Replacing internal hard drive w bigger capacity clone--easy?

[zed]

Hey folks,

I need to upgrade two of my 4 internal hard drives in order to add more hard drive capacity to drives that are almost full. I have no more room to add new libraries to my Samples drive!

Theoretically, this should be really easy, since I recall doing this before a couple of years ago--I cloned my Samples drive onto a bigger hard drive and then swapped it with the original inside my Intel Mac. By making sure that the name of the hard drive is exactly the same as the one it is replacing, all aliases, and licenses and links to data on the hard drive should remain the same and there shouldn't be any mess to clean up. That's what I recall, anyway. It was a very easy transition and I didn't have to re-register any software or anything like that, as I recall.

But my recollections are not always perfect. Has anyone had any recent experience with doing a hard drive swap, and made any important discoveries that are worth passing along? Any warnings or advice?

I really want this to go as smoothly as possible. I am buying two 2T drives (Seagate Barricudas are my planned purchase). My idea is that I will keep the removed drives untouched for the indefinite future to serve as my full backups of those hard drives. If worst comes to worst I can put them back in and carry on with things as they are presently.

I'm assuming that Carbon Copy Cloner is still the best way to clone my drive? It's been a couple of years since I used it.

My Samples drive is going to be doubled in capacity from 1T to 2T. I hope that is not going to have any affect on performance. The new Seagate Barricudas are supposed to have faster access times, so I would hope to see a slight improvement if anything.

Please keep your fingers for me. Any feedback is welcome.

Thanks in advance,
Zed

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I think your authorizations should all be on your boot drive, so that shouldn't be an issue.

When I replaced my drives with Seagates a few years ago, they would click and whirr much louder and apparently for no reason except it's own secret desires. They still do it every so often but it seems they've matured somewhat (or I've learned to ignore them).

It sounds like you've covered your bases. I do the same thing: save the drives "as is" as insurance or, when getting a new machine, keep the old one with the old functional drives in it for a good long time.

You can never have too much insurance!

[zed]

I think your authorizations should all be on your boot drive, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Thank you for reminding me of this. Of course, that is exactly right, and explains why I remember things going smoothly when I did this last time. It is when you change your boot drive that things become more challenging!

I'm already feeling more at ease!