SSD upgrade

[ainsoph]

My HDD has 3 partitions: one for a 10.6 installation, another for 10.7 and another large one for the users. I'm thinking of buying a SSD and keep only the Lion installation. My question is: all I have to do is clone the Lion installation to the new SSD and it's done? Do I have to reinstall Chimera again into this new SSD? Also, I would like to reformat the HDD and use it only for the users. After cloning the system installation, is it safe to reformat the HDD and clone a copy of the user partition to it?
Thanks in advance

 

[ainsoph]

Anyone?

 

[dcl]

My HDD has 3 partitions: one for a 10.6 installation, another for 10.7 and another large one for the users. I'm thinking of buying a SSD and keep only the Lion installation. My question is: all I have to do is clone the Lion installation to the new SSD and it's done? Do I have to reinstall Chimera again into this new SSD? Also, I would like to reformat the HDD and use it only for the users. After cloning the system installation, is it safe to reformat the HDD and clone a copy of the user partition to it?
Thanks in advance

Good question, I've been doing some research on this recently, as I'm going to be starting the process of migrating all my applications, documents, data, etc to my new computer. I'm planning on going from one volume (HDD) to two volumes (SSD and HDD).

**Disclaimer** I haven't tried this yet myself, so I cannot vouch for it's effectiveness. Proceed at your own risk :? **Disclaimer**

I found the following guide (see the website linked below) after some digging and it has a section near the bottom of the page that should help you (and me) get your applications and data in the right location(s) without any permission errors or boot volume problems.

http://pondini.org/OSX/SetupOther.html

Additionally, this website has a TON of other scenarios and sitiations that should help you out with your setup.

Hope that helps!

 

[nukedukem]

I would connect the ssd and then boot into your current osx installation. Then clone your osx partition to the ssd. Then reboot and you should be able to select the new ssd to boot from in chimera. Once you are booted into the ssd, install chimera to the ssd and then test it by unplugging all other drives except the ssd so that you know that you can boot into the ssd and everything is working. Then go ahead and repartition your old drive as user space once you know the ssd is booting and running correctly.

 

[Sasquatch00]

I would connect the ssd and then boot into your current osx installation. Then clone your osx partition to the ssd. Then reboot and you should be able to select the new ssd to boot from in chimera. Once you are booted into the ssd, install chimera to the ssd and then test it by unplugging all other drives except the ssd so that you know that you can boot into the ssd and everything is working. Then go ahead and repartition your old drive as user space once you know the ssd is booting and running correctly.

This. Also set your BIOS to boot the SSD at the first priority.

 

[ainsoph]

Thanks guys, I will try that this week. I will post the progress and what worked, in case anyone else needs the answer.

 

[charliebee]

Don't want to hijack your thread but I was in the same situation and found this post.

I just wanted to report that I followed nukedukem instructions and it worked flawlessly.

I booted from my Unibeast thumb drive into OSX setup and used Disk Utility to restore my OSX partition to my new SSD. I then used the thumb drive again but this time to boot into my SSD and used Chimera to reinstall the bootloader.

I've now removed my old drive and my thumb drive and now have a crazy fast hackint0sh

Thanks!

 

[jasjeet]

There is one problem, OSX disk utility doesn't align the SSD correctly.

Do the following to partition the SSD correctly:
Download GParted Live USB
Follow instructions to make a bootable USB install of GParted
Boot GParted USB
Set the Partition Scheme of the SSD to GPT. All partitions will be removed
Create a new partition Apple HFS+ with offset of 1Mb.
Now you can clone the existing Lion installation with your clone program (I used Carbon Copy Cloner) to the new partition on the SSD.

Aligning the SSD is very important, a misaligned SSD can substantially reduce its lifespan.

Also OSX doesnt TRIM drives that are not from Apple, so here is a guide on how to enable OSX to TRIM all SSD from every brand:
http://digitaldj.net/2011/07/21/trim-enabler-for-lion/

 

[charliebee]

Wow, thanks for the insight jasjeet!

Unfortunately I did quite a bit of changes to my system after my last clone. Isn't there a way to offset the partition without formatting the whole drive?

If not I guess I'll have to clone back and forth two more times :x

 

[jasjeet]

iPartition is the only one i know of that will do it, but you need the paid version.

I would just clone the SSD somewhere, follow my guide and clone it back.

And before you waste any time, you can get iPartition to give you the starting sector, put it in this calculator to see if its aligned:

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/157

iirc you have to multiply iPartition sector by 512 then put this in Partition Offset in the calculator.

File Allocation Unit Size: 4096 standard
NAND Erase Block Size: 512 standard
NAND Page Size: 4 or 8

You can find the specific values for the 3 above by googling your SSD and the spec required.