LostInTechnology

How To Upgrade Your MacBook Hard Drive – Part 2

Posted on 30. Jul, 2009 by Douglas Reynolds in How To

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I left off in Hard Drive Upgrade with an external drive prepared and ready to receive an image of my existing primary drive.  That article discussed backup strategies, a list of items needed in order to perform the data migration and what is needed in order to get started. We then stepped through the process of formatting and partitioning an external drive.

In this article, we are going to go through the process of using SuperDuper.

Forward Progress

At this time, we’ve completed all of the previous steps and are ready to move on.  Earlier, we downloaded and installed SuperDuper, a backup utility.  SuperDuper is free, but also has a registered version with some enhancements for $27.00.  The free version is all we need to take care of cloning our existing drive to our new drive located in the external enclosure.  SuperDuper is amazingly easy to use, by default, running a backup has all of the settings we need to make a bootable clone of the external drive.

Using SuperDuper

If not already connected, attach the external drive to your Mac so that it will be available upon launch of SuperDuper.  Fire up SuperDuper, the initial window will open.

SuperDuper’s Initial Dialog

By default, the primary drive is selected in the ‘Copy’ combo box, chose the new drive volume in the ‘to’ combo box.  This defines that we will be copying “Macintosh HD”,  primary drive, to “Macintosh Primary HD”.  Macintosh Primary HD, as I named it earlier during partitioning, will later be installed into my MacBook as a new bootable copy of my old hard drive.  My original drive is 80 GB, hence the need to upgrade – given that I have about 350MB left at the time of this writing.  My new drive is 320GB and should last me for at least a couple more years, which will probably be longer than the lifecycle of this 2 year-old machine I’m working on.

In the “using” combo box, leave the default selection as it was, “Backup – all files”.  Below the Copy/to configuration there is a window which explains what is about to happen.  Had i done a better job of reading the manual, I would have realized that SuperDuper does an erase for me.  My previous step of formatting might not have been necessary.  Regardless, it only took a few seconds and its probably not a bad idea to be sure that the drive is completely prepared.

Leaving all the options as default, click on the “Copy Now” button.  A confirmation popup opens warning us that we are about to erase the drive in the external enclosure.  If you are sure this is what you want to do then click “Copy”.  If you change your mind, this is where you want to click on “Don’t Copy”.

Copy – Erase Confirmation

After clicking on copy, SuperDuper will ask you for your username and password, this is to ensure that this operation is authorized by the root user.

Authenticate For Copy

Enter your username and password in the dialoge and click ok to proceed.  SuperDuper begins the copy process and opens a status window which provides information about what it is going to do, what it is currently doing, and the statistics of the copy process.

Copy Progress

As of the time that I grabbed this screen shot, SuperDuper had prepared both drives, erased the new drive and preserved the state of Spotlight to my new drive.  The copy process had begun and I could see the progress bar, the statistics of files to be coppied, current copy speed, number of GB evaluated and copied, and then what would occur following the copy process.  In this case, SuperDuper is going to create a bootable drive, exactly what we want.

In my case, I am copying just about 80GB of data from my existing drive to my new drive.  So grab a good book, do some channel surfing, chat with some friends, take a hot-tub, its going to take a while.

Copy Completed

When copy is completed a little “Please Register” popup will open, giving you a chance to register SuperDuper.  This program is awesome, support the programmers if you feel the same.  If not, just click on “Later” and review what SuperDuper has completed.

Copy Review

Its interesting to see the statistics on files evaluated, files copied, and effective copy speed.  This image took 2:22 hours to complete.  Click on OK to finish, the original copy window will open, simply close this to finish.

Comparing Drives

At this point, lets have a look at the information on our existing drive as compared to the new drive.  Open Finder and select the existing drive and press Apple+I, then do the same with the new external drive.  Two information windows should now be open so that we can compare.

Comparing Drive Information

The information contained on the two drives is really close, its not exact, but I have a feeling its going to be just fine.  The only differences I see are in the “Used” numbers which are probably things such as temporary internet files, cached images, etc. that have been added/changed on the file system since I began.  Even the creation dates are the same.  Have a look at “Sharing and Permissions” at the bottom of both information windows.  The permissions should be identical.

Open up the new external drive in Finder and have a look around, see if things look in order and that important files are present.  Just get an overview that everything looks ok.  I’m really pleased with what I see.

Next Steps

In my next article, I will walk through the removal of the drive from the external enclosure, removal and replacement of the existing drive from my MacBook, and booting up to see if everything is working as it should.

(By) Douglas Reynolds is an application developer, holds a degree in Software Engineering, and owns an independent Flex application development consulting company.  He maintains a personal and technology blog located at dougrdotnet.  Find him on Twitter @dougrdotnet and LinkedIn.

Related Posts

• How To Upgrade Your MacBook Hard Drive – Part 1
• How To Upgrade Your MacBook Hard Drive – Part 3
• How To Set Up An External Drive Enclosure
• HDClone Review – Cloning A Windows Virtual Drive
• How To BackUp Your Hard Drive

Tags: Drive Clone, Drive Image, Mac, SuperDuper