HD Copy for Pismo - Easiest Way?

[J English Smith]

I would like to bump up one of my Pismos from a 6 gb drive to a 20 or 40 gb drive. Rather than rebuilding the new drive up from scratch and going through all of the OS updates for 10.4.11, and other program loads, is there an easier way using the firewire ports to copy/clone to the existing drive to the new drive before I swap them? I guess what I'm asking is if there is a firewire to IDE hard drive interface cable?

 

[tmtomh]

Cheapest and simplest way, I believe, would be to find an inexpensive Firewire HD enclosure. As long as you ensure the enclosure takes an ATA drive (not an SATA), you should be good to go.

Then use SuperDuper! (or CarbonCopyCloner or a similar program) to clone the HD and make it bootable.

From there it's just a physical swap and you're done.

 

[Strimkind]

I created an image using Disk Utility by way of the Restore function and used a USB hard drive. I do it all the time when I retore old macs. Its a little slow using USB 1.1 but it works and no extra software requred.

Do the following:

1. Run disk utility

2. Select the restore Tab.

3. Drag your existing hard drive to the 'Source' area

4. Drag the external Hard Drive to the Destination area (make sure it is empty as it will wipe the drive).

5. When its done, you restart and boot from the Install DVD.

6. Load Disk Utility under the menu.

7. Drag the External Drive to the 'Source' Area.

8. Drag the new Internal Drive to the 'Destination' area.

9. When its done, restart...and you are done!

Hope that helps!

 

[Bunsen]

I guess what I'm asking is if there is a firewire to IDE hard drive interface cable?

Indeed there are such things. As tmtomh suggests, an external FW HD box is probably the simplest way to source one. For extra flexibility, it should cost little more to find one that also has USB, eSATA or both.

I would also recommend Carbon Copy Cloner on the software side.

 

[quinterro]

I don't have a Pismo, but for my Lombard I used CCC on my Sawtooth to clone its drive to a larger one.

 

[J English Smith]

Thanks, everybody. I will give this a try soon. First, I need to score a 20gb or 40gb drive at a reasonable price. Since the clone source is small (~6gb) I may just buy a USB external case/enclosure, since the FireWire equipped ones seem to cost quite a bit more.

 

[Bunsen]

You should be able to find one with a 20-30GB drive already in it fairly cheap, unless you prefer to look for a specific drive model/brand for the Pismo, and the case separately.