Hard Drive Cloning options

acHave them install the hard drive, and that's it. You can do the restore yourself. They get away with charging those fees for something users can do themselves without trouble. Depending on your resources.

You can do right now, make a disk image of your PowerBook's hard drive to another Mac if you have one. Later on, when the installation is done, connect it via FireWire in Target Disk Mode and run Disk Utility and restore FROM the disk image on TO the new 250GB hard drive. You will have an exact copy of your original drive.

If you have an external FireWire enclosure, you can restore onto the 250GB drive before you even have it installed doing the same steps above, but choose the external FireWire (or USB 2.0) drive as your destination volume to restore ON to.

Another yet is to have the 250GB drive installed, put the old one into a FireWire external enclosure, and then when you get your PowerBook back, reinstall Mac OS X, and when all is done, use Migration Assistant (Tiger only) to migrate your files from the old drive that's in a FireWire external enclosure (USB 2.0 will not work here) to your new 250GB drive and that will work too.

The last one is not so clear cut as a "clone." There may be glitches in migration.

If any of that was unclear, let me know.

Message was edited by: Pismo 900

Others will recommend using Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper. I never use these because I have always had bad experiences with the program and I find it to be unreliable. Never have had problems with Mac OS X Disk Utility. However, that is my experience. Others swear by it. (I don't, so I don't recommend it).

Message was edited by: Pismo 900

I just realized you are using Leopard. I have not moved to Leopard yet, so maybe my suggestions will seem odd to you. However, if you've used Tiger in the past, they should sound familiar. Sorry. Also, I was going to say, too bad you didn't do this before the holidays. MacService.com had a special on their 250GB upgrade services for PowerBooks, iBooks, and MacBook/MacBook Pros. Normally $295+, the discount brought it down to just under $200. Heck, the price of a 250GB drive alone is $159 to $200. Oh well... =)

survivorz21888:

After you have the HDD installed and have your computer back, here's what you do:
1. Boot your computer from the install disk and partition/format the HDD (see step-by-step directions below).
2. Install old HDD in a 2.5" firewire enclosure like this one (I have 2 of these and love them!)
3. Connect external HDD (old HDD in firewire enclosure) to computer via firewire.
4. Hit power button on computer and immediately after chime hold down the Option key.
5. Select external drive as startup and hit right pointing arrow.
6. Download and install SuperDuper (Don't worry. I use it all the time and it works great!)
7. Launch SuperDuper.
8. Select external FW HDD as Source and new internal HDD as Destination.
9. Click "Copy" and confirm.
Depending on the size of the volume you are cloning, it may take a while. My 100 GB HDD with 80 GB of data took about 2 hours. Subsequent SmartUpdates with registered copy of SD takes a fraction of the time).

Formatting, Partitioning Zeroing a Hard Disk Drive

Option for formatting an External HDD
Connect external HDD to computer
Turn on external HDD
Start up computer and log in
Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility and launch DU.
Select HDD (manufacturer ID) of internal HDD in left side bar.
Select Partition tab in main panel. (You are about to create a single partition volume.)
Select number of partition in pull-down menu above Volume diagram.
(Note 1: One partition is normally preferable for an internal HDD. External HDDs usually have more than one. Since you have a very large internal HDD you may want to consider partitioning, although it is not necessary. See Dr. Smoke’s FAQ Backup and Recovery for tips on partitioning external HDD
Note 2: For more partitions than one, after you have selected the number of partitions you can adjust the size of the partition by selecting the top partition and typing in the size; then move down if more adjustments need to be made..)
Type in name in Name field (usually Macintosh HD)
Select Volume Format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Click Partition button at bottom of panel.
Select Erase tab
Select the sub-volume (indented) under Manufacturer ID (usually Macintosh HD).
Check to be sure your Volume Name and Volume Format are correct.
Click Erase button
Quit Disk Utility.
Your HDD is formatted and ready for installation or cloning.

Please do post back with further questions or comments.

Cheers 🙂

cornelius