First prep the new drive properly:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the
Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing.
SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the
Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Click on the
Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the
OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the
Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the
Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the
Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on
OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the
Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.
For backup:
Basic Backup
Make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1.
Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2.
Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3.
Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4.
Deja Vu (Shareware)
5.
PsynchX 2.1.1 and
RsyncX 2.1 (Freeware)
6.
Carbon Copy Cloner (Freeware - 3.0 is a Universal Binary)
7.
SuperDuper! (Commercial)
8.
Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
9.
Data Backup (Commercial)
The following utilities can also be used for backup, but cannot create bootable clones:
1. Backup (requires a
.Mac account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
2.
Toast
3.
Impression
4.
arRSync
Apple's Backup is a full backup tool capable of also backing up across multiple media such as CD/DVD. However, it cannot create bootable backups. It is primarily an "archiving" utility as are the other two.
Visit
The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read
How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Now the problem you will have with the above is that your computer cannot be booted from an external USB drive. Rather, you will need a Firewire drive if you want to be able to boot your computer from your backup drive.
