[colivigan]

I have a PM G5 that currently has an 80GB startup drive and a 300GB Seagate SATA internal expansion drive. I just bought a 1TB WD Caviar SATA internal to upgrade my storage. What I would like to do is make the 300GB drive my startup disk, and move all the data that is currently on it to the new 1 TB drive.

I have an external FW drive, and I am right now cloning my startup disk to it using SuperDuper. It's taking kind of a long time. My plan is to then swap the internal drives, boot from the external, copy the 300GB data to the 1 TB drive, and clone the external boot partition back to the 300 GB drive.

So what's the fastest way to copy 200+ GB of data from one disk to another? Data only, it doesn't have to be a startup disk. I don't really want to be up all night doing this.

I am home alone for the weekend, so all options obviously include plenty of beer.

[Brad]

I added CCC and modified your command line option to be a bit broader.

That said, I haven't used all of the above and I've only once or twice ever copied a whole drive, but I'd guess using the Finder is probably the slowest of all options.

[colivigan]

Thanks Brad, I momentarily forgot about CCC. And I'm sure Finder copy is the slowest option.

I guess ditto might be another command-line method.

[FFL]

You can't really use a Finder copy to properly clone a startup drive - that's why utilities like CCC and SuperDuper exist.

I'm a SuperDuper fan, myself - I've used it onsite twice this week alone, and I use its Smart Update function in addition to Time Machine so that I have redundant and multi-format backups as well as an emergency startup drive.

As far as data-only speed goes.... if you're command-line comfortable, I'd use one of those, in single-user mode. Otherwise, I'd probably just use the Finder.

[709]

I'm a fan of CCC, fwiw. I'd say it's 6 of one, half-dozen of the other between SuperDuper and CCC, but I like CCC a bit better. Neither of them are going to be particularly speedy, especially since this is the initial backup.

And I just now got why it's called SuperDuper! D'oh!

[turtle]

I just used SuperDuper! to upgrade my two MBs and Intel Mini's HDD. MBs are at 500GB now and the Mini is at 320GB. The longest part is the USB transfer limitations. I should have a FW enclosure for this type of work.

[colivigan]

I'm using a FW400 enclosure, and it's none too fast. Copying 60GB of data from my internal to the FW drive is going on two hours now. Almost done, though.

I'm hoping the internal disk-to-disk copying goes a LOT faster.

[dmegatool]

Just to mention that I used CCC to make a clone of my drive before I upgrade it. I didn't test it much (my bad) before moving back the data. It was booting, everything was there so I changed the hard drive. But when I booted from the clone, no application would launch... I mean none. Safari, Terminal, Disk Utility, photoshop, etc.

In the end, it was caused by a corrupted preference file of "plugsuit". Don't know if CCC caused this but in one way, it was working before and after it wasn't. http://discussions.apple.com/thread....07109&tstart=0

So I would say SuperDuper FTW (I never used it). Just sayin...

[colivigan]

So far so good. Startup drive to external took about two hours for 60GB. Booted off external, all looks OK. Now I'm copying old data drive (internal) to new big drive (internal) using SuperDuper - it's done 88GB in 40 minutes, about 1/3 done.

I'll probably make another backup of the original data drive to the external, before I clone the startup disk back onto it. Just in case the new one croaks. Most stuff is already backed up elsewhere, but you can't have too many backups.

[curiousuburb]

Cloned my 500GB TM external to a new 1TB drive using Disk Utililty Restore.

Takes longer that a pure copy operation, but does include a verify run, and being a clone via DU, gets some files that might otherwise cause freakout over permissions or owner flag (Apple Support forums advised the SuperDuper and CCC sometimes didn't like cloning TM).

If it's your only critical backup, don't sweat the time. Were you planning to use the overnight hours while you sleep and the machine clones itself for something else?

[zippy]

Originally Posted by FFL You can't really use a Finder copy to properly clone a startup drive - that's why utilities like CCC and SuperDuper exist. I'm a SuperDuper fan, myself - I've used it onsite twice this week alone, and I use its Smart Update function in addition to Time Machine so that I have redundant and multi-format backups as well as an emergency startup drive. As far as data-only speed goes.... if you're command-line comfortable, I'd use one of those, in single-user mode. Otherwise, I'd probably just use the Finder.

I now have SuperDuper, and I now have an external drive. I want to keep an up-to-date, bootable clone of my iMac for disaster recovery.

Do I just select the "Backup All Files" option and turn on "Smart Update" to accomplish this? I don't need to use Sandbox to meet my needs - correct?

[Yontsey]

I feel like a noob and tend to be slightly bullheaded when reading other peoples threads because I need some sort of personalized verification to make my OCD feel ok.

I have an extra 2.5" 230 or so gb hdd and my old Macbook that I'm using as a desktop has a 160gb.

Can I use SuperDuper! to copy my MB hdd to the new drive then swap the new one in? Will it be like nothing ever happened except for now I have more room?

[Yontsey]

Originally Posted by Yontsey I feel like a noob and tend to be slightly bullheaded when reading other peoples threads because I need some sort of personalized verification to make my OCD feel ok. I have an extra 2.5" 230 or so gb hdd and my old Macbook that I'm using as a desktop has a 160gb. Can I use SuperDuper! to copy my MB hdd to the new drive then swap the new one in? Will it be like nothing ever happened except for now I have more room?

Anyone? *crickets*

[turtle]

Yes you can. Upsizing made easy with SuperDuper!

[Yontsey]

Originally Posted by turtle2472 Yes you can. Upsizing made easy with SuperDuper!

Awesome! Thanks a lot.

I just wanted to make sure because I formatted the drive today and now am doing a full backup with SuperDuper!. Hopefully tomorrow I have enough time to swap them out and start installing and updating some stuff I need since I don't have the room.