Easiest way to start fresh with a new hard drive?

RIP my MacBook Pro's hard drive. I got the dreaded 'this drive can't be repaired' error yesterday, so I wiped and restored with Time Machine and it seemed fine at first. This morning, the computer kept seizing up and I had to do a hard reboot, which failed. I have no reason to believe there's anything wrong with other components such as the motherboard. The hard drive gave me plenty of indications that it was dying.
I'll be ordering a new drive shortly. Any suggestions for good drive for an early 2009 17" MBP? I currently have a 320GB drive and that's plenty, no need to go bigger unless I can get a 500GB drive for the same price. I can do the switch myself.
I'm also trying to figure out the least painful way to get the new hard drive up and running. All the info I find has me transferring data from the old one to the new, but that's not possible obviously and why would I even want to since I have backups.
Can I just do a restore from the last Time Machine backup? Or do I have to install ML on the new drive and then use Migration Assistant? Would my bootable full backup be of any value?
I want as fresh of an install as possible with minimum fuss -- all my apps, all my data, none of the file permission errors, etc. Is that even possible?
Thanks!
Rae

You can boot up from the Mac OS X Install Disc that came with your machine or using the Recovery system if you have Lion/Mountain Lion installed. In the Utilities menu that will be on the top of your screen after you boot to the disc, you'll have an option to Restore From Time Machine Backup.
Once you choose that option, it will perform a full carbon copy restore from your Time Machine backup.
"Restoring your entire system from a backup
If you are restoring a backup made by a Mac to the same Mac
With your backup drive connected, start up your Mac from the Recovery system (Command-R at startup) or Mac OS X v10.6 installation disc (With the disc in the optical drive, 'C' at startup). Then use the "Restore From Time Machine Backup" utility."
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11192?viewlocale=en_US
Tada.
Done.

Similar Messages

Hi, I have a macbook pro with a new hard drive installed. My WD external drive backup on time machine now wont let me access the files. I get a prompt saying 'you do not have permission to access the files'

hi, I have a macbook pro with a new hard drive installed and restored. My WD external drive backup on time machine now wont let me access the files. I get a prompt saying 'you do not have permission to access the files' After my new drive was installed I plugged in time machine and it started backing up. I paused it when I realised that it was running for more than a few minutes. I now realise that it probably started backing up the new hard drive all over again. Which makes me think that the original back up must be on the WD back I cant seem to access it. Any ideas would be helpful.

See E-10 in the first link.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

Lost a 2 hard drives, have 7 k photos on a touch that I need to load on IMAC with a new hard drive, how do I do it. Just never went from a Touch to iMac. I have the cable hooked up and then what, I don't want to mess up,my last chance to save 7k pics!

Lost my hard drive and also an Ipad, but have 7 k photos on a Touch that I need to load on fixed IMAC with a new hard drive, how do I do it. (There were more photos than the 7k, but they were saved on other drives, thank goodness). 7K pohotos on the Touch are no where else, must be saved! Just never went from a Touch to iMac. I have the cable hooked up and then what, I don't want to mess up,my last chance to save 7k pics! New Aperture and IPhoto on IMAC with no other photos loaded on the new hard drive yet.

I'd ask in the iTouch forum where there are more iTouch users there than here and they should know how to off load the photos. It might take a 3rd party app.
OT

Re: My Macbook 2009 model was recently upgraded with a new hard drive and upgraded to Mountain Lion OS. I am battling to retrieve all my photos that were ''saved'' in iCloud. Can someone help?

Re: My Macbook 2009 model was recently upgraded with a new hard drive and upgraded to Mountain Lion OS. I am battling to retrieve all my photos that were ''saved'' in iCloud. Can someone help?

If you are trying to recover photo stream photos, they are only held in iCloud for 30 days. All you would be able ro recover is photo stream photos from the last 30 days.
If you have an iOS device that still has the photo stream photos one it, you can save them to the camera roll by opening the my photo stream album, tapping Edit, tap the photos, tap Share, tap Save to Camera Roll. Once in the camera roll, they can be imported to iPhoto on your Mac as explained here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4083.

My Macbook 2009 model was recently upgraded with a new hard drive and upgraded to Mountain Lion OS. I am battling to retrieve all my photos that were ''saved'' in iCloud. Can someone help?

My Macbook 2009 model was recently upgraded with a new hard drive and upgraded to Mountain Lion OS. I am battling to retrieve all my photos that were ''saved'' in iCloud. Can someone help?

While we all have MacBooks in this forum most of us don’t use iCloud. There's an iCloud Support Community where everybody uses iCloud. You should also post this question there to increase your chances of getting an answer. https://discussions.apple.com/community/icloud/icloud_on_my_mac

What's the easiest way to back up and restore my hard drive to a new HD

I'm going to upgrade my hard drive to a larger one on my MacBook. I have an external backup drive. What is the easiest way to save all my data (documents, emails, etc) and applications and restore them to the new hard drive in my MacBook? I have Leopard OS.
I've read on the forum everything from using Time Machine to the Disk Utility. I have been backing up everything to my external HD using Time Machine.
Can you point me to a step by step process.

I don't use TM, so here's my method that I've used many times for the same thing you are doing.
How to Clone Using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (journaled, if available) and click on the Erase button. This step can be skipped if the destination has already been freshly erased.
4. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
5. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the startup or source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Now, boot from the clone to be sure it works correctly by opening Startup Disk, selecting the external volume, then clicking the Restart button. If all is well the computer will boot from the external drive. Now shut down the computer and disconnect the external drive. Disconnect the AC adapter and remove the battery. Install the new hard drive. Once you've completed the installation connect the external drive and restart the computer.
Now do the following:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your new hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but recommended for a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.
After formatting is completed use DU to clone the external drive's system back to the new internal drive. The external drive becomes the Source and the internal drive will be the Destination.

Is there a way to transfer all the music and apps from an iphone to a computer with a new hard drive

I've had a new hard drive fitted in my laptop and i wanted to know if there is a way that i could tranfer my music and app from my iphone to itunes on the computer?

Yes, the Mac can read NTFS drives, but not write to them.
If you have the drive formatted FAT or exFAt then the Mac can read and write to it. But before formatting, remove the data as it's erased, and format it on the PC as it's easier. Right click on Windows and Format.
Drives, partitions, formatting w/Mac's + PC's
Moving your personal data via the external drive is likley the best option, there are other methods like Migration, but they are problematic and take a long time, a drive is simple, fast and direct.

Syncing with a new hard drive

Hi,
My laptop crashed recently and a new hard drive was installed. I had everything backed up on an external hard drive, so I just had to re-install itunes and transfer over my music. However, now when I plug my ipod into my computer, it will charge, but the ipod is not recognized by the computer so there is no option to sync my ipod with my itunes. I want to put my new music on my ipod!
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Be sure to not select the Erase and Sync option!
See this older post from another forum member Zevoneer covering the different methods and software available to assist you with the task of copying content from your iPod back to your PC and into iTunes.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2452022?start=0&tstart=0
B-rock

Fresh install onto new Hard Drive

Hey people,
I have recently upgraded my iBook G3 300Mhz with a 60Gb hard drive and 512 Mb RAM. The Hard drive I put in was brand new - nothing on it whatsoever. I have been trying to install an OS on the hard drive and started with a Panther disc I had lying around. However, this was the CD that came with my G5 and after research I have found that these wont work in other machines. I had an old OS 9 disc lying around from my now deceased iMac G3 which (if I remember correctly) was the retail disk and not one that shipped with the iMac.
Every time I try to boot from CD with these disks it makes a bit of noise and a bit of a wait (couple of mins) and then it gives up and I get the flashing system folder. My question is: With the operating disks I have available should I be able to get one of them to install? or should I buy the retail version of OS 9 as something to at least start from? or is this something else altogether?
Thanks
--Tanya
P.S I have tried booting from CD with the C key pressed and with the Option systems select thing on startup - it just doesn't wanna boot em!

Hi, Tanya. Welcome to Apple Discussions.
What version of the OS were you running on the iBook before you replaced the hard drive?
If it has never run OS X, you will need to install OS 9 in order to run the firmware update for it. Do you have the original system CDs that came with the iBook? If so, you can choose the appropriate instructions for restoring the system software from the links in this Apple Knowledge Base article:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61802
Then apply the correct firmware update, which you can download here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86117
Good luck.

Hp disk can not find, even after I replace with a new hard drive

In last week I have encountered few problems with your product, and following are the information about the HP laptop I have purchased in December 2011:
S/N#[Personal Information Removed]; Product#: qc399av; Model: g6t-1c00
It is only one year and 9 month old. The problems I have encountered are the following:
“A disk read error occurred, Press Ctrl +Alt+Del to restart” this sometimes shows up sometimes not. If it did show up, it always shows up in the beginning when I first turned on my laptop.
SSD 128G|TOSHIBA HDTS212XZSTA RT
- I thought, if I replace the new hard drive (from newegg.com: from the laptop )
After 1 day of replacement, I have found the error continue occur. Plus, with more error messages such as (an unexpected I/O error has occurred, status: 0x00000e9); (Boot Device Not Found); (system Diagnostics page showed up, and each test {start-up test, Run-in test, Hard disk test} takes about 1 hour to run for each one)
Since I already spend 100 dollars include rush shipping fees on the new hard drive from newegg.com, I found I still could not fix the problem.
I took my laptop to BestBuy’s Geek Squad, to see what their opinion is; they told me the problem was caused by a faulty motherboard (a hardware issue, not a personal issue)
Please tell me what I should do next. I need use a laptop really bad, and I have to work every day.

When you run the hard drive test, even though it takes an hour, what is the result?

Slow Start-up after installing new hard drive

I just installed a new Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500 GB Hard Drive 2.5 Inch, 8 MB Cache, 5400 RPM SATA II WD5000BEVT in my late 2008 MacBook. Seems to work fine once things are running but start-up is taking as much as 1 minute. Previous Hard Drive was the factory 160 GB unit and it started twice as fast. Is it normal for start-up to take longer with a bigger hard drive?

Sorry you're not getting any responses. I guess sometimes a new thread can fall through the cracks.
I'm not much help on this one but I wanted to chime in because I'm having the same problem. I just put a brand new Hitachi Travelstar 7k500 7200 16gb hard drive in my macbook pro and, although everything seems to be running well (and the drive is super quiet), my start up time is considerably slower.
I cloned my original drive to the new drive using Carbon Copy Cloner and everything seems to be identical. So, I'm a bit confused as to why the start up is so much much slower.
I should add, there is one more variable for me. I upgraded my ram from 2 to 4gb (OWC modules) at the same time I replaced the drive. However, the ram is fully recognized and programs seem to be loading and running at least as quickly as before.
If I find anything out I'll check back in.
-Steve

Synch my ipod touch 4 with a new hard drive

I have a new hard drive - the old one crashed - how can I synch my ipod touch 4 with the new drive?

= Transfer iTunes puhases to the new computer:
iTunes Store: Transferring purchases from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to a computer
- Transfer other music using third-party program like one of those discussed here:
Copy music from Ipod to new computer...: Apple Support Communities
- Make a backup of he iPod by connecting the iPod to the computer and right clicking on the iPod under Devices in iTunes and selecting Back Up
- Restore the iPod from that backup.
If you are in the USA you can also redownload most iTunes purchases by:
Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store

I have a new hard drive on my imac I want to sync my ipad(which has the files I lost when my old hard drive died), which holds the files I lost when my old hard drive died. How can I sync my ipad with my new hard drive?

My hard drive on my IMac died, so I have a new hard drive. I want to sync my Ipad(which has the files I lost when my old hard drive died) back with my IMac. How can I sync my Ipad with my new IMac hard drive without erasing my legacy files on the Ipad at the same time?

Copy everything from your backup copy of your cpomputer to your new hard drive.

How do I restore my bookmarks and favorites from the Firefox servers using my recovery key with a new hard drive?

I set up Firefox sync before getting a new hard drive. My understanding is that my favs and bookmarks would be stored on Firefox servers and could be synced to any of my devices.
However, now that I'm trying to restore to my new hard drive, it appears that I was supposed to sync previously with another device. I do not remember that explanation previously. I thought that my data was in the cloud and could be pulled at any time.
I have my recovery key. Can you help me?

I don't use Firefox sync, but my assumption was the same as yours. Have you tried the steps in the last part of this article?
[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/How%20to%20sync%20Firefox%20settings%20between%20computers#w_what-if-im-not-near-my-first-computer How to sync Firefox settings between computers > What if I'm not near my first computer?]
Do you still have access to your old hard drive, or a backup of your old hard drive? You often can retrieve your bookmarks, saved passwords, settings, add-ons, and so forth from that. If you have access, a volunteer here can describe the process in more detail.

Hi, I have a late 2008 iMac with a new hard drive. How do I install Mountain Lion from my bootable USB flash drive.

How do I install Mountain Lion to a new hard drive without having the recovery partition on it.
I have the USB flash drive with software on it but when I switch my Mac on all I have is a white screen & a flashing question mark.
ATB,
Steve.

Did you use LionDiskMaker or DiskMaker X?
Boot the machine with the option key down until you see your bootable USB stick. Select the latter, and reboot.
When the installer boots up, you will first need to choose Utilities and Disk Utility. Select the target HD device name and then the partition tab. Select 1 partition, name it Macintosh HD. Format is Mac OS Extended, and option is GUID. Apply. Exit Disk Utility and return to the installer, which will now show your newly partitioned HD as available for install.
When OS X is installed and all updates applied, press shift+command+U and run disk utility again. Verify/repair permissions and verify the boot disk.

Easiest way to start fresh with a new hard drive?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for