Hard Drive Change Out

Question

Hard Drive Change Out

Background:

I am planning to hot rod my MBP a little. I'll be adding a SSD in place of my 7200 rpm HD. The 7200 rpm drive will go into the dvd bay, the dvd burner will be in a housing and conected viia usb if and when it is needed.

The SSD drive will have the operating system and software. The 7200 rpm HD will have the home folder and all other files.

I am the only useron the MBP and my Aperture Library will be referenced when I switch. My normall work flow is to import as managed and then move to referenced once the pictures have been rated and such.

I purchased Aperture 3.0 and loaded from a DVD.

I will be doing a clean install of the operatig system to the SSD.

Questions

What are my options for getting Aoerture to the new drive. Do I need to load from the disk and then update, or can I somehow get the software from the Appstore ? I guess I could also move the Aperture files from one drive to the other, but I worry about not gettign everything I need moved.

I would prefer that my managed library reside on the 7200 rpm drive. When I load Aperture on the new drive won't it try and create a Library on a home folder on the new drive, come to think of it Mountain Lion will also create a home folder on the new drive. I will need to point the operating system and Aperture towards the home folder on the old drive. How do I do that?

Any insight before I start installing the hardware would be appreaciated. I have the hardware, but I need to finish a FCPX project before I make the switch. So it will be a coupe of days before I pull the trigger on this.

MacBook Pro (17-inch Mid 2010), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), Aperture, FCP X,

Posted on Jan 18, 2013 8:18 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

léonie

Level 10

194,561 points

Jan 18, 2013 8:54 AM in response to Michigan One Fly

Do I need to load from the disk and then update, or can I somehow get the software from the Appstore ? I guess I could also move the Aperture files from one drive to the other, but I worry about not gettign everything I need moved.

Since you bought the boxed version of Aperture and did not buy it from the AppStore, you will need to install it again from your installation media. Since you will no longer have the Super Drive, you could burn a disk image from your Aperture install DVD and mount that to install Aperture. Or download the Aperture Trial installer (how to reinstall using the Trial installer is described here: Aperture 3.4: May quit unexpectedly on launch after updating); You will need your Serial number again after reinstalling. If you no longer have the box with the number, make a note of the serial number, while Aperture is still running (Aperture > About Aperture).

When I load Aperture on the new drive won't it try and create a Library on a home folder on the new drive, come to think of it Mountain Lion will also create a home folder on the new drive.

Do I understand you correctly - you want to keep your complete current system on the second drive? And install a new system on your SSD? If you not really need two systems, it might be less wasteful to wipe the system from your old drive, and use it only to hold large media files, your Aperture library, iTunes Library, video, etc.

You can put your complete home folder onto the second drive. To do that, you replace the homefolder that will be created on your SSD drive by a symbolic link to the folder on your second internal drive. But you also can keep your Homefolder on the SSD - your user library for example will profit from being kept on a fast drive.

If you only keep the Aperture library on the second drive, you direct Aperture to this library by double clicking the Aperture library. This will launch Aperture using the old library.

I have exactly the setup you are planning to create and are very happy with it. But my second drive contains mainly media files, not my home folder.

And I hope other frequent posters will chime in 😁

Regards

Léonie

P.S. I would not rely on a TimeMachine backup alone for such a major system reorganization. If you have a second empty drive ,I'd recommend to create a clone of your current system with Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner.

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Answer 2

Jan 18, 2013 1:14 PM in response to léonie

LeonieDF,

Thanks for the reply. I am pleased to hear from someone who has actually already made the changes I am planning.

I was not planing on having my complete system on both drives. I had something more along the lines of what you describing for your situation. My SSD is only 128 GB so I don't want to add much in the way of files that will be rewritten to or are very large.

My super drive will be available to me via a USB conection, so I can load from the media that came with my boxed version.

I hope to load Mountain Lion on the new drive before I install it using the combo update. The drive came with a cable to allow for preinstalling files.

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Answer 3

Jan 19, 2013 5:58 AM in response to Michigan One Fly

We run the same set up as you are describing on an iMac with internal SSD&HDD. I moved the home folder to the HDD using these instructions:

http://macs.about.com/od/diyguidesprojects/qt/Move-Your-Home-Folder-To-A-New-Loc ation.htm

Once it is set up the little house icon shows on the secondary (HDD) drive rather than the main (SSD) drive, but that is the only way you can tell, it's a seamless move.

We keep the business Aperture library on the SSD, with masters from current jobs managed for speedier access. Once the job is complete the masters get moved to be referenced on the HDD (so the library is split part managed, part referenced)

As we have a 256GB SSD we keep the personal library on the SSD fully referenced, with the masters on an external drive. If we were pushed for SSD space we'd put this library on the internal HDD instead.

Just remember to get a good backup plan for you rreferenced masters.

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Answer 4

Jan 19, 2013 9:31 AM in response to Shuttleworth125

Shuttleworth 125,

Thanks for adding your remarks. Again it is very helpfull to hear from others who have gone down th s same road.

Thank you for the links also, that is not I site I have visited very often. Seems to be a lot of good info there.

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