Procedure for Upgrading My Hard Drive

Hello,
I have a Mac Pro full of 1.5 TB+ hard drives to store video and other files. My primary drive, however, is only 320 GB and since it is used to hold temporary files while editing and converting video, I have completely filled it up several times and had to move stuff around to get some free space back.
Ever since the drive was maxed out, my Mac has been running really slow. I checked Drive Genius 3 for fragmentation, and it says my drive is 60% fragmented, so I'm guessing this is where my performance problems are coming from. I bought a new 2 TB drive that I plan to swap out. My only question is how to go about restoring the data.
I have been backing up with Time Machine for quite a while, so once I swap the drive, should I do a Restore System from Backup, or should I reinstall, then use the Migration Assistant?
Thanks

There are a few ways to do this..
1. Buy Carbon Copy Cloner and use it to create an image of your current disk.. install the new disk, then create new system disk using Carbon Copy Cloner.
2. Drag and drop all your user files to a backup drive including iTunes and iPhoto libraries.. install your new disk and then drag and drop these files back in. This approach requires you to reinstall MacOS from the system disks 1&2 that came with the original computer, install subsequent upgrades with 10.6.6 Combi upgrade software, and application install disks(images) including iLife '11.
3. If you used TC to backup your entire disk then "restore" would work as long as you can boot from another disk before you attempt to restore using TC. I am not sure how this in done though so you should get help before you attempt this approach. Some people have had problems associating the old TC backup image with the new user account on the new disk. Maybe macjack (from above) can offer advice on the correct procedure to follow. I just don't know what it is..
I did a hard disk upgrade on my MBP with approach #2 and a 750GB disk from macsales.com. It worked out fine.

Similar Messages

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  • I upgraded my hard drive and my ipod no longer recognizes my computer.  It will not sync. What should I do?

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    No need to type in all caps - we HEAR you!
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  • Upgrade MacBook Hard Drive

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    I am trying to upgrad the hard drive in my mac book pro using the disk utility in an attempt to clone my old hard drive.  I can only get so far throughj the process where its about to start cloing when I get a message " error 254".  Any idea what that means and how do I get around this issue so I can use my new hard drive?  Thanks for your input.
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  • Can anyone help me with advice for a replacement hard drive

    Hi there,
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    Thanks guys that is so helpful :-)
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