Use old hard drive as external to add existing data to new hard drive?

[tcoffin014]

I ordered a new hard drive for my Macbook, but I don't have anything on my old one backed up. So instead of backing it up to an external drive and using that to put on my new one, I was wondering if I could take out my old hard drive and put it in an external case and use that to add all my existing data to my new hard drive once it is installed. Would this work, or should I back up my old on to an external hard drive first? Thanks

 

[bellerobot]

SuperDuper is the best choise in your case.

 

[louishen]

AS said above, use SuperDuper to clone your old drive, that software will create a fully bootable copy.

As for the method, I would put the new drive in a case and copy to that first. Then swap[ out the drives after.

 

[tcoffin014]

Is SuperDuper all I need? Or do i use time machine also? On the superduper website it says, "It's the perfect complement to Time Machine under Leopard and Snow Leopard."
But when i read about it, it seems like SuperDuper is all I need to use, without time machine.

 

[louishen]

All you need for your hard drive swap is Superduper

Superduper makes a complete clone of your hard disk including the OS and is fully bootable.

Time Machine backs up apps, settings and files but does not back-up the OS, which would have to be re-installed before using TM to restore everything else

 

[mtbinva]

I just recently updated my hard drive. Not to a bigger one, but to a 7200 rpm drive. They actually sell a kit that comes complete with the external enclosure, plus a how to guide to swapping.

I myself like the ease of use of CarbonCopyCloner plus the fact it's free made it nicer. The site I'm referring to is which is really OtherWorldComputing. Here is the link for the specific drives and enclosures.

I'm a new Mac user, and have found it to be relatively easy to do the hard drive swap. Good luck.

 

[~TheProxy~]

a new hdd showed up in the mail, spent weeks stressing over ways to do the backup

in the end, i put the old drive in an enclosure that i pulled apart, then when installing again from the dvd, it asked "already got a mac" or something similar, plugged the drive in the usb and navigated to the drive, and whammo, all settings and files trasnfered over,

all i needed was software updates and that to bring back upto speed from the time of the dvd release,

so yeah don't need to backup your drive if you can externally plug it into the mac during installation with your new drive physically in the mac

 

[Slydude]

TheProxy's suggestion of installing from the DVD then running Migration Assistant will work. I've done something similar myself.

Assuming that your current installation is up-to-date louishen's suggestion of cloning the current drive should take less time since the updates will already be installed and won't need to be downloaded again. If I remember correctly a couple of those updates were rather large.

 

[tcoffin014]

Thanks everyone. My hard drive will be coming tomorrow. I plan on taking the SuperDuper approach since it seems the easiest