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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > Restoring After MacBook HD Upgrade

Restoring After MacBook HD Upgrade
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biscuit
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Jun 24, 2011, 06:11 PM
 
I've just ordered a new 500GB drive to replace the nearly full 200GB drive in my MacBook.

What's the best way to restore after I've upgraded? I could clone the drive first or restore from my Time Capsule. The Time Capsule restore will take forever, but if I clone the drive won't it then copy the whole drive onto my Time Capsule again afterwards?

Any help much appreciated.

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AKcrab
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Jun 25, 2011, 01:19 AM
 
Get an enclosure of some sort for a 2.5" SATA drive. Install the new drive, put the old drive in the enclosure and connect it to the macbook (preferably via firewire). Boot your macbook from your installation dvd (or snow leopard dvd if you've upgraded). When it asks you where you want to install your OS, don't do that.. In the menu bar is Utilities where you can access Disk Utility.

In Disk Utility go ahead and format your new drive, and then click the restore tab. Drag and drop your source and destination, choose "erase destination" and it will clone the old drive to the new.

It's going to take a long time...

I believe that when you are done, the time capsule won't even know you've done anything and should just chug along, but I could be completely wrong about that.
     
Waragainstsleep
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Jun 25, 2011, 05:49 AM
 
I always prefer to install an OS on the new drive and migrate from the old one with migration assistant.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
biscuit  (op)
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Jun 25, 2011, 05:41 PM
 
Thanks for the tip. I didn't know you could use Disk Utility to do that. I guess it's basically what happens with a Time Machine restore anyway.

Would there be any point in booting from CD then restoring from the Time Capsule? That way I can hook up MacBook and Time Capsule over gigabit ethernet cable. Would that be better or worse than USB 2.0? Sadly, I don't have a FireWire enclosure.

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Waragainstsleep
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Jun 25, 2011, 05:51 PM
 
Theoretically ethernet is quicker than USB.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
biscuit  (op)
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Jun 29, 2011, 04:24 PM
 
For the benefit of anyone who stumbles across this thread, here's how the upgrade played out.

Firstly, I found a thread at macosxhints.com that indicated Time Machine doesn't copy the whole disk again after a restore. I mostly followed the instructions they provided (can't find the thread now). Here's what I did:

1. Ran a Time Machine backup so everything was up to date. Made a note that my Time Capsule had ~240GB free;
2. Swapped the disks;
(At this point I booted from the old disk because I'd forgotten to note down my Time Capsule's password)
3. Plugged in the Time Capsule with an ethernet cable;
4. Popped in the Install DVD and booted;
5. Launched Disk Utility from the Utilities menu and formatted the new disk;
(Here I got a bit confused because I tried to do the restore with Disk Utility - I mounted the sparsebundle but then remembered the correct next step)
6. Quit Disk Utility and selected 'Restore from Time Machine...' from the Utilities menu;
7. Picked the disk that worked (there was a choice, only the mounted 'Time Machine Backups' image worked);
8. Let the restore run. It said it would take 9 hours but it actually only took 3;
9. Booted from the new disk. All looked well. Spotlight was re-indexing everything (I guess the Spotlight index isn't backed up by TM - makes sense);
10. Selected 'Back up now' from TM menu and let it run overnight;
11. Once that was done I checked the TC's capacity: still ~240GB free.

And just like that, I now have 310GB free rather than 7GB. You could speed things up if you didn't have to boot from a DVD. I wonder if you could clone the installation DVD onto a USB stick.

A few oddities. I had to reauthorise my iTunes account when I plugged in my iPhone and when I launched Mail the "Welcome to Mail" screen came up and it reimported all my messages.

Anyway, all done. My only thought now is that I should have spent the extra £30 and got the hybrid drive.

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Waragainstsleep
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Jun 29, 2011, 07:38 PM
 
You can take an image of the DVD and restore it a USB stick. A USB drive is usually quicker than a stick and a firewire (800) drive is even better still. I have a firewire/USB drive with Leopard, Snow Leopard and Snow Leopard Server installers on it. Invaluable.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
B Gallagher
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Jul 8, 2011, 09:43 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
You can take an image of the DVD and restore it a USB stick. A USB drive is usually quicker than a stick and a firewire (800) drive is even better still. I have a firewire/USB drive with Leopard, Snow Leopard and Snow Leopard Server installers on it. Invaluable.
Indeed. Use Disk Utility to make a disk image of the install DVD, and then restore this onto a blank partition. Great way to have a backup of important optical media.
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