[kennedy]

I have a MacBook with a 160GB drive, of which I am using 84GB.
I want to swap that out for a 128GB SS drive for the higher speed, since I don't need the space.
I went to do what I always do... Disk Utility Restore and copy from the old to the new.
But it tells me my new drive is too small. Its smaller, but its plenty big to hold the data on there.

Options?

[anthology123]

Image to an external drive first. then swap drives, then image back to the smaller SSD drive. I assume you are using a different boot disk to do all of this.

[reader50]

Try SuperDuper. It is shareware, but basic disk imaging / copying is free. It is based on file copying, so it will copy from bigger to smaller drives, so long as there is enough space for all files.

[Art Vandelay]

Disk Utility would probably do it too if you don't check off the erase option.

[tooki]

Precisely.

[Simon]

No need for SuperDuper or CCC. All they do is cause trouble.

Use Disk Utility > Restore and do NOT check the erase destination box to do a file copy. That works just fine from a larger to a smaller disk.

[jmiddel]

I differ with Simon on this. I have been using both SD and CCC for years without a problem. I back up every night to 2 drives with SD, works flawlessly, and whenever I need to copy my main drive to another one I use CCC, never had a problem. Also, SD allows for a 'Smart Update' which copies only modified files, much less wear and tear on the drive. Can Restore be set up to incrementally backup externals on schedule?

[reader50]

Originally Posted by Simon 

No need for SuperDuper or CCC. All they do is cause trouble.

Use Disk Utility > Restore and do NOT check the erase destination box to do a file copy. That works just fine from a larger to a smaller disk.

I wish to respectfully disagree. The last time I did a drive upgrade, I moved the contents of multiple drives. ie - copy contents to newest (biggest) drive. Then next biggest moved to previously biggest drive. It was a hand-me-down process, with each of my volumes getting a size upgrade.

Disk Utility stopped partway through two of the copy operations. In which case I used SD. In the past, I've had SD fail to complete a copy a few times. I've found it useful to keep both solutions on hand. Admittedly this is under Tiger - perhaps Disk Utility has gotten more solid in the Leopards.

Originally Posted by jmiddel 

Also, SD allows for a 'Smart Update' which copies only modified files, much less wear and tear on the drive.

note that SD's incremental update is a premium feature that requires you to register and pay the shareware fee. SD is free so long as you stick to the full-volume features.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by jmiddel 

Can Restore be set up to incrementally backup externals on schedule?

Disk Utility does not do either (incremental backup or scheduling) but i suspect you already knew that.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by jmiddel 

Can Restore be set up to incrementally backup externals on schedule?

No. By design. A clone can only be trusted as a clone so long as you don't increment. Scheduling OTOH is easy if you script asr.

There are tons of reports on the web (even some on this board) where people who incremented with SD or CCC ran into trouble when they needed to rely on what they thought was a good clone. These tools tend to work until they don't. And then you're screwed.

If you're looking for an incremental backup (not clone!) solution, I suggest TM or if you want to be more fancy rsync.

[anthology123]

I can't say who is right here, all I know is I created an image from a basic system with all the needed apps that was on a 320 GB hard drive. I imaged it with Disk Utility and got a much smaller size image, the content not being more than 20GB uncompressed. I then have used disk utility to install this system image on every drive from 80 to 250 GB with no problem. YMMV. Good luck.

[kennedy]

Thanks Art / tooki... I'd have never dreamt that the erase option would have been the problem.
Worked perfectly.