New 320 gig hard drive question

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husky123


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Ok, I thought I'd ask just before I popped for a new 320 gig hard drive for my Macbook.

What's the best way to copy my old hard drive to my new one? I have an external so should I:

1. Use SuperDuper and make a bootable copy
2. Put in my new 320 gig
3. Boot up from external drive
4. Use SD to copy to my new one?

Is this way off....is there a better way? Thanks.
 
fletch33

fletch33


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i have the 320 as well and i am a believer in a fresh install.

you could do any of the methods above but what i did was put in the new drive , install the OS, and then i connected my old drive as an external and copied over my files.

i have never cared for any kind of recovery or copy programs when it comes to installing my OS.

however i gave my old drive to a friend because his HDD was smaller than my original macbook HDD and he used superduper and hasnt had any problems.
 
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I would agree with husky123 in principle but IF you are having no problems whatsoever then I found the best way was to fire up the laptop in target mode hook it up to my mac pro and use disc copy to copy the hard drive to a file. Then install the new drive and reverse the job. I have done this a few times and it worked very well.
 
cwa107

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fletch33 said:
i have the 320 as well and i am a believer in a fresh install.

you could do any of the methods above but what i did was put in the new drive , install the OS, and then i connected my old drive as an external and copied over my files.

i have never cared for any kind of recovery or copy programs when it comes to installing my OS.

however i gave my old drive to a friend because his HDD was smaller than my original macbook HDD and he used superduper and hasnt had any problems.
Click to expand...

SuperDuper does a file-by-file copy of your hard disk, resulting in an exact duplicate of the existing drive. I'm having a hard time understanding the logic of doing a clean install when upgrading a hard drive.
 
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husky123


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That's what a couple have said to me on the side....the fact that SuperDuper is so money that they'd just go that route? I'm just a relative noob to this stuff and don't want to jack anything up.

Also, before copying back to the new hdd do I need to run it through disk utility and partition? What I'm not understanding is when I start up via my external (holding the option key) will me new hdd "show up" in order to partition it? And when I do, what settings do I use?
 
chscag

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husky123 said:
That's what a couple have said to me on the side....the fact that SuperDuper is so money that they'd just go that route? I'm just a relative noob to this stuff and don't want to jack anything up.

Also, before copying back to the new hdd do I need to run it through disk utility and partition? What I'm not understanding is when I start up via my external (holding the option key) will me new hdd "show up" in order to partition it? And when I do, what settings do I use?
Click to expand...

Carbon Copy Cloner will do the same thing as SuperDuper and it's free. http://www.bombich.com/

Your new HDD should show up on the desktop.

When you first boot from your external drive (after installing the new drive) run the "Disk Utility Application" and format\partition your new drive. Then copy everything from the external or clone it to the new drive. The Carbon Copy Cloner help files have good instructions on both procedures.

Regards.
 
fletch33

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cwa107 said:
SuperDuper does a file-by-file copy of your hard disk, resulting in an exact duplicate of the existing drive. I'm having a hard time understanding the logic of doing a clean install when upgrading a hard drive.
Click to expand...

as i mentioned i agree that those softwares work. i just personally prefer a fresh install and i have dome it sooo many times for my none techy friends i guess i have just become very quick at it :)

probably comes from my pc days where my computer would require a fresh reformat every 6 months to stay running ;)
 
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