New HDD - Aluminum Macbook

Hi everybody, I want to upgrade my HDD in my Alu-MB to a 320 7200 or a 500 5400, but I have a few questions about the cloning. If I used something like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner, would that clone my Boot Camp partition also? Or would I need to use WinClone from Windows to clone it? Thansk guys.

 

From what i have read before, you need to use carbon copy for the mac os x partition, and then WinClone to clone your windows.

 

Ok, thanks for your reply Luke! I was thinking that, but I just wanted to make sure before I did anything tht would mess it up. Which one would I clone first, and how would the process go?

 

I don't know about the process. May be someone else should help you. Budding was discussing about this in another thread the other day.

 

Ok, well thanks for your help anyways! I know how to clone it and all, just some questions about the process of which comes first, etc.

 

Thanks! I'm gonna need it. Hopefully it will go as smooth as possible.

 

I think it goes like this, Never tried it but it's the only way it could work. Clone OS X, Clone Windows, Copy Over OS X, create boot camp partition, Copy over windows.

 

That sounds like it would work. I just don't want to be stuck without my Boot Camp partition, as I have a few games and game profiles that I don't want to loose. Other than that, I'll bookmark this so when I go to swap HDD's, I'll have some basis to start at. Thanks for your help Seshan!

 

When I did mine, I tried winclone and carbon clone or whatever, couldn't get it to work.

I just backed up my OSX with time machine and saved all my work in my windows partition onto an external. I didn't have any games or anything important so it didn't really matter to me.

Then I realized that I just wanted to do a fresh install so I didn't bother with time machiine. I just backed up all my files/music/videos etc in both partitions, becaues that's what I really wanted to keep.

THen did a fresh install, then moved over my files and installed all my programs again, and i was back.

 

Ok, I'll see what happens with WinClone and CCC, and go from there. I might even do a fresh install, but would that render my games unplayable because of the serial number issue etc. in Windows? I'm just worried about a few expensive games that I have on my Win partition that might get lost. I'll look into it though, thanks for your reply ToshibaDude.

 

the only game i have ever had a problem with re-installing was GTA4.

that game required a lot of online registration etc so i think that may have been an issue.

 

Ok, that's good to hear. I only have a few games on there, like Battlefield 2, Call of Duty World at War, and Quantam of Solace. The only one I am worried about it COD: WaW, just because of the Multiplayer. Thanks for your reply again!

 

I reached lvl 55 in COD4 and I thought that your profile gets saved so it opens anywhere you play.

Turns out that wasn't the case when I reinstalled after reformatting my HD. lol.

 

if you are looking for a 7200 rpm 500gb harddrive, it exists seagate momentus 7200.4

well, you might want to use your internal hdd as an external sometime, so you can buy (now) an external case, and put in there the new hdd, use carbon copy cloner and then use winclone. Then exchange the hdds and you're done =P

 

Thanks! I was looking into it, but I wasn't sure about the battery life with the 500GB 7200. Does anybody have some input on it? I pretty much am set on how to do it, so I should be good.

 

well, i had a 120gb 5400rpm hdd internal and i exchanged that for a 320gb 7200rpm WD Scorpio Black, it is or was before the seagate, the fastest mecanical drive for laptops. Noise.. i don't hear it, and i don't have a bad ear (i'm a musician ) haha, and battery life.. well.. it doesn't seem to be too affected.. i will go for you, but that's me, i prefer performance.

 

I was looking at the 320GB 7200 Black, as I need a bit more space and I would like to have some better performance, but I'm still trying to find some benchmarks between the 320GB 7200 and the 500GB 5400. I really don't hear my drive in my MB right now, but I try not and listen to it.

 

Just to let you know, I just went through this exact same procedure (this past Friday) and what I did and so far appears to be working.
1. Backed up bootcamp partition with winclone (backup stored in macos partition)
2. IMPORTANT: Partitioned an external drive as a single partition with a GUID partition table. If you don't use the GUID partition table, you will not be able to use bootcamp on that drive as I understand it.
3. Cloned mac os with carbon copy from internal drive to external drive where the external drive is the one that will replace the one inside in the mbp
4. Took out drive and placed external drive used in step 3 into the mbp.
5. Booted up new internal drive, ran bootcamp utility and created bootcamp partition.
6. Restore bootcamp image from step 1 to the bootcamp partition

For what it's worth, I have tried both the western digital 500/5400 and the seagate 500/7200. For the most part, I could not "feel" any performance difference. Xbench shows the 7200 rpm drive being faster in all sequential disk tests, however, it was actually slower in one of the random tests. I have the xbench values saved somewhere if anyone is interested.