Image MBP hard drive to larger - DDRescue?

[mraikes]

A customer want's me to put a larger hard drive in his MBP. I haven't upgraded a drive in a Mac before.

For PC drives, I usually just use DDRescue to clone to the new drive and then adjust the partition size on the new drive if moving to a larger.

Seems like I could just follow the same process with a MAC drive. Am I wrong about that?

And are there any "gotcha's" when increasing the partition size to take advantage of the larger drive on a Mac?

 

[JustInspired]

I suggest using Carbon Copy Cloner.

 

[lcoughey]

Create a full hfs+ partition on the new drive, then use the disk utility in Mac OS to restore from the original partition to the new destination partition.

 

[Markverhyden]

A customer want's me to put a larger hard drive in his MBP. I haven't upgraded a drive in a Mac before.

For PC drives, I usually just use DDRescue to clone to the new drive and then adjust the partition size on the new drive if moving to a larger.

Seems like I could just follow the same process with a MAC drive. Am I wrong about that?

And are there any "gotcha's" when increasing the partition size to take advantage of the larger drive on a Mac?

What version of OS X are they running? Do they have a current backup? Are you going to make a backup prior to doing work? Kill two birds with one stone. Use TM to backup the drive to another temp USB drive. Make sure it completes and that you have a few more restore points showing up in TM. Remove the old drive, pop in the new drive, boot into recovery mode or with the OS restore disc and use restore from time machine option. Just be aware that certain apps, like Office, will need to be re-registered.

 

[altrenda]

I suggest using Carbon Copy Cloner.

I agree. It copies the recovery partiton as well as the main partiton, and is very simple to use and always works.
DIsk Utility works fine, but CCC is just click and go. I use it almost everyday.

 

[mraikes]

What version of OS X are they running? Do they have a current backup? Are you going to make a backup prior to doing work? Kill two birds with one stone. Use TM to backup the drive to another temp USB drive. Make sure it completes and that you have a few more restore points showing up in TM. Remove the old drive, pop in the new drive, boot into recovery mode or with the OS restore disc and use restore from time machine option. Just be aware that certain apps, like Office, will need to be re-registered.

Don't know the version yet. Probably won't see the machine until tonight or tomorrow. Regarding backups, I always assume the customer does NOT have a current backup (and I'm rarely wrong).

I like the idea of using Time Machine. Didn't know it could be used that way. Sounds simple, and low enough risk, to give it a try.

Carbon Copy Cloner looks great, but for all I know this is going to be a one-off and I'd rather not have to pay $100 for the pro license.

I'll also look at using the disk utility as lcoughey suggests.

Looks like it's time to fire my own mac back up and practice some stuff.

Thanks!

 

[mraikes]

Just realized that beyond these excellent suggestions, no one addressed DDRescue cloning.

Is there something about the mac file system, partition resizing, or anything else that makes it not an option here?

 

[lcoughey]

ddrescue does a sector-by-sector clone and does not modify the partition size. So, if you clone a 250GB hard drive to a 1TB hard drive with ddrescue, you will have a 1TB drive with 250GB used with partitions and 750GB of unallocated space.

 

[Markverhyden]

Don't know the version yet. Probably won't see the machine until tonight or tomorrow. Regarding backups, I always assume the customer does NOT have a current backup (and I'm rarely wrong).

I like the idea of using Time Machine. Didn't know it could be used that way. Sounds simple, and low enough risk, to give it a try.

Carbon Copy Cloner looks great, but for all I know this is going to be a one-off and I'd rather not have to pay $100 for the pro license.

I'll also look at using the disk utility as lcoughey suggests.

Looks like it's time to fire my own mac back up and practice some stuff.

Thanks!

The version does matter. If it's 10.7 or above then things are much easier. The machine will have the recover setup in BIOS so you do not need anything else. If it's 10.6 or less you will need to have the appropriate recovery disk to do the TM thing. You will also need to partition the destination drive as GPT.

 

[mraikes]

ddrescue does a sector-by-sector clone and does not modify the partition size. So, if you clone a 250GB hard drive to a 1TB hard drive with ddrescue, you will have a 1TB drive with 250GB used with partitions and 750GB of unallocated space.

Of course, I use it regularly. After cloning to a larger drive I then adjust the partition(s) accordingly to take advantage of the additional space.

Is it not possible or inadvisable to do the same with a Mac drive?

 

[Markverhyden]

Of course, I use it regularly. After cloning to a larger drive I then adjust the partition(s) accordingly to take advantage of the additional space.

Is it not possible or inadvisable to do the same with a Mac drive?

I've never had a problem adjusting the size of an OS X partition.