Replace hard drive with bigger drive

[jazzer1027]

I have a Mac Book Pro core duo with a partition running windowsXP pro. The hard drive is almost completely full. I want to replace the drive with a larger drive and clone the current drive. Is there a way to completely clone the drive complete with the partition, boot camp, windows etc? I'm running mac os 10.4.11

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

You can clone the OS X partition of the drive easily with software like Carbon Copy Cloner.

You can clone the Windows partition with software like WinClone.

If you plan on replacing the hard drive yourself, be aware that doing this on the MacBook Pro computers with Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo) processors is quite a daunting process, involving more than a handful of screws and basically disassembling a large portion of the machine.

 

[ex2bot]

I did this with my Core Duo MacBook Pro, and I was sweating the whole time. Replaced the 80 gig drive with a 320 gig 7200 rpm drive and replaced a defective optical drive too.

It wasn't easy, but it's doable. I recommend using iFixit's visual guides (www.ifixit.com). I had a couple problems, the most minor of which was that there's a small gap in the front edge where the latch button is. The somewhat bigger problem is that my trackpad button is not as responsive now. By the way, if anyone has ideas on how I can get it working better I'd appreciate it. I also lost one of the tiny screws. Other than those problems, the machine runs well.

I used the free Carbon Copy Cloner to back up the Mac side and WinClone to back up my Windows partition. Restoring them to the new drive was easy.

Bot

 

[jcooke]

I did this with my Core Duo MacBook Pro, and I was sweating the whole time.

I agree, it was probably the hardest swapping of a drive besides the iBook G3 I had. The main problem for me was the little metal tabs that the screws screw into get bent so easily and some break off. It seems that when taking off the keyboard half that it requires a bit of roughness and delicacy at the same time to get it off. So when you do do it be sure to find a place to put all those tiny screws and have a big table.
Unfortunately a month or two later the computer failed to boot, not sure if the swapping of drives was the culprit, but luckily I now have a big drive in my MacBook thanks to that .