

Pixelmator on the Mac App Store