Question regarding upgrading hard drive on Macbook Pro (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

In about two weeks I will probably upgrade my 120GB Macbook Pro
hard drive to 320GB. Already have a drive selected as a friend from
work recently upgraded his drive.

I want to avoid having to reinstall everything.

My question is simple...

If I copy everything to an external drive using SuperDuper, can I
simply restore it to the new drive and expect everything to work fine?

Or, is there information a hard drive writes to the software that is
only compatible with that drive?

Thanks

 

[Carlo_M]

I don't use SuperDuper, though I've heard good things about it, and it sounds like you just make a bootable clone and away you go.

I use Carbon Copy Cloner (latest version) and it is a simple clone -> swap HDs -> as if you were using the same HD but with more empty space. I've swapped my MBP HD twice now (120 to 200 to 320GB) and it's worked like a charm each time. I also back up and clone back to my HD every 6 months or so to defrag because that's a side benefit to using CCC (and Super Duper I assume).

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner will make the job painless for you, Ron.

 

[Eric M Jones]

Ron, do you have your current drive backed up to Time Machine? You can easily setup your new drive with all your old stuff directly from the time machine if you do. I used this method a few months ago when I switched machines and it was easy and worked very well.

-EJ

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Eric,

No. I don't currently use Time Machine because the HP Media
Center I bought does not support it. However, they are issuing
a software update soon that will enable support.

I can just use SuperDuper. Should work fine.

 

[Eric M Jones]

Yeah, I'm sure Super Duper will do the trick. I just mentioned the TM solution because it requires no extra backing up or file transferring if you're already using it.

-EJ

 

[DaveF]

Yes.

I backed up to superduper, booted from the external backup, reformatted my internal drive and repartitioned it for BootCamp, and then did a full restore from the external back to the internal. It pretty easy and straightforward.

I suggest not wiping the original until you've booted from the external and done a "sanity" check that it works.