MPG Table of Contents   Page 1: How to boot off an external drive Page 2: How to upgrade your system/boot drive Page 3: How to clone a volume Page 4: How to detect a failing hard drive (SMART status) Page 5: How to test memory for reliability Page 6: How to install 6GB or 8GB memory in MacBook Pro Page 7: How-To Tips for the Safari Browser Page 8: How to Create and Use a RAM Disk

How to upgrade your system/boot drive

Want to install a newer, faster boot drive in your Mac?

(The “boot” drive is the one containing your system and applications.)

A new boot drive can be a very time-consuming task: installing a new system from scratch, reinstalling your applications, printer drivers, transferring your data, etc. It could take all day. Ouch.

Cloning to the rescue: not only can you switch your system to a faster, larger drive, you can do so with minimal effort and generally in less than an hour!

Choose a new drive

For a laptop, you will need a 2.5" SATA drive. Especially for a laptop, choose the largest capacity drive because you need more space than you need. Also, choose a 7200 rpm drive for higher performance. Or you might find that a solid state drive will fit your needs. View laptop hard drives

For a Mac Pro, the choice is highly flexible, with a variety of options. If you’re setting up a serious workstation consider a consultation to discuss performance, reliability and backup. For the Mac Pro, choose only 1TB or larger 7200rpm drives for performance reasons.

For an iMac, get professional installation (one good reason to avoid an iMac, details). Be sure to clone your boot drive first, so you can clone it back to the new internal drive.

Clone your boot drive to the new drive

How to do so is described in How to clone a drive/volume, including how to connect the drive.

Cloning is easy, and also a great way to make a bootable backup of your system drive.

Install the new drive

If this is an upgrade for a laptop or iMac, swap the old drive with the new one. This generally requires just a small Phillips screwdriver

If it was a Mac Pro, you probably already installed the drive internally. But if not, then install/swap as appropriate.

 

Set the startup volume PERMALINK

Be sure to set the startup disk (a misnomer, it’s really the startup volume). If you have both the old and new boot drive attached, you’ll see both of them here; choose the new one.

Open System Preferences, then choose Startup Disk to set the desired as the startup drive.

You might want to also disconnect or remove the older boot drive, to avoid confusion (this is why using different names is also a good idea).