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I recently purchased a Crucial M4 SSD 256GB for my Macbook Pro Early 2011. I bought the transfer kit that includes the USB to SATA cable. After I initially format the new SSD to be Mac compatible, I will use SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my HDD to the new SSD.

Now my question is before I install the SSD internally in my Macbook Pro, will SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner, clone everything I need for it to work?

Do they copy the OS and literally everything my old HDD had?

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    Also make sure to update the firmware of your SSD to the latest version. It very easy to do, just follow the official instructions.
    – gentmatt
    Jul 30, 2012 at 7:22

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SuperDuper! doesn't create the Lion Recovery partition on the new disk so Carbon Copy Cloner is a better choice for cloning to an empty drive.

If you use SuperDuper, you'll need to reinstall Lion afterwards to create the recovery partition. It's a non-destructive reinstall so all your data and applications are preserved (although it still sounds scary to me).

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/showthread.php?p=31750#post31750

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  • Excellent point. I would think its not as crucial to have the recovery partition on a backup disk but if you wanted to use it as a primary disk at times then yes, why not have it.
    – Richard
    Jul 30, 2012 at 10:45
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Yes, both SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner are designed to make fully bootable clones. Like you, I've performed this procedure (with older versions of both apps) on MacBook Pros onto external SSDs, for use as replacement drives.

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I have used CarbonCopy for similar purpose and it worked fine. Just a note, maybe you should consider making a clean install if you got the time, instead of cloning. Always good to make a clean start.

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    you can do a clean install, and then bring across all of your existing apps and account preferences via "migration assistant" (this is what I have done since buying my first macbook pro in 2006, and I still have my mouse acceleration settings and desktop and icon sizes from my original mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" installation running in my current 2011 macbook pro, unlike Windows, "migration assistant" actually works like you would expect it to (in other words, all your mail & apps come across correctly).
    – user1556373
    Aug 28, 2012 at 5:21

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