HARD Drive Interchangeability

Is a 2.5 inch serial ata hard drive from a 2006 macbook the same as a 2.5in SATA Hard drive from a 2010 mid MacBook Pro ?
I have a 320gb 7200 rpm drive out of my Black Macbook thats quite new that has all my info on it. Can it be put in my MacBook Pro so that I can clone the info to an external drive.
?? is there any compatibility issues, and will it work ?

You can install the drive into the new machine however because the two computers have different hardware architechtures _the new new computer will not work_ well at all if it even boots. What you can easily do is using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper you can create a clone from the old machine onto an external HD. Then simply turn on the new machine and let it install, at the end of the installation it will ask if you want to restore from a volume, select this and then it will ask what you want to restore. If you want the new machine to look and act like the old machine choose all the options.
Here are some excellent instructions Pondini (a frequent and generous contributor) provided on Setup Assistant. Follow the instructions and you'll be up and running shortly.
Roger

Similar Messages

  • Running itunes on two pc's with external hard drive library

    Hi All;
    I am working with two laptop pc's, a large external hard drive and my iphone. I am in the process of putting my cd library onto an external hard drive and I plan on plugging the drive into either laptop to play my music library wirelessly using apple airplay. Both laptops are running windows 7 and I use the latest version of iTunes.
    Initially, I transferred my music off my laptop onto the external drive (following the 'consolidate library' process provided in one of the help menus) and then successfully told iTunes where to find the library on my external hard drive (E:/itunes Music). I then did this with the 2nd laptop. Then I resumed downloading music from cd's.
    All of my music is successfully saving to my external hard drive (E:). However, when I download on one laptop and then go to the other, I can't always see all of the albums. I got frustrated, started checking and unchecking things, now I'm sort of lost. iTunes has never been my favorite program.:/
    My questions are below:
    1. Can I use two laptops and my external hard drive interchangeably?
    2. Right now, I get the message 'please choose an iTunes library' but when I direct it to the E: drive and click 'open' it keeps opening into my music files and doesn't open the program. If I try 'create library' I see this:
    3. Now that there is a new library, I see this:
    but previously I had it set to look like this:
    My question is- should I have both boxes checked? Only the top one? What do they mean, anyway?
    Ideas, suggestions and links welcome.
    Thank you!

    Making some assumptions:
    The iTunes Library.itl file located at E:\iTunes Music\Music\iTunes 1 is your current/active database
    When you run iTunes all your media files can be located and will play
    You have free space on your external hard drive - at least as much as currently used for your E:\iTunes Music folder
    If one or more of these are not valid, STOP HERE and report back - some parts of the procedure below would be different.
    Before starting I would strongly suggest taking a backup of your E: drive as insurance against anything not working as it is supposed to.
    Exit iTunes
    Open Windows Explorer and navigate to drive E:
    Select Organize > Folder and Search Options, then the View tab - make sure that the Show hidden files, folders and drives option is selected
    Create a new folder E:\iTunes - this will be the new starting point for your iTunes library
    Navigate to the folder where your library files are currently stored (E:\iTunes Music\Music\iTunes 1) - you've already provided a screenshot of this, but with the Show hidden files, folders and drives option selected you should see one more file:
    (sentinel is a hidden file that iTunes uses while running).
    Select all five files in this folder:
    then right-click > Copy or press Ctrl-C.
    Still in Windows Explorer, navigate to the E:\iTunes folder you created in step 4, then right-click > Paste or press Ctrl-V.  At this point the E:\iTunes folder should look like this:
    Now hold down the Shift key and start iTunes.  You'll get this prompt:
    Click on Choose Library..., navigate to E:\iTunes and select the iTunes Library.itl file (that you just copied into this folder).  Click Open.  iTunes will start and show your library with the same content as before.
    Select Edit > Preferences > Advanced.  Click the Reset button, which will change your iTunes Media folder location to E:\iTunes\iTunes Media, which is what you should want it to be (ignore the I: drive shown here, yours should be E:)
    Click OK - you should get this prompt:
    Click Yes.  This doesn't actually move your files, there's one more step.  Still in iTunes, select File > Library > Organize Library... When you see this prompt:
    check the Consolidate Files box and - if not greyed out - the Reorganize files ... box.  The click OK.  iTunes will now start copying your media files to the new, preferred location and layout.  The time taken to complete this process depends on the size of your library - for a small one it'll be a few minutes; for a large library considerably more.  Allow the process to finish.
    Once complete, your library in iTunes should look exactly as it was before - you should be able to select and play any of your songs/albums.  However, if you right-click > Get Info on any song and select the File tab, you should see that the file location has been updated:
    and if you go to Windows Explorer and navigate to E:\iTunes\iTunes Media you'll see a Music subfolder which in turn contains one folder for each artist:
    In your case the drive reference at the top will be "My Passport (E:)" and the folders listed will be those for your library.
    Successful completion of all these steps should now have brought your library into the "portable" or "well-formed" layout.  Just to make sure everything's working:
    Exit iTunes
    In Windows Explorer, rename your E:\iTunes Music folder to something like "Old iTunes"
    Restart iTunes, without holding down shift.  Your library should be available to you as in step 11 above - however, its worth testing a significant sample of your music just to make sure that everything is in the right place and plays correctly.
    One point I didn't cover is the case where the other (older) iTunes library you have - the one where the iTunes Library.itl file is on the C: drive - may be referencing albums/songs that were not in the library that was on the E: drive and that the procedure described above will bring into a more standard format.  If this is the case then there are a couple of approaches that you can use to merge the two libraries - report back if this is the case.
    If this last point doesn't apply, you can now go ahead and delete the renamed E:\iTunes Music folder - otherwise there will be a few more steps to go through before you can finally get rid of this.
    Finally, once you've completed everything successfully, work out how you're going to create and maintain a backup of your library.  With the approach described above all of iTunes' data is in one place - E:\iTunes.  I would suggest using the method described in turingtest2's notes on Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy ... remembering that "Hard drives fail.  Always.  You just don't know when its going to happen."
    Apologies for the length of these notes - however, based on your description of your current setup I thought it worth going through all the steps to bring it into a more conventional layout.

  • What format i should use for my external hard drive that can be used interchangeably between mac and pc?

    What format i should use for my external hard drive that can be used interchangeably between mac and pc?

    Usually Fat32/MS-DOS as mentioned, but that has several limitatiuns, like 4GB filesize limit.
    One option is MacDrive for you PCs... allows them to Read/Write HFS+...
    http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/
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    NTFS-3G Stable Read/Write Driver...
    http://www.ntfs-3g.org/
    MacFUSE: Full Read-Write NTFS for Mac OS X, Among Others...
    http://www.osnews.com/story/16930

  • Solved - D Series Hard Drive Tray interchang​e

    All,
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    On a whim, I had my old IBM IntelliStation Z Pro (Model 6221) apart and decided to try the tray from that system in my D10... fits like a charm.  The casting is slightly different in that the Lenovos are black (IBMs are blue) and the markings on the sides of the rails are different.  Functionally, exactly the same.  
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    Here's the page that shows the details:
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    --- A

    Guess I broke the trays wrong since the three that I broke all snapped between the indicated pull surface and the rail spar.    
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    My only question was why there wasn't a pseudo-hot swap backplane used - turn the drives around and have them snap into the connectors on the far side of the removable door.  Seems like that would have been simpler and you could do your cable runs from the SAS or SATA to a sort of patch-panel in order to make sure things were on the right controllers.
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  • How would I go about formatting my hard drive if my macbook is no longer working? Will I be able to do it on an older macbook?

    My macbook became gradually increasingly unresponsive a few days ago, and at the moment, when I try to start up I get to type in the password, but nothing further happens.
    I took it today to a laptop repair shop. He said the hard drive seems OK, but would like to wipe it and re-install the system. I believe this would indicate a software error. Would there be a way of doing this operation myself? What do I need to do it?
    This Macbook was purchased about a year and 8 months ago.
    I also have a macbook that was purchased 7 years ago, but are still working. Could I interchange the hard drives and do the job from there?
    Any advice is much appreciated!
    Kind regards,
    Oystein

    Formatting a HDD will delete all user data on the drive.  Yes you can do it on an older MBP by connecting to it via USB, but do you really want to?  If the repair shop says the HDD is functional, there is no need to wipe it and reinstall the OSX.  The problem then is something else.
    It would be helpful if you indicated the EXACT model/year MBP that you have.
    Ciao.

  • Issues with external hard drive

    hello, i recently purchased a seagate external hard drive 2TB. i am trying to copy videos onto the external hard drive from my macbook( mac osx version 10.6.3 but the files wont copy. i checked the details of the external hard drive, formatted for windows nt file system (NTFS). also, when i click info on the external hard drive and click on sharing and permissions it says "You can only read". What do i need to do to use the external hard drive with my mac. I should note that i want to interchange the external hard drive both with my mac and windows if possible. can anyone point me in the right direction... thanks

    Macs can't write to NTFS, only read. Here's a post with some background information on your problem if you really need to use this with Windows: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11547287 As you can see there's a few potential solutions. How big are these files? If under 4GB you could use FAT32. Note that sometimes file copying to and from FAT, especially large files, seems to be an issue I see not infrequently on these fora.
    If you don't need to use it with Windows, or can install software on the PC to allow it to read Mac drives, then format the drive to Mac Extended.
    [Kappy's extensive hard drive formatting post|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8340551] - note that instructions at end are for zeroing data.
    Message was edited by: Limnos

  • Toshiba Satellite M35X-S114 Hard Drive Replacement

    I have a Toshiba Satellite M35X-S114, and the hard drive is broken. The hard drive model is MK4025GAS. Where can I buy it? Can I find cheaper one interchangable?

    You can use any parallel ATA drive that is jumper selectable as 'master'.  Cable select only drives won't work.  Local stores like BestBuy usually have a selection of replacement notebook drives although the PATA drives are getting harder to find with the spreading use of SATA drives.  To the best I can determine, your notebook has 48-bit LBA which would allow any size drive available.  There are a number of online vendors as well as local sources.  I've used NewEgg successfully in the past.

  • What is the lifespan of a Macbook Notebook Hard Drive, and is it a good idea to replace them more then once?

    In specific, I own a 2007 Macbook Notebook, and it is an Intel Core 2 Duo MB21.00A5.B07. Last year, it became necessary to replace the hard drive, and was informed that the reason for the replacement was that the hard drive had reached the end of its lifespan.
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    justinfromlos angeles wrote:
    Also, this means that, the settings of a system like Snow Leopard, in addition to all other personal settings from a current hard drive, can be copied to and from an external hard drive?
    Your entire system can be copied to an external HD in bootable form. It's generally referred to as cloning, and there are a number of applications available to assist in the task.
    SuperDuper
    CarbonCopyCloner
    LaCie Silverkeeper
    To name but three.
    Furthermore, once cloned, should you have to replace the internal drive, it's easy to boot from the external and clone the system back to the internal.
    justinfromlos angeles wrote:
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    As I don't live in the US, it's difficult for me to reccommend retailers, but any computer store (including Apple) can supply external HDs. Be aware that not all HDs from some manufacturers will play well with Macs; Western Digital I believe needs careful selection of the correct model. There are plenty of contributors who can no doubt help on that front. Personally I use LaCie and Iomega. Note that these are purpose built externals and come with their own enclosure and all cables reqd.
    One thing you will need to do with most of them is to use Disk Utility to partiton them correctly (GUID system for Intel Macs) and set the file system to Mac Extended (journaled) before cloning.
    justinfromlos angeles wrote:
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  • Choosing an external hard drive for MacBook Pro video editing?

    This summer, I'll be taking an introductory video production/editing class, using Final Cut Express 4.
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  • New Mac user-External Hard Drive question...

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    derosky wrote:
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  • Swapping out hard drives - Quicksilver

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