[Ouhei]

I want to upgrade my internal HD to 120gig and use my current 60gig as an external drive in an enclosure.

My question is, is there a way to transfer my programs off the old drive onto the new one? I have a lot of programs that we'll just say can't easily just be reinstalled (wink wink) and I'd rather avoid getting them all again.

Also, I assume it works like this: Swap out drives, install os x on new drive, ????, profit?

[mfbernstein]

Easiest solution is to:
1) Put old drive in external enclosure, and new drive in machine.
2) Boot from external drive.
3) Use a program like SuperDuper to make a bootable duplicate of the external drive onto the internal one.

Saves you from having to reinstall anything (OS X or apps).

[Ouhei]

Originally Posted by mfbernstein 

Easiest solution is to:
1) Put old drive in external enclosure, and new drive in machine.
2) Boot from external drive.
3) Use a program like SuperDuper to make a bootable duplicate of the external drive onto the internal one.

Saves you from having to reinstall anything (OS X or apps).

Any way to just do the apps? I want to put boot camp on, but when I tried to do it on this drive I kept getting errors. After researching people were only able to resolve them by reinstalling os x.

[mfbernstein]

Don't know if it'd work, but you can try running BootCamp Assistant off the external drive to partition the internal one _before_ you copy your data over. Often, if the assistant fails it's because the drive is too full/fragmented for the partition to be resized. Obviously with a new empty drive this wouldn't be an issue.

Alternatively, you can just manually create an MSDOS partition when you're formatting the internal drive. Just make sure that when you're in the Partition tab of Disk Utility, you set the partition scheme to GUID under 'Options.'

Copying just the apps is tricky because they tend to stick all sorts of garbage in /Library (and in some cases elsewhere).

[Ouhei]

Originally Posted by mfbernstein 

Don't know if it'd work, but you can try running BootCamp Assistant off the external drive to partition the internal one _before_ you copy your data over. Often, if the assistant fails it's because the drive is too full/fragmented for the partition to be resized. Obviously with a new empty drive this wouldn't be an issue.

Alternatively, you can just manually create an MSDOS partition when you're formatting the internal drive. Just make sure that when you're in the Partition tab of Disk Utility, you set the partition scheme to GUID under 'Options.'

Copying just the apps is tricky because they tend to stick all sorts of garbage in /Library (and in some cases elsewhere).

Yeah, I may just starting gathering up the programs again, shouldn't be all that hard.

If I just take out my current drive and put it in the enclosure, install os x on the new drive, would I be able to access the contents of the drive (like my movies, music, photo's etc)

[mfbernstein]

Certainly. Though some applications will need to be configured to look for their data on the external drive, if you choose to leave it there, ie iTunes Music or iPhotos Picture folders. If you just want to put everything on the internal drive, then you don't even have to do that. Just copy over the relevant folders.

Still, all other things being equal, I'd recommend seeing if you can use the BootCamp assistant on the blank drive, and then using SuperDuper to copy over all your stuff. Copying 60GB will probably take an hour or too, but compared to reinstalling OS X and even a dozen apps, it'll be light years faster. Plus if it doesn't turn out as expected, you can always do the installation manually.

[Ouhei]

Well, ordered my 160gig HD and enclosure, should be here friday!

[chabig]

The easiest way to transfer just the apps is to use the Migration Assistant, found in the Utilities folder. You can tell it transfer the apps and nothing else.

[sdilley14]

From my experiences, Photoshop won't transfer between machines. Even using the Migration Assistant. Anyone else have better luck? I was abl to transfer it over, but it wouldn't actually start up and run. I'd get the "Adobe Space Money" splash screen then it'd quit.