New drive - New OS?

Sawday · Sawday #1 (**permalink**)

04-11-2012, 02:49 PM

Following the failure of my imac's hard drive a couple of weeks ago I've been running off a clone copy (Snow Leopard) on my 2TB Iomega external drive. This was bought up to date with my Time Machine backup which exists on a separate partition on that drive but I have not run Time Machine since.
Rather than replace the internal hard drive I've opted on a new external drive and have an Iomega 1TB drive on order. My question is whether this proposal sounds the most practical...

1) Install Lion on the new drive.
2) Boot into new drive and then copy all the bits I want from the (Snow Leopard) clone drive.
3) When happy as is well, delete then recreate my CCC clone and restart Time machine.

or should I first install Snow Leopard on my new drive and update it when all back up and running?
Supplementary question - will all my applications (barring MS Office and Photoshop - which I know from experience have to be reinstalled) work if I simply copy their folders from the old Applications folder to the new.

McYukon · McYukon #2 (**permalink**)

04-11-2012, 10:16 PM

Quote:

1) Install Lion on the new drive.
2) Boot into new drive and then copy all the bits I want from the (Snow Leopard) clone drive.
3) When happy as is well, delete then recreate my CCC clone and restart Time machine.

Sounds ok, I did this myself a few days ago and everything went super well.

Sawday · Sawday #3 (**permalink**)

04-15-2012, 01:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by McYukon

Sounds ok, I did this myself a few days ago and everything went super well.

That's good to hear. Thank you.

Any similar experiences from anyone else?

sfam198 · sfam198 #4 (**permalink**)

04-15-2012, 10:25 PM

So if I understand correctly, your plan is to use an external hard drive as your primary boot disk? This sounds less than ideal. Sure, booting to an external drive that has been cloned from your internal drive is great for emergency purposes, but I wouldn't trust an external drive as my permanent main disk.

Besides the drop in bandwidth, you're adding another point of failure in the external enclosure/SATA adapter.

Sawday · Sawday #5 (**permalink**)

04-19-2012, 04:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sfam198

So if I understand correctly, your plan is to use an external hard drive as your primary boot disk? This sounds less than ideal. Sure, booting to an external drive that has been cloned from your internal drive is great for emergency purposes, but I wouldn't trust an external drive as my permanent main disk.

Besides the drop in bandwidth, you're adding another point of failure in the external enclosure/SATA adapter.

Thanks for your input but I'm committed now. Have run for almost a couple of months now on my cloned drive with no problems or performance issues. New 1TB drive now installed and Lion bought ready to install so when set up is complete I'll have one external running Lion, one running Snow Leopard (to move to Lion once I'm happy with Lion) and a Time Machine backup so I think I'm OK for a few more months yet.

Mini_mi · Mini_mi #6 (**permalink**)

04-19-2012, 04:42 AM

Should work fine. I ran my 27 inch iMac this way for about a month. Finally copied to the internal and all is well.

Mini_mi · Mini_mi #7 (**permalink**)

04-19-2012, 04:47 AM

I used Super Duper to copy my cloned drive to the internal (and to make the original clone on the external drive).

Sawday #1 (permalink)
Member Since: Nov 19, 2006 Location: York, UK Posts: 868 Mac Specs: 24" Aluminium, 2.8 GHz, 4Gb RAM. iPad2, iPhone4	04-11-2012, 02:49 PM Following the failure of my imac's hard drive a couple of weeks ago I've been running off a clone copy (Snow Leopard) on my 2TB Iomega external drive. This was bought up to date with my Time Machine backup which exists on a separate partition on that drive but I have not run Time Machine since. Rather than replace the internal hard drive I've opted on a new external drive and have an Iomega 1TB drive on order. My question is whether this proposal sounds the most practical... 1) Install Lion on the new drive. 2) Boot into new drive and then copy all the bits I want from the (Snow Leopard) clone drive. 3) When happy as is well, delete then recreate my CCC clone and restart Time machine. or should I first install Snow Leopard on my new drive and update it when all back up and running? Supplementary question - will all my applications (barring MS Office and Photoshop - which I know from experience have to be reinstalled) work if I simply copy their folders from the old Applications folder to the new. Happiness is not getting what you want, but wanting what you get.
	QUOTE Thanks

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sfam198 #4 (permalink)
Member Since: Jun 13, 2011 Posts: 73	04-15-2012, 10:25 PM So if I understand correctly, your plan is to use an external hard drive as your primary boot disk? This sounds less than ideal. Sure, booting to an external drive that has been cloned from your internal drive is great for emergency purposes, but I wouldn't trust an external drive as my permanent main disk. Besides the drop in bandwidth, you're adding another point of failure in the external enclosure/SATA adapter.
	QUOTE Thanks

Mini_mi #6 (permalink)
Member Since: Mar 13, 2011 Posts: 224 Mac Specs: 2011 MacBook Air, i5 27" IMac, 2010 21.5" IMac, 2010 Mini, 2011 13" MBP, IPhone 4, Airport Extreme	04-19-2012, 04:42 AM Should work fine. I ran my 27 inch iMac this way for about a month. Finally copied to the internal and all is well.
	QUOTE Thanks

Mini_mi #7 (permalink)
Member Since: Mar 13, 2011 Posts: 224 Mac Specs: 2011 MacBook Air, i5 27" IMac, 2010 21.5" IMac, 2010 Mini, 2011 13" MBP, IPhone 4, Airport Extreme	04-19-2012, 04:47 AM I used Super Duper to copy my cloned drive to the internal (and to make the original clone on the external drive).
	QUOTE Thanks

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