software too?

[djporter91]

hi. i'm looking at upgrading my macbook white's hard drive from a 120 gb to a seagate momentous 500 gb 7200 rpm w/ 16 mb cache. if i use super duper and a sata-usb interface to copy my current hard drive to my new seagate, will i be able to put in my new hard drive and open up any of my existing software and have it work? i.e. logic, reason, switch, firestudio interface,. or, will i have to reinstall all my software all over again? if anyone can answer this, or if any one has done this and wouldn't mind telling me how they overcame this, it would be VERY much appreciated.

thank you,
-dp

[dnanian]

You'll likely need to reactivate anything that's copy protected...

[MacCetera]

I've done this many times for clients - with OWC's USB bare drive adapter or their voyager quad interface bare drive dock. SuperDuper will make a bootable copy of your internal MacBook drive, and you will probably need to re-authenticate only a few of the more paranoid and pricier apps if any at all.

1. Connect the new drive to your USB SATA adapter/dock/whatever...
2. Use Disk Utility to partition the new drive GUID and HFS+ Extended Journaled...
3. Use Super Duper to copy your internal drive to the new one...
4. Restart from the new drive (while still docked) to make sure life is good...
5. Seven screws later your new drive will be inside your MacBook.

-- Marc

[djporter91]

Originally Posted by MacCetera

I've done this many times for clients - with OWC's USB bare drive adapter or their voyager quad interface bare drive dock. SuperDuper will make a bootable copy of your internal MacBook drive, and you will probably need to re-authenticate only a few of the more paranoid and pricier apps if any at all.

1. Connect the new drive to your USB SATA adapter/dock/whatever...
2. Use Disk Utility to partition the new drive GUID and HFS+ Extended Journaled...
3. Use Super Duper to copy your internal drive to the new one...
4. Restart from the new drive (while still docked) to make sure life is good...
5. Seven screws later your new drive will be inside your MacBook.

-- Marc

why do you have to partition it Guid and HFS+ extended??

[MacCetera]

Originally Posted by djporter91

why do you have to partition it Guid and HFS+ extended??

Ummm... because your MacBook is Intel, thus GUID, and HFS+ Extended (Journaled) is the native Mac format... you do want it to boot, right?

-- Marc

[macmon]

done it before in upgrading my hard drive from 120gig to 250gig. And it just worked without problems. Although ms office and ilife are my apps that worked okay. Not sure with professional apps.

[dnanian]

A partition scheme (e.g. GUID, APM, MBR) is not the same as a format (HFS+, FAT32, NTFS). Partitioning divides a 'bare drive' into one or more volumes. Those volumes are then formatted.

Both the partition scheme (which helps the OS and ROM find the volumes) and the volume format (HFS+) need to be correct for a drive to work properly as a startup volume.

[RobLewis]

I believe a volume must have a GUID partition scheme if you want to be able to boot it on an Intel Mac. The volume is readable on (IIRC) any Mac running Tiger or later, but only boots on Intel machines.

Also, Intel machines, unlike PPC, can boot from a USB drive.

The old Apple partition scheme is readable but not bootable by Intel Macs.

[TMay]

Rob

I know it risks confusion to say this, and Dave would probably rather I didn't, but sometimes someone may need to know. In fact, often (always, actually, that I've tried) given Intel machines will in fact boot from an EXTERNAL APM drive/volume. Both of mine will consistently, but I do not know that this is 100% for all Intel machines. I also do not know about an INTERNAL APM, as I have not tried it. I suspect it may not work.

Obviously, it would be better and more certain not to and to do it Apple's way, but if someone gets in some sort of jam/situation where they need to, they may find that APM works fine. That does NOT mean anyone should routinely do it.