Upgrade Hard Drive Transfer Final Cut Help
 

My HV20 arrived in the mail about a week ago, which called for an upgrade. I am upgrading my 60 GB hard drive in my MacBook white (13 inch) to a 250 GB hard drive. I tried to upgrade it today in school but my animation teacher told me that you can't transfer Final Cut.

I am unable to get ahold of the install disks, so the install I have on my computer right now is the only copy I have. We are transfering basically all my videos, pictures, and documents, to a school computer and then transfering them again after my new hard drive is installed. Is there any way to properly transfer Final Cut?

BTW, I just signed up for this forum, Hello! The previous one I went to wasn't giving me any help at all, I hope you guys are nicer ^_^

Hi Connor,

There are a number of extra components installed with FCP, so, unlike your typical Apple software, it's not all contained in one place.

I think the easiest thing to do is create a Disk Image of your 60GB drive on any external HD and then transfer that image to your new HD once it's installed. The easiest way to do this is if you connect your MacBook to another Mac and startup it up in Target mode (so it appears as a simple harddrive to the other Mac).

Now, I've never actually had to do this myself, but have seen it done from a backup to replace a faulty system HD. The startup from the new HD took a while, but that was because his preferences were suddenly trying to start up from a network location. If that happens, go to the Preferences and specific the new HD as the start up disk.

If I'm missing anything obvious, someone please jump in.

Good luck...

For a laptop upgrade, I think Tom's advice is spot on. If doing the upgrade on a full size system or an iMac, there are other methods.

I used a software application called SuperDuper to clone my original drive when I did my upgrade (props to Mike Curtis for turning me on to that one).

-gb-

Hello Gentlemen,
For what it's worth, I was able to boot off cloned external HD's and successfully run FCS 2 on other macs without having to reinstall the Pro Apps. I only had to enter the serial # obtained on the startup screen when starting the newly cloned HD. Search this forum for "Will FC work on another computer"...hope the info is helpful.

So all I have to do is transfer with the fire wire to another mac, and then transfer it back over after I have the new HD installed?

Cause I was thinking it would kinda mess things up because files would be out of place and I wouldn't know where to organize them to.

Hello Connor,
I'm not sure what you're saying. Using the free app. SuperDuper will clone your MacBook HD...you do not have to address organizing or finding files when you clone back onto the new hd...I hope you're using OS 10.4 and not upgrading to 10.5 when you clone because it seems alot of people, including myself are having problems with Apple's Pro Apps. running in Leopard without a clean install.
Good Luck !

That sounds great! How do you use the program? I don't understand how it would work. Don't you have to completely reinstall OSX after the new HD is in? If it copies your entires HD then wouldn't it mess things up?

SuperDuper is really easy to use. There is a dialog window
where you choose what hd to copy/clone ( your present MacBook hd) and where to clone it to ( an external firewire hd )..just reverse the process after you install your new hd..remember that the destination hd will be completely erased/formatted so don't use another mac containing only 1 hd with apps.

On a side note, cloning FCS 2 in Leopard requires the serial # shown on the startup AND any applicable upgrade serial #'s ( something I did not have to enter when I cloned FCS in Tiger)

Allright, well I have Final Cut Pro 5.

I still don't understand how it works though, so you have to clone the current harddrive onto another computer which erases that computers harddrive, and then transfer it over to the new harddrive once it's installed? And if that is true, wouldn't it mess something up after you've installed OSX? Wouldn't it make double of system files etc.?

You'll need to boot your computer with a boot disk, then use disk utility, carbon copy cloner, super duper or another utility to make an exact image of your computer's hard drive onto another drive.

It would be easiest to borrow an external firewire drive that will take your new hard drive and clone straight to that, but you can also make a disk image (which is just another file) on any drive that has space for your 60gb.

Despite the difference in capacity, you can clone from the 60gb to the 250gb and have an exact copy. Alternatively, you can make an image and put it on another computer's drive without erasing anything on the target drive, as long as there's enough free space, then use the "restore" function to put it back to the new drive.

What you absolutely don't want to do is just copy the contents from your computer onto some other drive -- it won't work.

...no, does not erase, this is not a reformat of the transfer drive, you would only be making a Disk Image, but it's a big 60GB file.

...no it would not. The idea is to make an exact copy of everything on your current hard drive and transfer it to your new hard drive. You do not need to reinstall all your software because you will have transfered your current setup up exactly to your new hard drive. Everything will be the same except you will have a larger capacity harddrive.

For info on what a Disk Image is, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_image

Hope it works out...

Allright I'm gonna do this soon, are you completely sure this can copy Final Cut?

Disk upgrade
 

Hi Conner,
Why are you so worried?
Follow the procedure above the gentlemen have given to you. It will probably work if done properly.

If it doesn't work: Put the old disk in again. Or get the install disks. Or buy a new license.

The only thing is you might waste some time. But this is usual when working with complicated stuff like these programs and computers.

Good luck! /Johan

Okay, so I tried this yesterday at my school, and it ended up failing cause we put an internet cable in. I think I'm going to try again today, but let me just get this straight. After I've transfered the "disk image" of my harddrive to the other mac, and then I get the new harddrive in, what is the next step? Do I reinstall the OS on the new harddrive? If I do, then how does it work that after I get the disk image back onto the new computer it doesn't screw anything up with the files that are already there? It still confuses me, surely if I was transferring the old harddrive with EVERYTHING, including all the system files, it would screw something up with the new HD.

Here's what I usually do when I upgrade a macbook drive:

1. get an external enclosure for your new harddrive (best with firewire 400 ports, sata internal). Check: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-.../2.5-Notebook/
You can use this enclosure later for your current internal drive. Nice for doing backups.
3. after you temporarily put the new drive in the enclosure, hook it up.
4. Run SuperDuper and clone your internal harddrive to the external. This will produce an exact copy of your internal drive, just with lots more free space.
5. Swap the two drives, the new one goes into the macbook.
6. Startup your machine. It will be an exact "clone" of your old one, just with more free disk space.