Transferring data to a new internal HDD

My new 500 gb 7200 rpm HDD for my MBP should be arriving in a few days. I've found a video on how to do the physical swap, and it seems easy as pie.

Now I'm making sure I know how to actually do the data/software side of things. Is this accurate?

(1) Time Machine backup for the main partition before the swap; copy the save-game files from my Windows partition (used for gaming).
(2) Do the physical swap.
(3) Start up machine with Snow Leopard disk in drive (do I have to press anything in particular to boot off the disk?).
(4) Install Snow Leopard.
(5) Restore contents of main partition with Time Machine.
(6) Create a Boot Camp partition and install Windows XP.

Is that all I have to do?

 

3) C

That'll work i suppose.

You could also use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a copy of your current harddrive onto an external and then just place the clone info on the new harddrive. Should keep all partitions and such intact. (never used it on a mac though it works great on windows)

 

I'd use CCC with an eSATA connection to make the clone. Much faster than doing a full time machine backup (I assume via USB? ugh) then installing clean OS and then migrating from backup to new environment.

Although it would be cleaner your way, I'd lean more towards doing CCC to make a clone and then be done with it.

Do you currently have bootcamp and your moving that to the new HDD too? If so, use winclone to make an image of the bootcamp partition. Then restore it to the new enviornment.

 

Thanks for the info, directeuphorium, and for the feedback, ygohome.

But I already maintain a Time Machine backup on a regular basis to my external HDD, so it's not going to take hours and hours to do the initial backup. It's only the transfer back after the installing of the clean OS, and admittedly, that is going to take a long time.

The problem with the Carbon Copy Cloner (is that what CCC stands for?) is that I've only got one external HDD, and I'm already using it for my boot camp backup. I don't want to buy another; I'd rather just let it take all night for the transfer from the Time Machine backup onto the new internal HDD.

The only problem with that is...what to do with the winclone image? Can it be broken up and put on DVDRs? I don't want to have to buy an external HDD just for the WinClone image, when there are only save games from two games that I really care that much about saving (Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2). It'll take a while to re-download all my games from Steam, but that can be done while I sleep, and doesn't cost a penny (unlike buying another external drive for the WinClone image).