Replacing my 160gb hard drive with a 500gb on my macbook

Jump to First Reply
omelet1978omelet1978
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Hello,



I do a lot of traveling and have a lot of video files that I like to take on the road with me. I saw a 500gb Western Digital 2.5 hard drive on Amazon.com and want to replace my 160gb hard drive with it.



I have an external hard drive with time machine. Is there anyway to do this so that I do no have to re-install everything? Or am I just out of luck?



Thanks

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    davedavedavedavedavedave Posts: 6member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by omelet1978 View Post


    Hello,



    I do a lot of traveling and have a lot of video files that I like to take on the road with me. I saw a 500gb Western Digital 2.5 hard drive on Amazon.com and want to replace my 160gb hard drive with it.



    I have an external hard drive with time machine. Is there anyway to do this so that I do no have to re-install everything? Or am I just out of luck?



    Thanks



    Restoring from a TimeMachine backup is incredibly easy - you just boot from a Leopard install CD and go to Utilities->Restore from backup.



    side note - google could have told you that in less time than it took to post your message





    Dave
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 2 of 6
    omelet1978omelet1978 Posts: 19member
    Actually I did do a search, but I was not sure if what I found was referring to installing a brand new hard drive or not. I also called Apple tech support and they did not know either.



    So let me just make sure before I go do this...when I put the new hard drive in and put in the MAC OS there will be an easy to find utilities button and all I have to do is hit retore from backup...and all of my settings/programs/etc...will be transferred?



    Thanks
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 3 of 6
    jonnyboyjonnyboy Posts: 525member
    restorting a time machine backup is probably the simplest way, although when i've upgraded my hard drives in the past i've ended up having to reinstall os x over the top in order to get the new drive booting properly. not sure why this is
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 4 of 6
    timmilleatimmillea Posts: 285member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by omelet1978 View Post


    So let me just make sure before I go do this...



    I upgraded my Hackintosh netBook with a 320GB drive recently. The procedure is dead easy and all settings, apps, cookies etc. etc. are retained.



    1. Connect an external HD via USB or FireWire.

    2. Finder menu bar -> Time Machine -> choose "Open Time Machine Preferences" and select the drive you have just connected.

    3. Finder menu bar -> Time Machine -> choose "Back Up Now"

    4. When finished, shut down, swap-in the MacBook new hard drive

    5. Restart from a System DVD (leave the external backup drive connected)

    6. Choose menu bar -> Utilities -> Disk Utility

    7. Select your new HD and click on "Restore"

    8. Drag the external backup drive on to "Source" and the new HD on to "Destination"

    9. Click "Restore" and sit back.

    10. Shutdown and restart.



    Everything will be exactly as before except more spacious and faster!
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 5 of 6
    adcurtinadcurtin Posts: 2member
    A couple ideas, I had trouble restoring from a time machine backup (but I was using alpha drivers for the network hard driver [NDAS]).



    If you can put the old 2.5 in the external case, that'd make it really easy. What I did when I upgraded my 160 to a 500 was to just copy (with finder) everything from the 160 to the 500, then install leopard on the 500 (doing and archive and install). That should work just fine, even if you copy 160 to external to 500 (but in this case you'd have to install leopard on the 500 before you copy the files to it from the external, then reinstall after you copy the files). My setup was a bit more complicated that that because I triple boot, but that's all I had to do for the leopard partition, and all you'll have to do if you just have leopard installed. (you could actually do the same thing with tiger too, I did that when I bought my mac, I copied the hackintosh files to the legit mac and installed over it. Yes, I bought a mac because of OSx86, and woudn't have otherwise. My piracy ended up netting Apple $2800, and I'm sure I'll buy another mac.).
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 6 of 6
    floorjackfloorjack Posts: 2,726member
    I just went through this with a new system. I think Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper is the better way to go. Slap the new drive in, slap the old on in a case, boot on the external and dup' it to the internal. Reboot.



    I just tried to restore to my old computer from Time Capsule and it would run for hours and hang, I'd restart and run for hours and hang. It wasn't until I installed the OS and migrated the user that it worked. Makes me think Time Capsule isn't that great at system restore, only recovering files that have been deleted.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
Sign In or Register to comment.