Changing boot drive from disk to SSD

[midilance]

I have an early 2008 MacPro 3,1 with four 1GB internal drives. I plan to get a 1GB SDD in the near future and am uneasy as to how I want to go about loading everything onto the new SSD boot drive. For backup I use SuperDuper! with four 1TB external LaCie Quadras. Each internal drive has it's own external backup drive. SuperDuper! maintains my backup boot drive as a bootable drive. Once when I had my internal boot drive fail I bought a new internal drive and simply copied the contents of my backup boot drive. It worked fine. No problems with passwords, keys, serial number or whatever. Does anyone have some thoughts or some suggestions to share with me about this? I have the feeling that I am not alone with this situation.

[mikehalloran]

Now that quality 2T SSDs like the Samsung 850 EVO are under $600, you might think of consolidating a bit. Also get a 6T or 8T WD Red and use it for Time Machine in that spare bay you now have. There is zero benefit to having 4 1T spinners (except in a RAID array) and hasn't been since the G4. You do not need to partition the SSDs unless running multiple OS.

There are many reasons that Apple never recommends cloning. I won't go into them again but, when doing a ground up install, cloning is never a good idea. Installing the OS from scratch gives you a hidden, bootable repair partition that you access by holding the Option key when you start.

Before you start, inactivate any internet based licenses on the old drive. Don't worry about iLok or apps that store the licenses on the same drive.

Now, install the SSD. Use Disk Utility to format the drive. Install the OS. Use Migration Assistant to pull everything in from your old boot drive—you will be prompted to do this after the installer finishes.

When done, open Terminal and run the following command: sudo trim enable.

Now reactivate your licenses.

Some older applications will benefit from running Repair Permissions. This is done in Terminal in OS 10.11.

Learn how to use Time Machine.

[HCMarkus]

Midilance, I don't know how often you upgrade your OS. For the home machines, I stay current. For my studio Mac, it's a rare occasion, as evidenced by the fact I am currently running Mountain Lion, and my system is still roaring along very nicely thank you. Last time I upgraded the studio Mac, I started from scratch. Took awhile, but avoided junk data and programs. Will I do the same next time? Maybe, maybe not.

I would definitely recommend keeping your current known good OS drive intact to the fullest extent possible, so reverting to a working system is painless.

As Mike mentions, 2TB SSDs are pretty affordable now; Instead of one drive to rule them all, I prefer multiple smaller SSDs, to avoid SATA traffic jams, especially if using with SATA2 ports (like our cheese grater Mac Pros have.)

I like the idea of nightly backups x2 on internal spinners (they don't have to be huge drives), but rotate two 4TB external spinners for my Time Machine backups; one is kept offsite at all times. Partitioning spinners provides some advantages… fast outer sectors for speedy transfers, slower inner sectors for background stuff or longer term storage.

However you proceed, you're gonna love your new SSD boot drive!

[mikehalloran]

His sig says OS 10.11.6

[midilance]

Phew! It looks like I have my work cut out for me. Thanks for all the input.

[mikehalloran]

Phew! It looks like I have my work cut out for me. Thanks for all the input.

It's much easier than it looks. A bit time consuming but only if you have nothing else to do.

[midilance]

I've got lots of nothing to do. By the way, will I need any cable for this installation? I have a 2008 MacPro 3,1.

[mikehalloran]

For a Mac Pro, you'll need an adapter. There are many designs but I like this one.

https://www.amazon.com/NewerTech-Adapta ... wc+adapter

[midilance]

Thanks Mike. I'll get one.