Upgrading stock hard drive: how to copy lion and files to new drive

Per above, I'm planning to replace my stock 5400rpm drive with a new Western Digital Scorpio Black drive this evening. I want to transfer all my files, folders, and applications from the old drive to the new one.
I have an external drive, which has my Time Machine backup. Can I use that backup to just restore everything after physically installing the new WD? Mor is there a better way?

I would get an enclosure in which to place your old drive. Then boot from the external drive, partition and format the new drive then clone the old drive to the new one:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
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. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
Clone Lion using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Select Disk Utility from the main menu then press the Continue button.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the new drive. Source means the external old drive.

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Upgrading stock hard drive

I just purchased an 80GB hard drive for my iMac DV 400. I don't have an external firewire box and since I would probably never use it again, I cannot justify buying one.
Since I bought this iMac used, it did not come with discs to reinstall OS X. Can I temporarily unplug the CD-ROM ribbon and attach it to the new hard drive and then carbon copy the stock drive to the new one, then replace the stock drive, and reattach the CD-ROM? If yes, I assume they would be master and slave.
Is this the best way without a firewire box?
Thanks!

An old wise man once told me...
Old stock drive + Firewire case = Bargain back-up device + peace of mind for your vital data from now on.
Well actually I made that up. However, for about $45 I think it's a no-brainer. You can keep the old OS on there just incase you get a corruption on the internal drive; which considering you don't have OS disks...
If you don't want to have the ability to boot or recover your Mac, just transfer data, the USB case is available from $15.
mrtotes

I have a rather old iMac 20" (mid 2007) and I want to upgrade the Hard drive. How do I change it? How do I transfer all my applications? May I just copy the old hd into the new one? Thanks.

I have a rather old iMac 20" (mid 2007) and I want to upgrade the Hard drive. How do I change it? How do I transfer all my applications? May I just copy the old hd into the new one? Thanks.

There are many online tutorials on how to change out the HD on a mid 2007 iMac. One of the originals is from 2007 and is Upgrade your iMac 20" or iMac 24" aluminum (mid 2007) to 1TB Hard Drive and 4 GB RAM - DIY Guide. As far as migrating your system Apple helps out with that in Setup Assistant which automatically starts when you turn on a new Mac for the first time. After you have installed the new HD you will have to format the new HD to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and then you will have to install OS X. The first time you turn it on Setup Assistant will start. Follow the directions and you will be fine. In order to restore your information you will need to backup what is on the current internal HD first. I'd recommend using Time Machine (Assuming you are using Leopard or later) AND also creating a bootable clone using either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.
Please complete your profile so at the very least we know what version of OS X your machine has installed.

How thow to upgrade a hard drive in an mac mini 1.7

what hard drive does the mac mini take 1.7 model of feb 2006 and how to you upgrade the hard drive if you can? and also replace the optical DVD copy drive?
thanks
rich

To replace HD
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/mac_mini_06-08/
Google did not find anything about replacing the optical drive with a HD in your model Mini

Hi, I bought the macbook pro 15 3 months ago. I wanna upgrade the hard drive to 128G ssd drive. How much I should paid?

Hi, I bought the macbook pro 15 3 months ago. I wanna upgrade the hard drive to 128G ssd drive. How much I should paid?

Qingfeng wrote:
Hi, I bought the macbook pro 15 3 months ago. I wanna upgrade the hard drive to 128G ssd drive. How much I should paid?
Well you won't have very much storage capacity with a SSD that small, also SSD has limited writes, so it wouldn't be good for on-loading and off-loading a lot of files.
SSD isn't being securely erased due to steps to prevent their premature wear, so despite what you do in Disk Utility Secure Erase, your confidential data can still be recovered if you pass the machine on to someone else for instance.
Other than those reasons, small SSD's can be extremely fast, loading your programs and OS much faster. But the real benefit in high speed storage is transfering large amounts of files on/off the computer to ANOTHER fast device. This comes in handy for video and large music collections and so forth.
Since the SSD because of it's limited writes doesn't fit the bill as a large file transfer medium.
If you want to get a SSD drive, you can upgrade it yourself simply by ordering one online at locations like Other World Computing or NewEgg and have a 00 micro phillips head screwdriver handy.
There are instructions over at iFixit for opening your MacBook and replacing the hard drive with the SSD.
Preferably you will want to clone your present boot drive to a external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner, then making the switch and hold option to boot from the clone and then clone from the external to the new internal SSD drive.
Prices of SSD are varied, Apple won't replace it for you
This is currently the fastest SSD availalbe
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd.php?hdd=OCZ-VERTEX3+MI

I'm installing windows 7 64-bit on my imac which I've done before but I get a message that the partition is GPT even after I format the bootcamp partition. I just upgraded my hard drive to a 3tb and I'm allocating 1tb for windows. How can I fix this?

I'm installing windows 7 64-bit on my imac which I've done before but I get a message that the partition is GPT even after I format the bootcamp partition. I just upgraded my hard drive to a 3tb and I'm allocating 1tb for windows. How can I fix this?

No easy fix for a few reasons:
1) Bootcamp requires a hybrid MBR for the partition table. That is: both an MBR and a GPT partition table at the same time with the GPT one having all partitions and the MBR one having only the ones that are relevant, but at most 4 of them (including the protective partition and the Macintosh HD one). Which leads us to:
2) The MBR part of the hybrid partition table cannot work with 3TB hard drives. MBR is limited to 2TB.
I am working on a small EFI app that can boot Windows in EFI mode on a Mac and that would mean that you can go GPT only on your system. The progress of the app is slow due to the nature of EFI and for now requires that you do an unattended Windows install with slipstreamed graphics drivers, but we are adding VGA loading on top of EFI quite soon after the rest of the app stabilises. The status of the app is documented at:
Win7 x64 booting natively via EFI (no bios emulation)
Windows does actually successfully boot in EFI mode on most Macs (anything with a 64bit EFI should work), but does not have graphics support even if you load the driver due to the VGA pci registers not being set by the firmware. Furthermore, in Setup and Safe Mode, Windows uses VGA instead of GOP which is a failure by design since VGA is a BIOS standard and not really compatible without hacks with EFI. Other EFI implementations also add VGA compatibility at a high cost to the firmware complexity for the VGA cards available on the market that don't actually contain anything in their ROM except the VGA BIOS.
My recomendations:
1) Install on a second smaller hard-drive; or
2) Wait for the EFI app to come out officially and use that to boot Windows Vista SP1 x64 and Windows 7 x64 (RTM and SP1) in the native EFI mode.
3) Wait for Windows 8 which supports VGA-less booting acording to the AMD presentation at UEFI Plugfest.

Is there a 'how-to' anywhere about upgrading the hard drive?

Hi Guys,
I'd quite like to upgrade the hard drive in my 24 inch 3.06GHz iMac to 2TB. Is there a step-by-step 'how to' available anywhere or has anyone done it successfully?
I've done laptops on many occasions but the iMac has a difficult looking case to crack!
Thanks
Rich

Hi mate,
Haha, no I have no preconceptions about firewire! My iMac has a 400 and an 800. The 800 is connected to a Sony DV video deck and the 400 is connected to a RAID drive that is then daisy-chained to another external firewire and a Wiebetech bare hard drive device that I just swap out various hard drives to for clients.
I suppose I should really be looking at a tower, but I sold a G5 Quad to downsize to the smaller footprint iMac and have been happy with it's performance - but the new ones have more space and more RAM capability - it's just a shame they don't have the connectivity options of even this iMac.
Cheers
Rich

How to upgrade my hard drive, videos?...

Hi, I'd like to upgrade my hard drive. Wonder how hard it is to do and if there are some good videos showing how it's done.
I've got a 2008 macbook pro. Model 4,1. Bought in April 2008, just before the aluminum solid chasis models were released. Right now it has a 200 gb hard drive at 5400 rpm.
I've been looking at seagate momentus 2.5" drives. Between 500-750 gb and 7200 rpm with 16mb of cache.
Would you recommend a different drive? If yes, why please...
Also, I'm thinking I'll need to buy a tool set to help me taking apart my computer.
thanks for any help, maybe tips as well, things to be careful with, look out for, etc...
Morris

How handy are you feeling?
Other World Computing calls the skill level for replacing the hard drive in your model "Involved." Their video is about 10 minutes long, depending on whether the MBP is 15" or 17". (Look under Tech Support.)
I replaced the hard drive in my 2007 17" twice for capacity reasons following printed instructions; it was about a dozen steps, some with substeps, plus reassembly. Make sure you have a large, clean, static-free surface to work on, a clear surface to stand on (and find dropped screws on), the appropriate set of tools, cups or sticky tape loops to keep the various sets of screws from getting mixed together, and no pets "helping." A grounding strap for your wrist is probably appropriate if your area is prone to static electricity.
At one of the capacity-related replacements, I stepped up from 5400RPM to 7200RPM. The MBP felt surprisingly sprightly afterwards.
The third and final replacement of the drive on that MBP was done professionally as part of problem diagnosis. Had I continued using it as my primary notebook, I would probably have tried a hybrid drive next.

Upgrade MacBook Hard Drive

While it is obvious that I can upgrade a hard drive, I would like to do so without reinstalling software and, as importantly, changing an identifier (such as a serial number) so that my online backup software will not balk when trying to back up. I hope that this is clearer than it sounds but essentially, I want the new, larger hard drive that I install, to be identified as the same as the smaller that I had after the upgrade. (Do not want iTunes to consider this a new device, don't want Carbonite to think its a different drive and make me reupload everything, etc.) How would this work?

Ahsley is correct. Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper are two most common and most recommended options. You put your new drive in an external enclosure and clone your internal drive to the external one. Reboot the machine holding down the Option key and select the external drive just to make sure it is working properly (it will be much slower as it will be running over the firewire or USB port... both of which are slower than the internal SATA). After you're convinced everything is working properly, just swap the drives.
To the best of my knowledge, nothing is based off of a drive serial number... but rather the logic board serial. Using a drive serial number for any sort of verification would be a bad idea considering how often they fail or are upgraded.

Upgrade MacBook Hard Drive - Restore System from Time Machine Backup?

I have a MacBook that I want to upgrade the hard drive of. Am I right in thinking, all I need to do is:
Run Time Machine one last time, to make a recent backup of the MacBook
Install the new hard drive in the MacBook
Insert the Snow Leopard DVD, and start a clean installation
During installation, select the option to Restore System From Backup...
Will this copy across ALL of the contents of the old MacBook's hard drive, to the new MacBook's hard drive? A perfect clone? Because that's what I want to do.

I performed the installation, restoring a Time Machine backup from the external hard drive to the new blank internal one I put inside the MacBook. Everything went fine, except for one problem.
Now, whenever I try to open Safari, it immediately crashes with the error message:
"Safari quit unexpectedly
Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)"
What's going on? How can I stop Safari from doing this? I've repaired permissions using Disk Utility, and Spotlight has finished re-indexing everything.

I am trying to upgrade my 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, just before cloning may start and receive an "error 254" and can go no further. Any idea what this error is?

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.
Vince

Connect the HDD to your MBP. Open Disk Utility>Erase and drag the HDD icon inrt the Name field. The format should be Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Click on the Erase button.
Then try the clone process again. You may use Disk Utility>Restore or a third party cloning application such as Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper.
Ciao.

Upgrade my hard drive

I have a Macbook that I need to upgrade my hard drive to the maximun size and speed possible. Is it something that I can do or only Apple? And if so, how difficult is it.

Putting in a new hard drive is easy. For a new hard drive try Newegg.com http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=380&name=Laptop-Hard-Dr ives&Order=PRICE
Or OWC http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/
Here are instructions on replacing the hard drive in a MacBook with a removable battery. http://creativemac.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=45088
Here are video instructions on replacing the hard drive on the Aluminum Unibody http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/macbookpro_13_unibody_hd/
Here are video instructions on replacing the hard drive on the White Unibody http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/macbook_13_09_unibody_hd/
To transfer your current hard drive I like the free application Carbon Copy Cloner. It makes a bootable copy of everything on your hard drive http://www.bombich.com/index.html You'll need a cheap SATA external hard drive case. Put the new drive in the case then partition and format the new drive and clone your old drive to the new one. Check that it's set up right by booting up from the external drive. Then replace your old hard drive with the new one and put your old one in the external case.
Here's a cheap SATA external hard drive case on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-NexStar-2-5-Inch-External-Enclosure/dp/B002JQNXZC/r ef=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332118549&sr=8-1
If you don’t have the tools to open up the MacBook OWC has a set for $5
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TOOLKITMHD/

Least painful way to upgrade my hard drive if I don't want to use an image.

I want to upgrade my hard drive and DO NOT want to restore from an image–mostly because there is fifteen years worth of crap on my current image so I want to start completely fresh and copy over only what I currently need.
I bought the new drive. I have other drives with backup images on them. I just downloaded DivXInstaller. Now that I have all of the parts I don't know what to do with them.
What's the least painful way to do this?

chenango232 wrote:
Missing a pretty big step here.... How does one install a new OS on an external drive? You can't install an OS without first booting into an OS. I don't have a disk to boot to, but have gotten as far as downloading the install software. Perhaps the answer you should be providing is that I need to create an install disk somehow?
Is not the current HDD in your MBP a boot drive? If so and you have Yosemite installed, you can boot into the recovery partition. From the 4 option menu you can use Disk Utility. If you have the NEW HDD connected to the MBP it will appear in Disk Utility. Click on that drive to format in Disk Utility>Erase. After formatting, go to the 'Reinstall OSX' option and install the OSX onto the external HDD. When finished swap the drives.
Ciao

"Negotiated Link Speed" question to make informed decision on upgrading my hard drive

This is my first post on any help forum I've made in a while as I have usually found answers if I looked hard enough. I am glad I caught and investigated this detail before buying anything that may not improve. What I really want to do is top my macbook out. I'll try to provide as much useful info I can and appreciate what clear insight anyone has for me.
While comparing the specs of my current hard-drive to the SSD ones, I couldn't help but notice these line items:
Link Speed:    3 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed:    1.5 Gigabit
While I spent a great deal of time researching similar concerns I could not find the answers that I needed, or made any sense. I'm going to include the hardware specs of my system to make this easier for anyone who is more knowledgeable about what is causing the 1.5 limit. My current stock hard drive is a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 SATA.
Serial-ATA:
NVidia MCP79 AHCI:
Vendor:    NVidia
Product:    MCP79 AHCI
* Link Speed:    3 Gigabit
* Negotiated Link Speed:    1.5 Gigabit
Description:    AHCI Version 1.20 Supported
Hardware Overview:
Model Name:    MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:    MacBookPro5,4
Processor Name:    Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:    2.53 GHz
Number of Processors:    1
Total Number of Cores:    2
L2 Cache:    3 MB
Memory:    8 GB
Bus Speed:    1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version:    MBP53.00AC.B03
SMC Version (system):    1.49f2
All I am looking to do is top out my system hardware wise. I already maxed the RAM and was interested in getting an SSD. Before I do....I need to know why the 'negotiated link speed' is not reading 3gb as well, and if it's something I can correct. If I upgrade to a 6gb SSL and the value still reads 1.5 I'll have wasted my money. Thanks all.

I looked in as many sources as I could find, and didn't see any 'published' link speed for my macbook. I am led to believe that it is 3gb based on the system report. Since my 5400rpm drive cannot physically achieve much less than 1gbs, if what your saying is true (which is sounds to me that you know what you're talking about).
With this understanding, even if a 7200rpm drive can't saturated the 1.5gb, and even if my Macbook data *may* not be able to exceed 3, would it be logical to say that an SSD would gives me 3x the speed if I upgrade? I'm just looking to get the most out of my computer with the current processor and the 8gb of RAM. If it makes the music software, opening/closing programs, reboot, start-up, shutdown and things like that more noticeably 'snappier'. I can be comfortable with the investment.
"The bottleneck is the drive's best-case transfer rate."
I would like to know how to go about determining this. I also need to know if I have to limit my choices to an SSD based on the recommended upgrades for my specific computer:
http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Upgrades.cfm?&model=353&type=Internal+Drive&sort =pop
or if I can get a discounted one such as this:
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0364781
Speed and compatibility. Before I upgraded to this macbook from my PC, I was chasing incompatibility issues all over the place and got to spend less than 10% of my time actually working on music/video production. If only I had know then what I know now….but that's why I gotta do my homework before buying everything these days

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

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

- First get iTunes to see the iPod:
iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch: Device not recognized in iTunes for Windows
- The transfer iTunes purchases to the computer:
iTunes Store: Transferring purchases from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to a computer
- For non-iTunes purchased music you need a third-party program like one of those discussed here:
Copy music from Ipod to new computer...: Apple Support Communities
- Connect the iPOd to the computer and make a backup by right clicking on the iPod under Devices in iTunes and select Back Up
- Restore the iPod from that backup.

Upgrading stock hard drive: how to copy lion and files to new drive

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