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Clone int. hard drive and partition to add Windows?

I've got a 320GB hard drive in my MBP and I've got like 15GB's of space left so I decided to get a Seagate Momentus 750GB drive. My plan is to partition the new drive down the middle, 375GB on each side, which the MAC side will already have just over 300GB on it and then use the other partition to install Windows 7. I'm just not exactly sure exactly how to do all the different parts of the process. Thank You Very Much In Advance, Your Help Means A Lot!!!!! Addendum:I want to do it BootCamp style, not parallels or VMware. THANKS AGAIN!!!!!

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Hollywood -

Get yourself a Firewire external case to hold your new drive temporarily (much faster and you can use it to hold your old HD afterwards as a backup). Install your new drive to it and connect it to your Mac. Setup your partitions as you like and as Jay pointed out make sure the first partition is setup for Mac OS Extended (Journaled), within Profiler it shows up as Journaled HFS+.

Then use Apples Migration assistant to migrate all of your files and user account/s info over. At that point you'll have an exact image of what your old drive has in the first partition. Using System Preferences - Startup Disk set your new drive as the boot volume. Now restart your Mac at that point your external drive should be the first listed in the finder if so your drive is ready to move into your system.

Setting up MS Windows can be done in two ways:

First using Apples Boot Camp 3.1 see this Apple TN Boot Camp Windows 7 FYI's. So depending on your Mac OS version you may have to upgrade and Windows 8 is not supported at this time. Note: Windows will be running in 16/32bit mode here

You could run Windows natively with in a Virtual Machine (VM) using either VMWare or Parallels. Which I think is better as you can move stuff between the OS spaces, can be quicker and run concurrently. Note: Windows can run in full 64bit mode here if you have the correct version (not limited to Vista).

In either case you'll need to duplicate your Antivirus between the two OS's (some companies offer a dual Mac/Win program, Intego is one example).

Just make sure to keep your files isolated as backing up & restoring can be a hassle if your not careful.

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4 Comments:

Don't forget you'll need to use Disk Utility to create & format the FAT32 volume.

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Hey Dan,

I like your idea of the Firewire enclosure, I had went ahead and got a USB 3.0 enclosure because I also just got through building a Monster of a PC that has USB 3.0, so I thought I might get use out of it with that as well. I actually didn't consider the Firewire which is a Great idea! Now when I've gone into Disk Utility, when I set up the HDD into two partitions, I get the first one set at GUID and then when I go to the second and make it Windows then it changes the first one to the same thing. I must be doing something wrong with a step in the Disk Utility. I'm obviously gonna have to re-clone the HDD-320 so that I'll be able to partition the HDD-750 properly because I don't think there's a way to go and change the empty partition now. I'm getting totally lost. First I need to go to Disk Utility and partition the drives correctly which I haven't been able to do? Next clone the HDD-320 onto one of the partitions on the HDD-750 with which program? Then install WIN on partition 2?

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Your cloning software might be the wrinkle here. Try using Apples Migration tool which does the same thing after you've setup the drive volumes with Apples Disk Utility program again as you want tour HD setup.

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thanks dan, i'll give it a shot! you're a "rockstar," all the way!! thanks again!!!!!

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Hi,

First of all you need a way to plug any HDD to your USB or Firewire in order to retrieve your old data.

Now, you will need to remove HDD-320 and replace it with HDD-750. I will need your MBP's model to point you to the proper HDD installation guide.

Once the HDD-750 is in ou will have to format the hdd. this is when you can create your partitions. Just remember that they the one running osx needs to be journaled extended. When you are done with the partitions, proceed to install OSX. At some point it will ask if;

-You want to do a clean install. If you opt for this, you will have to move your data, do all the settings and re-install your programs.

-You want to restore a previous account. This will pull the data from HDD-320 and will leave HDD-750 with an exact copy of your old install.

Either way, you will have to be able to access HDD-320.

So, you should now have a clean install to work with or a restored version of your old system. Now you can run Boot Camp Assistant to install W7.

If you have any questions, please add them as comments.

Cheers,

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8 Comments:

Jay you almost have it... Remember Mac's have Migration assistant which makes moving files and use accounts a breeze. I would also recommend using Firewire over USB for the external case connection to house the new drive for step 1 and then he can use it to hold the old drive as a backup afterwards

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Hey Jay I appreciate the help, let me tell you what I've done prior to throwing up the question. Also real quick to answer yours, I have a Mid-2009 MBP 15" and I've already looked up how to do the installation so let me save you some time there. What I did was, I put HDD-750 into an external enclosure and then used a program called "Carbon Copy Cloner," so I created two partitions when I began, I split it right down the middle 375GB each partition. I cloned HDD-320 onto HDD-750 it transferred perfectly. It's when I went to make the next move using Boot Camp Assistant that I ran into a snag. I was getting a message that I didn't have enough room left in the partition to add the WIN OS, and at the time I didn't have any internet access which I didn't think was going to be an issue. The program told me there were going to be downloads that would be part of the Boot Camp process, but I still don't think it was going to work because I couldn't format the 2nd partition in FAT, it was in GUID, incorrect.

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I have to say some more, it wouldn't allow me to access the second partition, that's why it was telling me there wasn't enough room for the other OS. Dan I just saw your comment and Thank You kindly for your bit of input!

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Hollywood - No the second partition should be FAT32 with BootCamp but with one of the VM's you could use NTFS or NTFS+ which is what Windows 7/8 uses.

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BootCamp assumes your running inside of the Mac volume (thats were Windows will be placed in a special folder). In your case the volume was not big enough to host BootCamp and Windows. Can you delete some stuff to make room? (remember you still have your old HD with it on it).

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