Hiya,

I just bought a new (larger) internal hard-drive for my MacBook Pro 17” and was wondering what’s the best way of getting all the system / data that I have on my existing hard-drive mirrored on to this new drive?

At the moment I am currently backing up the entire hard-drive using Super Duper to a disk image on an external USB drive. Is it possible to just :

1 - Back up the entire disk before swapping it out.
2 - Swap the internal hard-drive for the new one.
3 - Start up the Mac with the blank drive in it using the Leopard OSX install disk.
4 - Use the disk utility programme to load the disk image from the external drive on to the new drive (after it is formatted)?

Just wondering what the easiest way to do all of this would be?

Thanks for any help on this.

Best wishes,

Mark

Assuming you keep a complete, bootable backup with Super Duper, and you have a Firewire external HD, you change steps 3&4;to…

3. Start up the MBP in Firewire Target Disk Mode with external disk attached (which has your Super Duper backup). Choose your backup as the start up drive. This boots you into your backup.

4. Open Super Duper and then do a full backup to your new internal HD. If Super Duper doesn’t see it you may have to open Disk Utility and set it up first. In Super Duper’s Option’s menu be sure to select On Successful Completion—> Set (Your Drive) as Start up Disk. Super Duper does its thing. Reboot (unhook the external drive) and done.

Typically that’s all there is to it. Shirt Pocket has great support so if you run into problems that’s your best bet.

Edit: I test my external backup before swapping my drive out. This means I start up my MBP in Firewire Target Disk Mode and make sure I can boot into my external drive. If yes, proceed!

Hi Leslie,

Thanks for the info. Is it not possible to start up with an external USB drive instead of Firewire. We (my wife and I) used to have a Lacie Firewire external drive but that decided to go the way of the Dodo and so we bought new USB drives as we only really use them for backing up and they were a lot lot cheaper. I have heard that people have got the Intel MacBook Pro to boot from a USB drive, just wondering if it would be the same kind of process as for a Firewire Target Disk Mode type of operation or using the standard “Hold down Option whilst starting up the computer”?

Thanks.

Best wishes,

Mark

Hi Mark,

Unfortunately I have no idea on the USB question. Might do a Google search for USB Target Mode and see if anything turns up or try Apple’s support forums.

Hi Leslie,

Okay, thanks for that. Will try it all out this weekend, hopefully not losing any data in the process!!

Best wishes,

Mark

I used to use a USB drive as my main boot drive with an Intel Mac Mini. I would try what you just suggested - hold down the option key while booting and see if it shows up.  You can also just try to select it in system prefs as your startup drive.

I wouldn’t even bother with target disk mode - just boot from your USB drive, and clone your USB drive to your new internal. I’ve migrated a couple times recently this way.

btw, I used the iFixit Guide when I swapped out my MBP’s HD. Quite helpful.

Brian M. - 25 July 2008 10:34 AM

I used to use a USB drive as my main boot drive with an Intel Mac Mini. I would try what you just suggested - hold down the option key while booting and see if it shows up.  You can also just try to select it in system prefs as your startup drive.

I wouldn’t even bother with target disk mode - just boot from your USB drive, and clone your USB drive to your new internal. I’ve migrated a couple times recently this way.

Thanks Brian. Will try it out this weekend. If it does boot up from USB then I should be able to get it all done exceptionally quickly

Leslie Camacho - 25 July 2008 10:35 AM

btw, I used the iFixit Guide when I swapped out my MBP’s HD. Quite helpful.

Thanks Leslie. Actually I already had that link from quite a while back as I have been meaning to upgrade the drive for a while now. Just came across a good deal on ebuyer.com and thought I would go for it. I’m sure I will have some bits left over after putting it all back together again!! Oh well!!

This coming from someone who is a qualified electronics service engineer as well!!

Thanks again for all the information on this guys, much appreciated.

Best wishes,

Mark

Well all done now and I have an extra 270GB of space!!

I thought I would never get it done though as I had to go and buy a small screw-driver for the Phillips screws as didn’t have one of that size and on the very first screw the darned thing went and snapped off inside the screw-head!!!!

I know how to get a big screw out of a door if the head gets damaged but didn’t really want to have to drill into this one!

In the end after a lot of scraping to get the part of the screw-driver that had snapped - out of the screw - I went back to the shop where I had bought the screw-driver from and after lots of hassle got a return on it. Then went and bought a different one that I was told was a lot stronger. Luckily it was and when I used this one I managed to get the screw out. After that it was plain sailing only took around 5 minutes to take out the old drive and plonk in the new one, excellent!!

Used Disk Utility on the OSX Leopard install disk to copy across the backed up Super Duper clone to the new drive and after about 2 hours I now have a completely mirrored version of my previous hard drive on the new one!

Well I’m happy now for the rest of the weekend!!

Thanks for all the information everyone gave on this, much appreciated.
Hope everyone’s having a good weekend, we had the hottest day of the year here today - sweltering!!

Best wishes,

Mark