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Change boot drive.
Hi. I can’t find the definite method via Google so I thought I’d ask here. I’m swapping out my old boot drive with a new hard drive. I have a 2010 MacPro running OSX 10.8.5. My current boot drive is a 1tb HDD and I’m replacing it with a 2tb hybrid which I already separated into two 1tb partitions.
First, is that even ok or does the physical boot disc (considering it’s a hybrid) need to be just one partition? And what do I do next?
I have Disk Utility open and was going to do the “Restore” function from the old boot drive onto the new boot partition, and once that’s done remove the old one from the computer & put the new one in it’s slot. Is it that easy or is there something else I need to do?
Thanks!
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6 Replies
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I would recommend cloning your old boot drive to whichever partition you want to use as the boot partition on your new drive. That way is a bit more surefire. There are plenty of free (or at least a free trial) utilities to use. Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! to name two. I use both of those utilities regularly and they work great.
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Tyler Chittick
Integration & Warehouse Manager
Technical Support
Maxx Digital
http://www.maxxdigital.com
tyler@maxxdigital.com
714-374-4944 -
[Jesse Glucksman] “My current boot drive is a 1tb HDD and I’m replacing it with a 2tb hybrid which I already separated into two 1tb partitions.”
Why did you create two partitions? I don’t see a need for this but maybe you have a reason.
[Jesse Glucksman] “First, is that even ok or does the physical boot disc (considering it’s a hybrid) need to be just one partition? And what do I do next?”
When you say “hybrid” I assume you mean an SSHD drive? I haven’t had any experience with them but they are similar in concept to a Fusion drive and when you partition a Fusion drive, the second partition looses the benefit of the SSD and is just a regular HDD at that point. Maybe the hybrids hide all that and somehow take care of it? I would check with the manufacturer on what happens when you partition an SSHD but personally, I would not partition it.
I would recommend the same as Tyler. I just switched my boot drive on my 2008 Mac Pro from a HDD to an SDD and I used SuperDuper! to clone the drive while it was in an external enclosure. Then I physically swapped the drives and after OS X boots, go into System Preference | Start Up Disk and select your new drive as the startup disk. That’s it!
Personally I would not make partitions. SuperDuper! will easily copy the 1TB to a 2TB and use the entire drive as one partition. I’m guessing this will make the best use of it’s “hybrid” capabilities.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
There’s no specific need to make the partitions, I just had it in my mind to keep the old boot drive as my Time Machine backup just for the boot drive & applications. The second partition being limited to HDD capabilities wouldn’t matter since the hybrid benefits would be only for the applications on the boot partition anyway.
But again, that’s not actually important. I don’t mind reformatting it back to one partition.
And yeah, it’s a Seagate SSHD. Thank you both for the information and guidance. I think I’ll go with SuperDuper! since you both agree on that one.
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Limiting backups is certainly a valid reason to create partitions. Of course you could also exclude folders in your TimeMachine backup as well. It looks like the Seagate SSHD makes it all transparent to the OS so it actually might be smart enough to accelerate both partitions. I would ask them.
I almost forgot, Paragon has a beta of their Drive Copy for Mac which I joined and have also used. It works extremely well for beta software. It has the added advantage of rebuilding your recovery partition and it will allow you to resize partitions to fit the new disk which is required when going from a larger HDD to a smaller SDD. I used it to migrate a drive with a Bootcamp partition and it worked great.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Hello from my new SSHD boot drive. Thanks again for the help.
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