Unsolicited testimonial…
I’ve been so accustomed to switching computers via FireWire target disc mode that when it came time to upgrade the quaint 5400rpm/160GB internal drive on my notebook to a speedy new 7200rpm/320GB drive I was all ready to plunge into the hassle of booting both drives on a second computer and then cloning. I figured there had to be some locked or in-use files that wouldn’t copy over no to mention the morass of file permissions that needed to be tracked.
Carbon Copy Cloner (donation-ware even!) couldn’t do all that by itself, that’s way too unnervingly easy. In the end it was that easy: hook up the new drive via FireWire, tell Carbon Copy Cloner to clone to the new drive, open up the case and replace new drive with old drive, and finally shame yourself for thinking in Mac OS 9 still.
If you hold alt when booting, you can select which boot device you want to use — useful if you backup using this method and then manage to make your system disk unbootable.
I did remember to select Startup Disk in Preferences before restarting, but that’s handy to know.
I already have a 500GB external dedicated to Time Machine. I want to get another for off-site stuff.
Dude. Get a big external and use Time Machine. Do it now.
Hm. Then it should have been a trivial “restore from TIme Machine”..
But then you have to install OS X on the new drive first before restoring.