Swapping hard drives yet again!!

I am swapping my HD out for yet another larger drive. This time around I would like to shadow the smaller drive onto the larger one. Does anyone know if this is still possible only via firewire for mac or can we now do this via USB as well?
Any links to an external enclosure that would work for this and is reccommended would be very appreciated. Thanks.
Kal

Thanks for the software links. Reading the super duper instructions, it sounds as if you can clone to a USB drive but they are simply informing those that do not know, that you cannot BOOT from the USB drive. I am unsure if I am reading this correctly though.
I may get a firewire plus USB case. For SATA 2.5"s the price is much steeper to add the firewire option though.
What to do what to do Thank you very much for the help.
Kal

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Swapping hard drives between PXI-8115 and PXI-8105 won't boot up

I have a test system running Windows XP on PXI-8105. I've upgraded the entire test system for another project and need to upgrade my existing systems; the upgrade runs on Windows 7 and PXI-8115. I have new hard drives with Windows 7 and the new test software which were loaded/configured/tested on a PXI-8115, but I need to retrofit the PXI-8105 with them. This doesn't work. Windows begins to boot but fails and tries over and over again. In an effort to take the PXI-8105 off-line to troubleshoot, I replaced it with one of the PXI-8115 and the old (WinXP) drive. This didn't boot up, either.
Here's a summary of my situation:
An old system has PXI-8105 running WinXP
A new system has PXI -8115 running Win7
A hard drive (with Win7) from the PXI-8115 won't boot on the PXI-8105
A hard drive (with WinXP) from the PXI-8105 won't boot on the PXI-8115
What is different between the two PXI controllers that keeps me from swapping hard drives?
Jim
You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are. ~ Alice
Solved!
Go to Solution.

A couple thoughts:
1. Windows 7 probably works fine on a PXI-8105. Although NI never officially supported or shipped that configuration, I suspect that the default Windows 7 installation contains enough of the driver support needed to boot up.
2. In general, Windows is not very tolerant of swapping hard drives between completely different systems, especially with Windows XP and prior. Consider whether just installing fresh and copying over what you need is faster than trying to do this, but if you must, I would suspect that Windows 7 would be more tolerant of the swap.
3. As a debugging step, try pressing 'F8' during the boot process to launch the Windows boot menu and try safe mode or some of the other options. More information here.
4. If all else fails, Google is your friend here as there's nothing particularly specific about this being an NI product that you need to know when attempting this operation. Any information you find online about swapping hard drives between PCs should be relevant to your situation. Searching for 'swap hard drive to new computer windows 7' gave some useful hits on the first page. Beyond that, you can also look into using the 'sysprep' utility to try and clean the system and prepare for swapping to a new PC.

Swapping Hard Drive problem

Hello, I have a 2008 model Macbook pro. I recently pulled the hard drive from a windows pc and replaced that drive with a SSD. The windows drive was not reformatted, I figured I could do it through Disk Utility. However, the drive does not show up. I'm assuming it's currently formatted as ntfs or fat32.
The existing drive is bootable, but the machine is put back together and it's a pain to take apart. Wondering if I can boot into something like terminal and choose to reformat the drive.
The only drive that shows up is my bootable flash drive. I do have the ability to hook up the old drive through a USB to SATA adapter, and possibly boot that way. If I can get it to boot from that external drive, is there a way to format the newly installed drive without having to rip the whole thing a part?
I had a hard time with the * shaped screws getting them in and out, so I'm trying to avoid having to remove the drive again....
Any tips would be appreciated!

More info: I think there is something wrong on the motherboard side all of a sudden. Now when I put the original drive in it doesn't boot up anymore. I wonder if while removing the old drive, I damaged the Hard Drive Connector? I just ordered a replacement on ebay (only 9 bucks). What is odd is I'm pretty careful about removing things, since I have replaced many laptop components over the years, so I don't think I did anything damaging when swapping hard drives.
The laptop did work fine, but since it is a 5400 RPM drive, I wanted speed, so I wanted to just put a 7200 RPM or SSD. What I ended up doing this morning was to hook up the SSD externally and choose to install Mavericks to that drive through my bootable USB. Than, once I booted successfully, I re-took the laptop apart, and put the SSD drive into the laptop. I didn't put the rail screws on this, I was just testing if it booted, so I just set it in the area it will reside. I booted and it wouldn't boot up at all, never saw Apple logo, just showed a blinking folder with quesiton mark on the screen.
If anyone has any other suggestions, I'd appreciate it, but now the internal drive connections don't seem to work, but I can boot externally for now. I figured I'd order the Hard Drive connector kit from ebay and see if that fixed it, since that is a 9 dollar part....
Thanks.

Swapping hard drives .... how does lightroom handle this ?

My photography is done on a separate computer to my online machine and the photo system never goes online ( so virus-proof ).
I use " Laser " brand hard drive racks which allow me to swap hard drives on each machine, and also to swap them between the two computers.
So I have several HDD's with different photo projects on each drive and some backups on HDD's as well.
Lightroom is a database system rather than a browser, so how will it be able to handle swapping HDD's in and out like this ? What happens if lightroom points to a file which is on another HDD not currently installed in the machine ? Will it be able to show all the thumbnails and tell me which HDD holds them ( as I believe programs like Imatch can )? Will lightroom be confused by this. Or will it set up its database on each HDD so each disc is a self-contained library with its own lightroom index ?
I know I can't be the only one with more photos than fit onto just one HDD. Can anyone please tell me how lightroom's library system deals with this situation ?

Thankyou very much for the responses so far ....
I see a potential problem because my HDD's are not permanently connected in the computer. Each HDD as it is swapped in and out is assigned the same identifier, say " drive D " or suchlike by windows. So my drive D might be any one of several HDDs .... with very different content to the previous drive D I had in the machine. If Lightroom stores its library for each of my drive D's on drive D itself, then I suspect there will not be problem because each HDD will be its own self-contained libary and Lightroom which resides on drive C will be able to operate on each one in turn. I will then have a series of HDD's dedicated to specific tasks, and can use Lightroom on all of them.
Windows works this way, where it resides on my drive C and performs operations on each drive D. It has no problem in " picking up " each new drive D at startup. I do not attempt to hot-swap.
But I do not know if this is how Lightroom operates. If Lightroom stores any of this information on drive C will it be able to differentiate between the different drive D's it is confronted with ?
Geoff's reply suggests that Lightroom might store some or all of its database/library with itself on drive C. Even this might work if the missing files are shown in red. I would just need to select the right HDD to put into the machine for the project I want to work on. Hopefully this will work like the external drive situation Andrew has described. I am using sticky labels to identify each HDD with the projects it holds at the moment ....
Sounds encouraging .... Thanks for the help.

Swapped hard drive boot problem

Swapped hard drives between 6530b and 6535b, neither boots. What did I miss? (Toshiba MK3255GSX and Hitachi HTS543223L9A300)

Disk Utility - Erase (drive, not volume) and make sure it is now GPT/GUID and not old Apple Partition Table format.
Even though it is data only, there can and are some problems (the older it was last formatted the more so perhaps).
Just pull the data off if needed. Handy to have a FW drive case for SATA laying around.
Migrating OS and apps from G5 to Intel is full of potential pitfalls.
Depending on the drive age, size, performance, I'd probably go for a WD Caviar 640GB $75 to transfer files onto, and then wipe the Maxtor and use it for an emergency backup drive off which you can run Disk Warrior and such.

Just upgraded my OS from the app store, so I don't have the actual disk. What do I do if my hard drive crashes (again) and I have to reinstall the OS?

The hard drive on my computer crashed a couple of weeks ago, so I had to re-install the old OS from the CD that came with my computer almost four years ago. After dealing with all that, I decided to upgrade to OS 10.8.4 and purchased the upgrade from the app store. And then about 20 minutes later I made the realization that hey, if this happens again, I don't have an actual disc to reinstall from should my hard drive crash again. I'm planning on getting a new computer once I get my financial aid in September, but it would be just my luck that my hard drive crashes two weeks before I get that, so what should I do to make sure I don't have to re-purchase the upgraded OS?

Bootable Drive - Install
Bootable Drive - Install (2)
Bootable Drive DVD or USB Flash Drive – Lion Diskmaker

Can I swap hard drives between 2007 and 2011 iMacs?

I have a 2007 iMac that I want to replace with a refurbished 2011 model. I had upgraded my 2007 iMac with a 1.5T hard drive and the 2011 model only comes with a 1T hard drive. And you can't do any upgrade at the Apple store on refurb units. SoI am just wanting to swap hard drives. The 2007 has 10.7 and it appears that the 2011 model has the same. (says elegible for 10.8 upgrade on Apple Store site.) I have replaced the hard drive myself, so I am familiar with the process.
Thanks.

The drives themselves are compatible, yes. However, the OS might not be. In any case, if you have a Time Machine backup (or some other backup) of the older iMac, it's best to wipe the drive and reinstall the OS once installed in the new Mac. Then you can just transfer your data, apps, and settings from the backup.
One important thing to note, though: the 2011 iMacs have temperature sensors built in on the hard drive, so if you use a drive other than one supplied by Apple specifically for that system, the fans will run at full speed all the time. Probably the easiest workaround: use something like smcFanControl to regulate the speed of the fans. Hope this helps!

How to swap hard drives?

I currently have a mid-2007 white Macbook with Tiger OS. I'm thinking of purchasing a 13" Macbook Pro, but would like to swap hard drives since my current one is 320gb 7200rpm.
What's the best way to do this? Can I just swap the drives out, and then reformat them with the installation discs? I don't mind reformatting the hard drives because I have all of my data backed up to an external already.

Yes, you can swap, reinstall the OS from the DVDs that come with the new MBP, then use Migration Assistant to transfer the data form your external backup.

Can I swap hard drives?

Hi.
I have a T400 with T9400 chipset. All (3) USB's have broken over the years and I recently purchased a used T400 on ebay with T9600 chipset to replace the older computer.
My question is can I simply swap hard drive from old computer to the new one and have everything work? The current computer is 64-bit Windows 7 and newer one is 32-bit...
Thanks for help!

>>> The current computer is 64-bit Windows 7 and newer one is 32-bit...
That statement is irrelevant. Either computer can run either Windows 7 version, no problem -- 4GB RAM addressability being the main limitation of the 32-bit version.
I would give it a try. Unless there are significant device differences (which I doubt), Windows 7 system loaded from the "old" HDD will work fine on the "new" ThinkPad.
In any event, I would rather use this opportunity to do a clean installation of Windows 7 64-bit, for which you have a COA key.

Swapped hard drives, but now Aperture does not recognize library file

I just swapped out my MBP hard drive for a larger one. I used SuperDuper to restore the small HD to the new, larger one from a third Firewire disk.
Everything else is working fine, except that Aperture says that "The selected master image is either offline or not found. Please reconnect it and try again." every time I try to do anything meaningful with any file in my library.
I have:
-Repaired permissions on the new HD with Disk Utility
-Tried several times moving the library file around to various places, telling Aperture where to find it each time, and restarting Aperture. Aperture finds the images okay, but I can't really do anything with them, as I get the above error message.
-Renamed my new HD, going through the Aperture Prefs, and re-specifying where the library lives, and then repeating the process with the HD named yet again.
Nothing seems to work for me. What else can I try?

1. Are you using referenced or managed Masters?
2. If using referenced Masters, have you tried reconnecting them via File>Manage Referenced Files...? What happens if you right-click on a thumbnails and pick 'Show in Finder'?
3. If using managed Masters, have you done a Spotlight search inside the Library package (right-click on it in the Finder and choose 'Show Package Contents') to see if the master files are still in there?
Moving the Library and/or renaming drives isn't going to help without finding out exactly where Aperture thinks the files should be.
Ian

Just installed new hard drive yet it's not picking it up.

A few days ago I couldn't figure out why my MacBook wouldn't get past the white start up screen. I found that it was caused because my hard drive was dead. I went out and picked up a new hard drive. I just installed it. No problems getting it installed. But I've put in my os cd to install it on my new hard drive. It starts up, goes to the walkthough for installation, yet again it won't recognize that I've installed a new drive. It's just like before and not finding it. What could be causing this??

Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your 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. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
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 can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
When the formatting is completed quit DU to return to the installer. You may now install OS X.

Swap hard drive from G4 14" 1.33 to a G4 14" 1.2?

After my display in my G4 14" 1.33 bit the dust (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6439953) and giving up on a fix, I've come across another G4 14". According to the owner, a Genius has said the hard drive is dead. While I'm proceeding with caution, if this is indeed the case, it may be worth the fix.
Here are the differences between the two machines:
- It's got a 1.2 in it vs. my 1.33
- It has a little more RAM: 768 vs. my 512
- It has a Combo drive vs. my Super drive
The magic question: Can I drop my 1.33 working hard drive into this machine without major consequences? While I don't want to lose all data, it's not a big deal if I do. I just want the drive to work in this machine.
The secondary question: Is swapping out the Combo for my Super possible? Is this as simple as taking out the old one and popping in the new one?
Thanks for your help!
Message was edited by: Lactoes

Lance,
Well here we are again.
Well so that new 1.33 did boot but you're getting the folder-? Do you have the original installer or the silver on black retail installer. Will the new one boot from the install disk? You might want to reinstall the OS cleanly in the new machine in situ.
Another thing:
only to completely lock up a few minutes later.
Now that still sounds like GPU.
Look on the bottom of the logic board. See that open area about 2" inboard of the headphone output jack. That should be directly under the graphics chip. It's a
ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 4x AGP (More about this later). Try placing a shim in that area. Those large square adhesive feet/bumpers that they sell at the hardware store are perfect. Make sure it's fat enough to put pressure there when the iBook is flat on the table.
Now remember in that last post when this exchange happened.
The ext display works.
So good GPU.
Well turns out that's not exactly true. Here's an email from Mike on this board:
"One thing I would like to add is that there is a misconception out
there that if the iBook will run an external display and the iBook
screen is black then the monitor/wiring/ or inverter is at fault and
the logic board is ok. Maybe ok. Mine ran an external display
perfectly and had a totally green screen on the iBook. The Apple Tech
showed me that by pressing on the area where the graphics chip was
soldered to the logic board he could make the iBook screen go from
green back to full color. As soon as he let off the pressure the
screen went green again. The eternal monitor looked perfect
throughout. I was also experiencing intermittent kernel panics as well
and the Tech told me he thought that was also a result of the loose
graphics chip explaining that the GUI ran through the graphics chip
and when the current was briefly interrupted by the loose chip this
forced the system into a kernel panic. Thought I would pass that along
maybe it will help someone. Unexplained kernel panics also could be an
early warning that there is a problem with the soldering on the
graphics chip."
So try the same trick on that board.
One bit of good news is that chip is a ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 4x AGP and there are thousands of them out there that could be swapped in if it turns out that chip is bad.
Richard
Message was edited by: spudnuty

Swapped hard drive - dvd drive doesn't work now!

hi
Long story but... my logic board in my 1ghz G4 combo drive ibook died so i bought another used ibook (1.33ghz superdrive). The new one had a 60G HD but my old one had a 120G HD so i swapped the bigger one into the newer one. The old 120G HD had 10.3.9 on it while the 60G HD in the newer ibook had 10.5. As expected, the newer ibook started up with the older HD with OS 10.3 with all my stuff on it and everything appeared to be successful until I tried to put in my OS 10.4 DVD to update to a newer OS. It didn't read the DVD so I tried other cd's and DVD's - nothing works? I've been assured that the superdrive in the newer one does (well did!) work. I tried patchburn and that just tells me the dvd drive is supported by osx already.
Is there some way of testing if it's the dvd drive or some sort of driver or firmware that needs updating?
I can't face stripping it down again and swapping the superdrive out for the old combo drive - especially if that is not guaranteed to fix it!
Any ideas?
thanks

One observation on the hard drive cable plugging into the logic board. On my iBookG4, the connector is covered with a piece of yellow tape which seems to be pretty sticky along the edges. When I took my iBook apart to get out the logic board, I noticed that the hard drive connector had become quite firmly attached to the metal shield just from the edges of the tape, and the connector pulled out of the socket when removing the shield. I have heard of the hard drive just becoming disconnected, and I think it's because the tape can stick to the shield and result in the hard drive connector pulling loose from the socket in the logic board. You might check to see if this has happened. A small piece of paper placed on the back of the yellow tape that would keep it from sticking to the shield should prevent this problem. I plan to do that when I put mine back together.
Good luck!

Swapping hard drive from one MacBook to another

I'll spare you the gory details, but my daughter broke the screen on her 2.0 Core Duo MacBook, one of the original ones. It has a 250 gb hard drive that I put in to replace the small stock drive. We are replacing this MacBook with a new one, a 2.0 Core 2 Duo. What I would like to do is simply swap out the hard drive from the old and out it in the new one. The old one does have Leopard. Is there any reason this would not work? Thanks.
(Also, is there any market anywhere for a MacBook that works fine except for the broken screen?)

twincities1 wrote:
I'll spare you the gory details, but my daughter broke the screen on her 2.0 Core Duo MacBook, one of the original ones. It has a 250 gb hard drive that I put in to replace the small stock drive. We are replacing this MacBook with a new one, a 2.0 Core 2 Duo. What I would like to do is simply swap out the hard drive from the old and out it in the new one. The old one does have Leopard. Is there any reason this would not work? Thanks.
You may need to run Leopard install again on the drive when it's in the new MacBook. There will be some drivers and stuff that won't be on there that the new one needs. You could probably just do an upgrade to do this.
(Also, is there any market anywhere for a MacBook that works fine except for the broken screen?)
You could consider keeping it and hooking it to an external monitor and use it that way as a spare computer.
You could also look online at some of the MacBook repir shops and see if they buy broken MacBooks for parts.

Swapping hard drives clamshell to G3 dual usb

Long story short... I bought an iBook G3 from someone and it's shorted the hard drive. I have an iBook clamshell that has a perfectly working hard drive. I would like to swap them out and use the dual usb iBook. Are there any known incompatibility issues in terms of software? (OS switching, different ports, etc)
Or, hypothetically, should it work?

Try starting up from a system software CD or DVD, and repair your disk using Disk Utility:
Insert the Mac OS X Install or Restore disc.
Restart the computer, then hold the C key during startup.
From the Apple menu, choose Disk Utility. Do this in the first screen of the Installer. Don't click Continue. If you click Continue in a Mac OS X Installer version earlier than 10.2, you must restart from CD again.
Click the First Aid tab.
Click Repair Disk.
After repairing the disk, try to start from the Mac OS X hard disk.
If you are able to start up in OS X, then go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility and repair permissions on the hard drive.

Swapping hard drives yet again!!

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