First Thing, Backup Backup Backup !!!!
You Can use SuperDuper Or any Partition Cloner
Make sure that your backup drive is the same size or bigger then your current drive.
1. Connect your backup hard drive to your Mac.
2. If you’re using SuperDuper Using the default option of “Backup – all files” will automatically create a boot-able backup, one which you can later boot to as if it were your internal drive. This is great if you want to test something, have a fully cloned system to revert to, or in this case, to copy to your new drive without loosing a single setting. Click the Copy Now button, and then click Copy in the next dialogue box.
3. Sit back and wait. Once the copy is complete, you will have what’s known as a full boot-able backup. Now you can do whatever you want to your internal hard drive – your data is safety stored on your new backup drive! Just to make sure, it’s always worth booting to that drive and checking that everything went according to plan. It only takes a minute, and it’s better to do it now rather than find it didn’t work.
4. Restart your Mac. While it starts, hold the Option key until a display appears. This asks you to choose a hard drive to boot from. Clicking on your backup, and then clicking on the arrow below it, will tell your Mac to boot to the backup. You’ll know that you have successfully booted to your backup rather than your internal drive because the backup will now appear at the top of your Finder window side panel, like so:
5.Now that you have everything backed up, it’s time to install your new hard drive!
Replacing Your MacBook’s Hard Drive
In order to protect yourself against ESD and static electricity in general, it’s always a good idea to ground yourself
For more information about ESD cause and prevention, see the Wikipedia article.
Replacing a MacBook’s Hard Drive
1. Turn your MacBook upside-down, with battery side near you. Use a coin to turn the lock slot to the unlock position. This will allow you to remove the battery.
2. Inside the bay, there is a small L-shaped bracket running down the left and far edges. This is removable with a Phillips #0 screwdriver. Unscrew the three screws along the far (longer) face. Don’t be fooled: these screws are not removable from the plate itself. Once unscrewed, the plate should pull out very easily.
Depends on your mac, it should be pretty easy to replace the hard drive.
3. Fit the battery back in its slot, and then use the coin to lock the cover in position.
Turn your MacBook over. You’re ready to continue onto the next section!
Restoring Your MacBook
This section is primarily aimed at those who have created a boot-able backup and would like to restore from that backup. This will allow you to get back to where you were with your last hard drive – all of your software updates, data, and music will be there.
Preparing Your New Hard Drive
The first thing you will want to do is to turn on your computer, but at present the drive you have just installed won’t show up on your desktop (assuming you could boot to a desktop). First, the hard drive needs to be formatted and partitioned, and doing so from a backup is very simple.
As soon as you hit the power button, you must hold down the Option (or Alt) key. This will produce a display offering the option to boot to all boot-able devices connected to the MacBook. There will likely be only one: the backup you made to your external drive. Select it, and then click the arrow button to continue to boot from this device.
Partitioning Your New Drive
Once your Mac has booted to the desktop, you’ll probably see a message asking if you wish to initialize a device. If this does appear, you will choose to Initialize, but if it doesn’t you will want to launch Disk Utility, which can be found in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder.
Using the Options button at the bottom, make sure that GUID Partition Table is selected (this is the new standard by which Intel Mac hard drives can be found as boot-able devices, which you will want as it will be your main hard drive) and click OK. Now click Partition, and when the dialogue box appears, click Partition again. Wait a few seconds while you watch the blue progress bar flash from left to right, and then notice that the name you selected for your drive is now displayed below the manufacturers name in the left-hand column. You now have yourself a usable, formatted, partitioned drive. Easy, huh?
Restoring from your Backup
Now you can close Disk Utility. SuperDuper! will recognize the new drive, so you open SuperDuper!. Using the same settings as before (only in reverse), you can restore the backup you are currently using to the new drive. You will want to copy from your external hard drive to MacBook HD which will also now appear on your desktop. Once the transfer is complete, you’re ready to go!
Reboot your MacBook once again, holding the Option (or Alt) key to choose the internal hard drive. Click the arrow button to boot from it. You’re done!
If You Don’t Have a Boot-able Backup, or Wish to Use Your Restore Disks
Start by turning on the MacBook and inserting Restore Disk 1. As soon as you hit the power button, you must hold down the Option (or Alt) key. This will allow you to boot to all boot-able devices connected to the MacBook. There will likely be only one: the restore disk you just inserted (it may take a minute to show up. If it doesn’t, try holding the power button until the machine turns off, and power it back on again holding the Option key). Select it, and then click the arrow button to continue to boot from this device.
Once the machine has booted to the Restore Disk, you can choose your language. After the next screen appears, you will notice a familiar looking Menu Bar across the top of the screen. Under the Utilities menu, you should see the Disk Utility application. Selecting this option will allow you to follow the same instructions for performing this procedure as if you were booted to a backup drive.
Once you have partitioned your drive, you can close Disk Utility. Your new hard drive will now be fully recognized by your MacBook. Continue to walk through the on-screen instructions for installing Mac OS X to complete the process. If you want to really show off, you can click the Customize button in the bottom of the window part way through this process to choose not to install certain bundled applications, language packs you won’t use, and so on. Deselect all of them to slim down the space required to install Mac to a mere 2GB! This is the real benefit of the fresh installation over using SuperDuper! to restore, however, you can always use the Migration Assistant to recover your user account to a fresh installation if you previously backed up using SuperDuper!
Congratulations on your new hard drive, and good luck with filling all the empty space!
First Thing, Backup Backup Backup !!!!
You Can use SuperDuper Or any Partition Cloner
Make sure that your backup drive is the same size or bigger then your current drive.
1. Connect your backup hard drive to your Mac.
2. If you’re using SuperDuper Using the default option of “Backup – all files” will automatically create a boot-able backup, one which you can later boot to as if it were your internal drive. This is great if you want to test something, have a fully cloned system to revert to, or in this case, to copy to your new drive without loosing a single setting. Click the Copy Now button, and then click Copy in the next dialogue box.
