3rd party SSDs on OS X

[Essence_of_War]

I'm getting my fiance a 512 GB Crucial MX100 for her Mac Pro 3,1 running OS X Mavericks, for her birthday next month.

Right now she has:
1) a 320 GB boot drive.
2) a 1 TB drive for work related video assets
3) a 1 TB drive for personal/freelance video assets
The boot drive and personal/freelance drive are backed-up to a 3TB Time Machine drive

I was planning on just cloning her boot drive while she's away the weekend before her bday, but before I did that, I have a bunch of questions:

1) Is there a best way to clone drives? Will Disk Utility do it, or should I use the Acronis key that comes with the MX100?

2) Is there a good guide for enabling TRIM for 3rd party SSDs in OS X? I know about the "TRIM Enabler", but I've heard it's a pretty poorly made application. I'm quite comfortable at a shell, so if it can be done with editing config files, or something like that, I'd rather do that.

3) She has ~200 GB of music, movies/tv-shows that live on her boot drive right now. On windows 7/8.1 on my own systems, windows is happy to relocate my User subfolders like Documents/Downloads etc etc to a different drive, can I do this with her home folder (or sub-folders of her home folder like Documents etc) in OS X? I was planning on keeping her old boot drive around as storage for her personal music/movies/media stuff.

Are there any other "gotchas" I might run into?

 

[ViRGE]

1) Is there a best way to clone drives? Will Disk Utility do it, or should I use the Acronis key that comes with the MX100?

2) Is there a good guide for enabling TRIM for 3rd party SSDs in OS X? I know about the "TRIM Enabler", but I've heard it's a pretty poorly made application. I'm quite comfortable at a shell, so if it can be done with editing config files, or something like that, I'd rather do that.

3) She has ~200 GB of music, movies/tv-shows that live on her boot drive right now. On windows 7/8.1 on my own systems, windows is happy to relocate my User subfolders like Documents/Downloads etc etc to a different drive, can I do this with her home folder (or sub-folders of her home folder like Documents etc) in OS X? I was planning on keeping her old boot drive around as storage for her personal music/movies/media stuff.

Are there any other "gotchas" I might run into?

1) IMHO, Carbon Copy Cloner is the way to go.

2) I am not sure who has been having issues with TRIM Enabler, but it has never failed to work well for me.

 

[mmntech]

If you have issues with TRIM enabler, there's a way to do it in the terminal. I used this guy's code. Gives a nice speed boost as well.
http://www.nick-p.info/enabling-trim-on-a-new-ssd-on-os-x-mavericks/

 

[Rakehellion]

Just use Disk Utility to clone the disk, or dd if you're comfortable using command line utilities.

3) She has ~200 GB of music, movies/tv-shows that live on her boot drive right now. On windows 7/8.1 on my own systems, windows is happy to relocate my User subfolders like Documents/Downloads etc etc to a different drive, can I do this with her home folder (or sub-folders of her home folder like Documents etc) in OS X? I was planning on keeping her old boot drive around as storage for her personal music/movies/media stuff.

The Home folder has to be on the boot drive. You can relocate the iTunes Music Library by holding Option when launching the app. But I don't know why you'd go through all that trouble since the new drive is bigger than the old one.

Are there any other "gotchas" I might run into?

It's pretty straightforward. Just copy and go.

The iTunes Store sometimes identifies a computer by its specs, so if you install new RAM or something, you may or may not have to enter your password and deauthorize the "old" computer.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Thanks for weighing in folks.

I think I'll try the disk util restore options for cloning and see how that goes. I'll keep CCC in mind, though.

I haven't had any issues with trim enabler, mostly because I haven't tested it. It sure sounds like the internet loves it, and it sounds super easy, so I'll give that a whirl first.

It sounds like there isn't an easy way to relocate her user folder to another physical volume, but it also looks like she doesn't add that much music/movies anymore since she mostly uses pandora and songza now, and we mostly just netflix/hbogo for movies. I think I just won't worry about it unless it becomes an issue later.

I'm excited, i think she is really going to like this, she's always complaining about how much slower booting and launching programs is than on her chromebook or my desktop!

 

[weevilone]

I generally use CCC but Disk Utility should work fine.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

SuperDuper is another option I've used. (Carbon Copy Cloner isn't free anymore.)

Otherwise it should work fine. I've got a Corsair Force 3 and a Crucial M550 in the Macbooks.

 

[TheStu]

SuperDuper is another option I've used. (Carbon Copy Cloner isn't free anymore.)

Otherwise it should work fine. I've got a Corsair Force 3 and a Crucial M550 in the Macbooks.

Carbon Copy Cloner gives you a 30 day trial.

 

[manly]

Carbon Copy Cloner gives you a 30 day trial.

correct me if I'm wrong but even after 30 days, it's still functional as nag-ware.

 

[Zaap]

correct me if I'm wrong but even after 30 days, it's still functional as nag-ware.

I don't believe so. (Bought CCC a long time ago so I don't quite remember for sure what happens after the 30 day trial, but I'm fairly sure it doesn't keep working.)

On the other hand, SuperDuper is free forever... just the basic backup features. The more advanced features are paid-only. ($30).

 

[silverpig]

If you have a time machine backup, just use that. I've used it every time with great success.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

If you have a time machine backup, just use that. I've used it every time with great success.

This is also true. It's slower though.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Just a quick update, I got the crucial mx100 512 GB, cloned her boot drive with disk utility, and used TRIM Enabler.

It's like night and day, she's VERY happy.