Cloning from HDD to SSD - What are my options??

In my experience, having cloned both my Mac and Bootcamp partition for backup purposes, Chris is entirely right. The reason is that Disk Utility, CCC, and Super Duper all clone from one Mac OS X disk to another Mac OS X disk. A Bootcamp partition is formatted as an NTFS disk. Therefore, none of the Mac-cloning tools (that I know of) will clone the Mac OS X partition *and* the Bootcamp partition at the same time. So Chris is right, you have to do it in two steps.

I would like to add that I used Winclone (free software) to achieve the cloning of my Bootcamp partition, so I didn't have to pay for Casper. There may be features of Casper that are worth paying for, but my needs were relatively simple, just a straight backup, so the free Winclone did it for me.

Dave

I think kappy originally wrote this for users and it worked great for me.. you just need the restore command in disk utility but it goes further than that in great detail and i think this is the sure fire way for a successful clone.

Step One: Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions

Boot from your Snow Leopard 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 Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Quit and shutdown.

If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

Step Two: Remove the old drive and install the new drive. Place the old drive in an external USB enclosure. You can buy one at OWC who are also a good vendor for drives.

Step Three: Boot from the external drive. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager appears. Select the icon for the external drive then click on the downward pointing arrow button.

Step Four: New Hard Drive Preparation

1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.

2. After DU loads select your new 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. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.

3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

Step Five: Clone the old drive to the new drive

1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.

2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.

3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.

4.Check the box labeled Erase destination.

5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.

6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.

7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.

Destination means the new internal drive.

Source means the old external drive.

Step Six: Open the Startup Disk preferences and select the new internal volume. Click on the Restart button. You should boot from the new drive. Eject the external drive and disconnect it from the computer.

Wrong post ..

I followed Chris LoPresto's post, and couldn't get it to the Windows to show up during boot even Casper (version 7) successfully cloned the Windows partition.

I finally figure out that you have to stop the antivirus before cloning and when setting the master boot record.

Chensf0rmers

Full drive sector clone software then, not CCC or SuperDuper, look into Clone X 4

http://www.tri-edre.com/english/clonex.html

I would still have clone backups from CCC or SuperDuper, along with TimeMachine if you use that. Cover all your bases.

Or you can use dd and clone both partitions in one whack for free. A great walkthrough was posted here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=9572245&postcount=13

I've done a very similar process myself on my Mac's as well as Windows machines and it works perfectly...

Thanks, this was excellently simple, required no new software and went quickly. Most underrated post in this thread (until now). (dont know why someone above said "wrong post") Cloned the 250GB of contents on a 1GB HDD to a 500 GB SSD. Everything was preserved, which would provide promise that anything bootcamp would be too (after all that's the need the poster was responding to).

I also use Winclone to backup windows, mostly because I can do everything from OSX.

then I just clone the mac partititon and recovery partitions to the SSD with superduper or CCC, boot it and create a new fat32 partition in disk utility for windows.
Then use Winclone to clone your backed up bootcamp partition to the new partition on the SSD.

If this helps, this is how I did it along with gotchas on the way.

I have a macbook pro (mid-2009) that I wanted to replace the 320gb HD with a 480 SSD.

So having backed up my HD using TM to an external HD, I thought it would be as simple as installing the SSD and restoring from the OSX utilities menu - wrong!

1st Gotcha - Time machine only backs up data not the OS (maybe there is an option but using SuperDuper now anyway instead!)

2nd Gotcha - the SSD needs to be formatted

So formatted it then tried to restore, wrong! you need the OS on it as well. So from OSX utilities, re-downloaded Mountain Lion upgrade I'd bought several months before. When done, tried to restore from within ML from TM backup. Sorted of worked but would not let me restore Admin account as had created a new Admin account when installing ML!

So restored it to a new Admin2 account but when finished, screen layout, icons etc... was all wrong and wasn't sure how to easily and safely combine admin & admin2 accounts SO...

Had bought a backup program called SuperDuper some years back and for some unknown reason never used probably because I thought TM was backing up everything!). So reinstalled the HD, did a FULL backup to another external HD (as it, like TM, needs full control of it). Then from OS X Utilities, restored this image after first formatting the SSD again (and wiping out new ML installation!).

This worked perfectly except for DropBox whinging about it's folder, reinstalled that and back exactly now as I was pre-SSD and at lightening speed!

Just hope my grief helps others!