In my 1,1 Mac Pro I have a 2TB boot hard drive I want to replace with a 4TB drive. What steps do I take to 1) clone it and 2) get it recognized as the new boot drive? Will there be a problem with copying the Lion OS onto the new HD? Thanks!
Duncan
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 4 2TB HDs, 4 3TB HDs external,
Use Time Machine or,
Carbon Copy Cloner ($39.95)
SuperDuper! ($27.95)
iBackup (free)
There are other options.
Use Time Machine or,
Carbon Copy Cloner ($39.95)
SuperDuper! ($27.95)
iBackup (free)
There are other options.
Back up
install new drive in slot #2, 3 or 4
Format as journaled extended.
Shut down, remove new drive.
Remove Drive 1 and place it into a different slot like #2
Put new drive in slot #1
Boot holding down the Option key
select Recovery
Select the drive in slot #2 as the source
Select the drive in slot #1 as the destination
let it run.
John, I tried backing up the 2TB boot drive with the new 4TB drive. The content supposedly copied, since in "Get Information" it showed the Used portion at 1.8 TB. But the "Available" reading still showed "4 TB". And when I tried accessing the 4 TB disk on my desktop, the names of the files were there, but when I clicked on them to access them, there was nothing there. And when I went to System Preferences and tried to assign the new 4TB to be the new boot drive, the icon for the 4 TB wouldn't even show up.
Am I doing something wrong, or do you think the new drive os faulty? Thanks.
you have to clone
you may want to not use 4TB for a system
would work but a system is small and only needs well less than 200GB
use it for media and projects and data
keep boot drive lean mean slim and keep all the aforementioned files off the system boot drive
ProImagesPa, thank you SO-O-O much! Your detailed process was successful and exactly what I needed! You saved me making a trip back to Fry's to exchange this drive, and you saved me the time I would have used up making the same mistake again. At the end I was concerned to see two drives with the the 2TB name, but I discovered that in your process, it also copied the name of the source drive, and all I had to do was change that. Thank you again. This is such a big help. Duncan
I'm glad to hear that. The best part is you didn't have to buy any software.
Hate to hijack this post, but would the same process work if my existing OS is on 2 drives in a RAID 0 configuartion? I want to move it all onto an SSD.
Chris935-
The same basic process will work fine.
Mac OS X contains many invisible files, so the fundamental principle is to a) copy the entire Volume it lives on, e.g. with Disk Utility or b) use Cloning software (which can see all the files).
As long as you have a place to plug in the new SSD, you can do copying "live".
Mac OS X will boot from a drive in ANY bay you have chosen with System preferences > Startup Disk. There is no need to arrange a certain drive in a certain bay, or to remove drives that contain different versions of Mac OS X that you are not using at the moment.
ProlmagesPa, I have not attempted your process yet, but I plan to. My main boot hard drive that came factory from Apple when I purchased the computer is too small and I want to upgrade to a larger one. Once the process is complete can the original boot hard drive be erased and formatted to be a storage drive or does it have to be kept? I appreciate your time and help. Thank you.
Jeet,
You can do whatever you want with the original drive. I would wait a few days to make sure it's right.
I did this to my Mac Pro about two monhs ago, it worked very well.
Just make sure you got the recovery partition as well. I usually don't use disk utility restore when I clone but maybe it takes the recovery partition with it.
To test for the Recovery Partition, hold down the Option key during a Boot. You'll see it.
I was thinking something simplier, type "diskutil list" in a terminal window. The new 2TB drive should have a 650MB partition called recovery if it made it there. If it doesn't, CCC can put it there from the old 1TB drive before it is reformatted.
Hi Hatter,
would you mind to explain briefly why it is better to keep the boot drive rather slim?
I'm planning to replace my old 250 GB startup drive with a 750 GB. Is that okay? What would be the disadvantages?
Thanks,
Henrik
japamac's Blog: Make Space for Performance -- Movling The Home Folder
http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-move-the-home-folder-in-os-x-and-why/
--chris pirillo's discussion of WHY follows the procedure of How.
I must also warn you that the Videos on his page are simply home movies-- they are deadly.
How replace boot hard drive in Mac Pro with larger hard drive?
