cloning a hard drive, then putting it on a new HD

i have cloned my HD with carbon copy cloner to an external HD. my question is, when i install my new HD, how do i throw the clone onto it. Wouldnt the new HD need the OS to boot into?
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hope that makes sense, im confused

you may want to look at this thread

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39132

oh crap, i think i bought an ULTRA ATA. will this work?

its definitely a 2.5 incher. but ive been reading about SATA. is ULTRA ATA considered Sata

this one would be of help too ...

http://www.macinstruct.com/node/130

maanico1 said:

oh crap, i think i bought an ULTRA ATA. will this work?

its definitely a 2.5 incher. but ive been reading about SATA. is ULTRA ATA considered Sata

Click to expand...

The specs for MacBook internal HD is Serial ATA (SATA). ULTRA ATA is also known as Parallel ATA (PATA). Here is what Wikipedia says about the two ATA HDs.

SATA and PATA
At the device level, SATA and PATA devices are completely incompatible—they cannot be interconnected.

Here is a quote from another forum:
Parallel ATA (or as you call it here "Ultra" ATA) is a standard that is now beginning to be phased out in favour of a faster standard called Serial ATA (SATA) which allows for "hot swapping" - removal of devices with power still turned on - and much faster transfer rates of data.

I am not a techie but based on the above, you can only use a SATA HD for a MacBook internal HD. However, I think you can still use your ULTRA ATA as an external HD.

Hope this helps.

1) No, an Ultra ATA drive will not work - it must be SATA.
2) Before you change out the internal drive you want to make sure your backup works. I use SuperDuper, so am only assuming CarbonCopyCloner creates a bootable back up also. Re-boot with the back-up attached holding down the option key. Select the external drive, boot up from it and make sure everything is working OK. "Then" you're good to change out the internal.
3) Once you have the new drive installed - you'll do the same - boot from the external drive, open CarbonCopyCloner and clone that drive to your internal.

Not sure about CarbonCopy, but with SuperDuper, there is no need to even open Disk Utitlity as SuperDuper erases and formats the drive when it creates the clone.

Also, even without a backup drive, if you have an enclosure to put your now old external into (meaning the enclosure accepts SATA drives as most enclosures for sell out there are still IDE / ATA only) - you do the same - install the new drive, put your old one into an enclosure, boot from the external and then clone it to the new drive.