Upgrade - Macbook Hard Drive with Win XP partition

Since I bought my Macbook in February of 2007 it has been rock solid with very few problems. I had my 150 GB Hard Disk partitioned to 3 parts for Mac OS, Shared Drive and Win XP.

After a few iPhoto project, I was running out of Hard Disk space to do anything else. So it was high time to upgrade the Hard Disk to Western Digital 500 GB. I still want my 3 partitions, but with 500 GB to play with. I can allocate 200 GB for my Mac OS, 100 for Shared Drive and the balance for Win XP. In addition, I want to upgarde the Mac OS 10.5 Leopard to OS X 10.6 Snow Lepard.

I had OS X Leopard installed so the process is pretty simple, just use Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner to do the copy, pull out the battery, unscrew the three screws and all would work. But, I installed Win XP so the problem became more complicated.

So I did my googling, and ran across WinClone. This was the easy way to save the Bootcamp partition without having to re-install everything. There is one HUGE downside though, but I’ll come to that in just a bit.

So, here was my procedure for upgrading my hard drive:

Pull out my current Macbook’s hard drive.Partition the new hard drive into two partitions.Then use WinClone to make an image of the Windows Partition.Clone my current Macbook’s Mac OS X Partition to the new Partition on the new driveRestore the Windows Vista Partition using WinClone.Install new Hard Drive and remove old hard driveBoot up new hard drive to verify that it all works, both OS X and Vista.Relax now that it is done?.
Now Let’s dive into each of these individual sections.

Step 1. Connect the new hard drive to the MacBook via USB.
I bought a 2.5″USB enclosure for the new 2.5″hard drive and connected it to the Macbook via USB.

Step 2. Partition the new hard drive into three partitions.
The MacBook detected the new hard drive and activated Disk Utility automatically. I partitioned the drive into 200GB for Mac OS X using HFS+ Journaled and 100GB for Shared Drive using MS-DOS and 100GB for Win XP using MS-DOS. This went smoothly.

Step 3. Clone the Macbook’s Mac OS 10.5 Partition.

Download Carbon Copy Cloner from the internet. It is a freeware, but please be kind to the developers by giving a generous donation when prompted. Run Carbon Copy Cloner to do an exact clone of my OS X Partition. It will direct you to select the drives accordingly to perform the cloning. This did take a while, but as expected went flawlessly. In comparison to cloning Win XP, this process is reletively fast.

Step 3. Use WinClone to make an image of the Windows Partition.
This worked beautifully, yet it took several hours to complete. (This is the downside that I mentioned earlier). So I started making an image of the Windows Partition. I hooked up the drive and enclosure to my iMac and did the WinClone procedure and saved the image to my iMac’s hard drive.

Remember, I have 2 macs, so it might be possible to do this with only one Mac, but it might be a bit slower. And you could have used the Mac Partition of the new hard drive to store the image to be restored. Then delete the file and do the Clone of the OS X Partition.

Step 4. Clone the Macbook’s Mac OS X Partition.
After the WinClone procedure finished I unhooked my old drive and put it back into my Macbook. After replacing the screws and battery I booted up the Macbook into OS X. I hooked up the newly partitioned hard drive to my Macbook and proceeded to use Super Duper to do an exact clone of my OS X Partition. This did take a while, but as expected went flawlessly.’

Step 5. Restore Windows Partition using WinClone .
Again, I hooked up the new hard drive to my iMac and went ahead and restored the saved image of Vista from WinClone onto the new hard drive. This, like the initial imaging process took hours to complete. But, I sat and waited and it did finished successfully.

Step 6. Install new hard drive and remove old hard drive.
I followed the same procedure as pulling out the old hard drive earlier. I pulled out the battery, removed the three screws and pulled out the hard drive. The hard drive is in a flimsy aluminum carriage that has a tab to easily pull the hard drive out. This is secured with 4 star screws which, luckily, I had a set of screw drivers that could remove these. I put the carriage on the new hard drive and reinstalled the hard drive, screws and battery.

Step 7. Boot up new hard drive to verify that it all works, both OS X and Vista.
This was the moment of truth. Did I screw something up? Did Winclone fail? Would everything boot up as expected? Well”¦ all copied and booted the first time without any problems. So it was a rousing success. I did test out both Operating Systems just to be sure that everything did work and that it would not crash on me in the middle of something. So far it hasn’t.

Step 8. Relax now that it is done?.
Obviously yes, I could relax knowing that everything booted and all of my data was secure.
Final Thoughts.

So Far everything is working as expected. The only little hitch I have run across is that it does seem to take longer than usual when accounts want to log off. While this isn’t a big problem it is a noticeable difference. I might try running some of the usual things, like Verify Disk and Onyx to clear up any caches and the like, just to see if that will correct the problem. I’d think it would. But if not, it’s not the end of the world.