Can you just drag and drop internal HDD to new SSD?

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Hey Everyone!
I just purchased a new SSD and had it installed on my iMac 27" (mid-2011). I am wanting to copy my internal Macintosh HD to the new SSD. They are BOTH installed and recognized on my iMac.
I was told by the shop that installed the new SSD that all I have to do is drag the old Macintosh HDD to the new Internal SSD on the desktop and this will copy everything. Is this true?
Also I am still running Mavericks 10.9.5 (yeah, I know ) and want to copy that as well to the new SSD and make the SSD my startup disk.

Is there any truth to what the shop told me (dragging HD to transfer OSX and all files to SSD)?

One more thing: I have tried copying the HD as "source" to the SSD as "destination" but it is saying "the startup disk can't be used as a restore source". Not sure why. hmm

Any help would be greatly appreciated! :)
 

Slydude

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What you were told is partially correct. If this were most situations dragging files from the internal drive to the SSD would work. That doesn't work if you want to make a bootable copy. That's what you need if you want to make the new SSD bootable.

The easiest way to do what you want to do is to download a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper. Install either of these programs onto the internal drive and run the program. Either program will do what you want. Super Duper does not however make a copy of the Recovery partition that OS X builds on your drive. When you run the program choose your internal drive as the source drive and the SSD as the destination drive.
 
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Before you do anything, make sure your backup is up to date. Another thing you should do before you begin is to format the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
 

Slydude

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Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper may format the drive as part of the cloning process. I don't remember for sure. In either case if you follow Bob's advice amdf do that step yourself it doesn't take long at all on an SSD.
 
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Awesome! Thanks guys. I have the HDD backed up to 2 different drives and now im going to try Carbon Copy
 

Slydude

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That program has a neat feature tasks that you perform routinely In the upper left pane of the main window is an area called "Tasks", Clicking here sets up a new task which can be give a descriptive name. Now finish setting up the task by choosing the source and destination drives/file locations. You then start the task by clicking the "Clone" button (lower right of the window). The next time you want to perform the same task select it, make sure the drives are available, and click clone.

You can have multiple tasks defined each capable of backing up selected files, folders, or the entire drive.

After you clone the drive leave it connect and reboot with the option key held down to see if the clone shows up as a boot option. If it does select it and try to boot from it. It's always good to test the clone to see if it works. I've been using the "cloning" procedure with differing pieces of software for years. I've only had the process fail once or twice but it's best to find that out before you need it.
 

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