# Solved: make bootable hard drive clone



## catlady13 (Aug 4, 2003)

HI, I am relatively new to macs. I liked my mini mac so much I bought a macbook. I took the hard drive out of the macbook and put in a larger one. I would like to now install that hard drive in my mac mini because it is larger than the one that is presently in there. 
I have an external enclosure and would know how to go about doing this if it was a pc but I haven't a clue with a mac. I have googled it and I get all sorts of conflicting ideas, none of which I could figure out thus far. I do have a mac leopard install dvd but I have this mac mini set up now how I like it so would rather clone it than start anew. 
Could someone please give me some easy directions and/or program with directions on how to do this. The hard drive I want to put in my mac mini already has leopard on it because it was in my macbook. I assume I would need to format it first? 
Thanks for any advice.
Linda


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## Headrush (Feb 9, 2005)

Plug the external with the old mac mini HD in.
Reboot off Leopard DVD and format and install a clean OS.
(make sure to format the right HD)

After the first reboot, you will be given the option of restoring Users and Apps from another volume on this mac, pick the external and it will copy as needed and you old stuff should be there.


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## darthrevan945 (Jan 1, 1970)

i did the same thing, but with an ibook G3, and an imac G3

plug your enclosure in, and use Carbon Copy Cloner.
http://bombich.com/ccc


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## catlady13 (Aug 4, 2003)

Hi, I assume ( being a pc person) that I should format the drive first ( the one I am cloning to) since it already has a copy of Leopard on it since it was in my macbook. If this is the case do I use disk utility to do it ? If so do I use the erase command in disk utility? This is assuming I am going to use carbon copy cloner. 
Thanks again.


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## catlady13 (Aug 4, 2003)

Hmm, one more question please. I erased the external hard drive but did not reformat it as it was in a format that will boot from what I understand. Is it possible after it has finished cloning to boot from it as an external? If so would I do this by holding down the option key the same as I do when I choose between booting to mac or windows on my macbook? 
Thanks again . I hope to learn a lot from doing this.


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## darthrevan945 (Jan 1, 1970)

YES it is possible to boot from the external drive, BUT i am not sure if it will boot off of a USB port, it might only boot off of FireWire. (again this is guess, but remember reading it somewhere.)


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## catlady13 (Aug 4, 2003)

The external was hooked up by firewire. I tried to boot it by holding down the alt key when I rebooted which apparently is the same as the option key on a mac keyboard but it did not work. I did take the mac mini apart and boy is that a nasty job. Those screws are so tiny and so easy to lose. I found when I took it apart that the hard drive (external) that I had taken out of my macbook had a different connector than the one in the mac mini. The mac mini had quite a few pins ( didn't count them) and the other hard drive had a connector such as a small pci type of card might have.... not exactly of course but the same type of thing. I saw no adapters on either one that could be removed .. so I put the whole thing back together again the way it was. 
I am pretty sure both are sata drives so this didn't make a lot of sense to me.


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## catlady13 (Aug 4, 2003)

Well DUH I found out that the hard drive in my macmini is ata and of course the one from the macbook was sata. I bought an older mac mini as an introduction to macs and it hadn't mentioned ata drives anywhere so I started looking online and found this out. 
I did want to thank everyone for their help and mark this solved. I would never work on one again anyway. Those screws are all so tiny and hard to keep track of. I lost one somewhere never to be seen again. Luckily the thing works anyway. 
Thanks again,
Linda


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