I need to upgrade the hard drive in my Macbook Pro (OS 10.5.7). I'd like to end up with everything as it is now, but on the larger drive. Do I get a fresh external, make a bootable clone of it with CarbonCopyCloner, and then clone it back over when the larger drive is installed? Or should I make a disk image with Disk Utility? Use Time Machine?

Hi,

I'd use Carbon Copy Cloner. This is a good place for info on the Mac: http://macperformanceguide.com/index.html

Best regards
Erik

Time machine works great for that. I was using it to backup my drive - the drive went south, a new drive was installed then i reinstalled the system software and was asked during the setup if wanted to use a load files from backup it worked perfect (even had files in the trash!).

time machine is a great way but if you are not running it there is another option. use your disk utility, select the drive your want to back up and click restore. select the drive you want to back up as source, and your external hard drive as destination, then hit restore again. Disk utility will then make a bootable copy of your drive. Depending on the size of your drive this may take a while. Or then again, you could just activate time machine and select your external (empty same size or bigger) hard drive as the designated drive.

All the best,

Wolf

See http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/Sup...escription.html

While it is not free it is very cheap, I use it to make bootable backups as well as clone data hard drive. Very slick and FAST.

I will second using Carbon Copy Cloner and checking out the Mac Performance Guide. I would also suggest getting the bundle of the Newer Tech Voyager 2 bundled with your faster, larger hard drive. I just used that when adding a 500GB 72k to my Macbook Pro, and then updating to Snow Leopard.

It was easy to do the clone and the upgrade, and I can still boot from the old drive once it was swapped out for times when figuring out whether I've found an issue with Snow Leopard or just mucked things up on my own.

I back up most of the data partition on my new internal to the old drive in the Voyager every few days just in case Time Machine or the external on which it's running fail. In a bit, I expect that I will clone my OS and application partition from the internal to the drive in the Voyager, and then free up my other portables for data use again.

Good Luck,

Cathy

I use CCC as well, but Super Duper is a great tool too. Either does the job and does it well, and can be scheduled to do it regularly...