Hi,
I have just slapped a 1TB drive into my MacPro, and CCC is currently moving the current boot disk contents to the new drive. It was criminally easy to do the install. Took about 5 minutes, if that. Fitting RAM and extra drives to those beasts is so easy, and others may bitch about the price of the hardware elsewhere, but this kind of easy user maintenance just adds value to the package as far as I am concerned.

The cloning of the drive is going pretty speedily too.

Paul,
If you use CCC to copy your old drive, which was, lets say, 500GB, when you put that back on to your new 1TB drive, does it let you expand the filesystem to use all 1TB? Or do you have to create a new partition to take up the rest of the space?

Ben

Old drive is 500 GB. CCC will do a block copy if it can - but in this case it appears to be doing a file copy, so I should have the full capacity of the drive for use. I think that because the capacities are different, it can’t do a block copy. So it knows. I do have all weekend to tinker if need be.

That's really good then, I was expecting you to have to partition it. If it lets you utilise the whole disk then it's a real bonus as I see it...

It took about 26 hours to clone the HD to the new one using CCC

Anyway, I have a new HD, with the full capacity, and second 500GB drive in the Mac for data storage. My Parallels virtual disk images will be living there, as well as other bits and bobs.

I did similar but what I ended up doing was using CCC scheduling to copy everything from the new drive to the old one once a week or so. I know if my main drive goes pop I have an available second boot disk I can use. Once the main drive goes over the old drive's capacity, I can replace it with another new drive and use the current boot as a backup for that...

I do also use Time Machine. Yes I am that paranoid.

Jon

Yep, the last couple of machines I ordered, I had IcyDock hot-swap S-ATA drive bays on the front. Makes drive swapping a doddle. I usually have a Linux and a Windows drive to swap out when I need one or the other operating system.

It is great for test machines, I can keep 4 or 5 HDs with different configurations or OS versions. Still, virtual machines seem to be taking over many aspects, although sometimes there is nothing like the "real thing", some problems don't show up on a VM, and some software requires "real" hardware (E.g. many 3D applications).

Jon I use Super Duper for my backups. It has a smart update feature that lets me clone a bootable backup in about half an hour. (The initial backup still takes about a day). Because of this I have new clone scheduled each night. Does CCC have a similar feature?

CC

P.s. I too have a separate Time Machine backup. I am looking to get some off site backup too. I don't see it as paranoid I see it as prudent.