Migrating data: Upgrading an Early 2009 White Macbook 5.2 2.0Ghz 2gb RAM 120gb HD

Joined
Nov 10, 2013
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
I am planning to upgrade my MacBook (spec as above) with Crucial 4gb RAM and SSD.

It is currently running Leopard which came preinstalled, no discs.

I have used Super Duper and have an up to date clone on an external hard drive as well as Time Machine doing updates to another external hard drive. I also so have a memory stick with all my essential docuyments/photos on.

My questions centre around the best way to get the OS and my data onto the new SSD.

I was planning to put the SSD in an external caddy and clone the existing harddrive to it using Super duper and then install the SDD and RAM and job done. I have also ordered Snow Leopard which I then planned to install on the new SSD and then hopefully upgrade to Mavericks. I have checked and my Macbook is compatible.

A friend who is a Microsoft Engineer said if he was doing this on a PC he would use Ghost; and he questioned whether cloning that is running on the system it is cloning the same time it is cloning it would be totally reliable to use as the way to get the OS on the new SSD. He talked about bit by bit copying at the level of 0's and 1's.

Questions

Is their some software for Mac that does the copying at the level my friend talks about?

Would I be better just putting the SSD in and Installing Snow Leopard from the discs and then migrating my data by hand from one of my various backups? If so would I just go ahead and install or would I need to format the SSD first?

Would I need to get original install discs of Leopard from Apple first? Or will the Snow Leopard just install?

Anyone running Mavericks on this spec of Macbook? Would I be better sticking with Snow Leopard? I want to get the App store and be able to run Google Chrome. I note some apps seem to need higher than OS X 10.6

Any thoughts/help?
 
Joined
Nov 14, 2012
Messages
2,241
Reaction score
100
Hi,
Is their some software for Mac that does the copying at the level my friend talks about?

Carbon Copy Cloner
Possibly upgrade to Snow Leopard first.
Start to clone your old drive to your new drive you should get a pop up saying that a recovery partition wasn't created. create one with Carbon Copy NB this does not apply if you did upgrade to Snow Leopard first.
Now proceed with the clone. once the clone is done, turn your macbook off. (This is important ) because you need to test all went well with your newly cloned drive. Do this by turning your macbook back on while pressing the option key, now select your external to boot and check if everything was copied when you did the clone.


Now install your new drive, you could if you wanted to install the old drive in the USB enclosure and use it for time machine or other backups.


One last thing to do turn your macbook back on and if you notice that the new SSD boot time takes longer than about 45 secs then go to system preferences > startup disk > select your new drive as the startup drive and restart your macbook once more.

Hope this helps.
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top