[nickw311]

I just bought a 100 gig hard drive for my MacBook and want to get everything off of my 60 gig HD onto the 100 gig one. What is the best way to do that? I have a 160 gig Firewire external drive, should I copy everything from the internal 60 gig to that and then copy it back over to the 100 gig once I have it installed? Is there an easier way to do this? I really dont want to loose all of my prefs and other files.

[cmoney]

Or spend some bux and get an external SATA USB/Firewire case. Plop the 100GB in there and back up to it. Then switch the 100 and 60 and you've now got an extra portable 60GB drive.

Or you can even do the switch first and then boot up from the external (60GB) drive and backup to the internal (now 100GB) drive.

(Though it may be hard to find an external SATA Firewire case for a laptop drive. I don't even know if there's any difference in the SATA interface for laptop and 3.5" drives like there is on IDE drives.)

[nickw311]

The external drive is 160 gigs, it is a MiniMate Firewire drive. There is no way that I can transfer the files directly from the 60 gig MB hard drive to the new 100 gig hard drive. I am also not going to buy an extra enclosure because I dont need a 60 gig external drive, I already have a 160 gig external drive and I am giving the 60 gig drive to a buddy to put in his now defunct 12" PowerBook.

[harrisjamieh]

The 60 GB drive will not go in your mates PB - the drive is SATA, the PB will only take ATA drives

[cmoney]

No I meant if you had the external case you could put the 60 in there and install the 100 then boot from the external 60.

There's a case on newegg for $50. And if you don't wanna keep it, check out their return policies. Nudge nudge wink wink...

[megasad]

Originally Posted by cmoney

There's a case on newegg for $50. And if you don't wanna keep it, check out their return policies. Nudge nudge wink wink...

I'm guessing this is the one you meant. Since this is the only 2.5" SATA enclosure I've found on all the interweb, does anyone know of any other shop that sells it, that will ship to the UK?

[cmoney]

Sorry, don't know about shipping to UK, but here's another enclosure:

http://www.cooldrives.com/almiposa25in.html

except it's out of stock.

And here's an interesting cable, USB to SATA:

http://www.pcmicrostore.com/PartDeta...x?q=p:10503894

Also found this info about 2.5" SATA:
"Unlike IDE, a Serial ATA connector is the same design regardless of drive size" from
http://www.firewiremax.com/usbtosaoride.html

Sorry, I don't know much about SATA yet, let alone SATA on a 2.5" drive but hope this helps.

[bfalchuk]

According to an Apple Genius, you can't do the Migration Assistant cloning with USB. It's gotta be FireWire

[Simon]

Originally Posted by nickw311

The external drive is 160 gigs, it is a MiniMate Firewire drive. There is no way that I can transfer the files directly from the 60 gig MB hard drive to the new 100 gig hard drive. I am also not going to buy an extra enclosure because I dont need a 60 gig external drive, I already have a 160 gig external drive and I am giving the 60 gig drive to a buddy to put in his now defunct 12" PowerBook.

Don't worry, it's very simple and you don't need to buy anything.

• Open Disk Utility (it's in /Applications/Utilites)
• Go to Software Restore
• Drag your internal disk to 'Source'
• Drag the external FW partition to 'Destination'
• Hit restore
• Turn off the MB, exchange the disk
• Boot from the external FW drive (hold alt while booting and select the FW partition you just cloned to)
• Open Disk Utility
• Format the new 100GB drive
• Go to Software Restore
• Drag the clone partition to 'Source'
• Drag the 100GB partition to 'Destination'
• Hit restore
• Reboot from the 100GB partition

Simple as that. Good luck!