Upgrading a Macbook Hard drive

doanster

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Jun 8, 2005
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I'm looking to replace the tiny 60GB hard drive on my Macbook with something bigger. Suggestions on the most painless way to do this?

Some questions to consider are:
How do I clone my existing install (Tiger) over to the new drive? Would something like Clonezilla work? Can I create a disc image on a USB hard drive and then restore it on the fresh hard drive?

Any input would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!
 

TheStu

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Sep 15, 2004
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Forget that, use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, it is easier.

Here is what I would do.
Get new drive, get enclosure
Put new drive in enclosure, connect to laptop
Run CarbonCopy to put contents of old drive onto new drive.
Reboot and hold down ALT so you can choose the enclosure as the boot source (this is just a test step to ensure that the clone is bootable)
Pull old drive, put in new drive, have a drink
 

TheStu

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Originally posted by: doanster
Originally posted by: VinylxScratches
You can use Disk Utility to clone your drive. It's really easy.

http://www.macinstruct.com/node/147

Wow, that looks unbelievably simple.

I wonder if it would work with multiple partitions with my Boot Camp WinXP installation?

If your XP partition is FAT32 then MAYBE.

If it is NTFS, then almost absolutely certainly not.
 

doanster

Senior member
Jun 8, 2005
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Originally posted by: TheStu
Originally posted by: doanster
Originally posted by: VinylxScratches
You can use Disk Utility to clone your drive. It's really easy.

http://www.macinstruct.com/node/147

Wow, that looks unbelievably simple.

I wonder if it would work with multiple partitions with my Boot Camp WinXP installation?

If your XP partition is FAT32 then MAYBE.

If it is NTFS, then almost absolutely certainly not.

Definitely FAT32 it is. Why do you say maybe?
 

TheStu

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Because I have never tried to clone a FAT32 Windows install before, and I think that the Disk Utility method will only work on HFS drives.