New HD for C2D MacBook

scott523scott523
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Hey everyone. I just got a C2D MacBook in exchange for my 1 week old CD MacBook for free (dead right speaker). I installed my RAM and I'm about to install a 120GB HD. How do I prepare my HD for OS X? I was thinking about putting in the new HD and inserting the recovery disk to begin reinstalling Mac OS X. Is this correct? I heard about reformatting but how could I do that?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by scott523


    I was thinking about putting in the new HD and inserting the recovery disk to begin reinstalling Mac OS X. Is this correct?



    Sure.



    Quote:

    I heard about reformatting but how could I do that?



    By booting off the disc. There's a Utilities menu from which you can launch Disk Utility, which will let you format and partition the disk.
  • Reply 2 of 4
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by scott523


    Hey everyone. I just got a C2D MacBook in exchange for my 1 week old CD MacBook for free (dead right speaker). I installed my RAM and I'm about to install a 120GB HD. How do I prepare my HD for OS X? I was thinking about putting in the new HD and inserting the recovery disk to begin reinstalling Mac OS X. Is this correct? I heard about reformatting but how could I do that?





    Something else you can do is buy an external hard drive enclosure that takes SATA drives. Put the new drive into the enclosure, use Disk Utility to partition it, and use SuperDuper to just transfer the files to the new drive and make it bootable. Swap the drives and you should be able to start it up. I think it might be faster doing it this way than installing fresh from the recovery disk.
  • Reply 3 of 4
    scott523scott523 Posts: 34member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeffDM


    Something else you can do is buy an external hard drive enclosure that takes SATA drives. Put the new drive into the enclosure, use Disk Utility to partition it, and use SuperDuper to just transfer the files to the new drive and make it bootable. Swap the drives and you should be able to start it up. I think it might be faster doing it this way than installing fresh from the recovery disk.



    Yes I had that in mind but (a) I prefer not spending more $$ for an enclosure and (b) since I just bought it yesterday, it wouldn't be much of a hassle to install fresh from the recovery disk.
  • Reply 4 of 4
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by scott523


    Yes I had that in mind but (a) I prefer not spending more $$ for an enclosure and (b) since I just bought it yesterday, it wouldn't be much of a hassle to install fresh from the recovery disk.



    Fair enough, but you could use the other hard drive as a backup drive.
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