New To Mac's..need some advice..

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Hey guys, i just recieved my 1st macbook pro 13"...now i have two dilemmas. 1st, i am currently waiting for my bigger hard drive to come in...what would you guys suggest to pretty much transfer everything to my bigger hard drive when it comes & i install it?

2nd, should i use BootCamp, or something like VMfusion for my Windows needs?

thanks guys & i hope everybody could help.:Smirk:
 
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Just got my 13"er too... since i'm in thailand.... i walked about 50yds from the apple store and bought a wd scorpio 500gB drive which the guys at the store imaged and installed for me - and i got the original 250gb as an emergency backup ;-) - the drive was 3150 baht, as opposed to an upgrade from apple cost of 5600 baht(!) and a wait of 2 to 3 weeks....

anyway... sorry, just gloating

to the 2nd question -
I now have windows xp installed also. I chose to install it first using bootcamp, this way it is always an option to boot fully into a 'native' (?) windows xp system. I chose to only use 32gB for the partition as it seems this allows FAT32 which then allows interchange between it and the Mac files system (a larger windows partition results in NTFS).
Then i've installed VMware (trial only so far) - installing the windows using bootcamp first is easy and also makes using it with VMware easy - you can then choose the bootcamp partition with windows on it, and away you go.
Very weird to see windows XP booting up from in a window within a MAC.... and even cooler when you click on the VMware Unity option and the windows ,errr, windows become just like any other window on your mac. My ewallet winXP program worked fine thru VMware and DVDcatalyst started up fine, too.
So - use bootcamp (it's free) and try out the VMware for a month to see how much you need it.
I'm impressed so far....

to the first question.... not sure best way as i'm new to this MAC malarkey - but some kind of clone software like Acronis, perhaps - or just save data to an external drive and reinstall MAC etc on the new 500gb (a hideous thought with a PC but seems like the Mac SL etc is a lot more pain free...)

Coops
 

dtravis7


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Your Mac's Specs
MacMini M-1 MacOS Monterey, iMac 2010 27"Quad I7 , MBPLate2011, iPad Pro10.5", iPhoneSE
For your first question, I would purchase an external hard drive case for your drive. You can do this a few ways but here are two.

Put the new larger drive in the USB/Firewire external case and use Carbon Copy Cloner and clone the old drive to the new one.

You can also put in the new drive in the computer and use the Install DVD and install OSX. Then put the old drive in the USB/FW case and migrate the settings and files to the new install. Either way will work.

For your second question, it all depends on what you want to do with Windows. If it's just basic things like a few apps that you need and can not run under OSX, use Parallels or VMWare as you can still be in OSX and use your Windows and apps right on the OSX desktop.

If you need more demanding Windows usage like 3D and demanding games, for sure you want Bootcamp as it's just like running Windows on a Windows machine of the same specs as the Mac. You do not want to try 3D and Gaming in a VM.
 

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