First off, why even bother? Well, like I said, speed is a HUGE factor. An SSD will make your Mac boot up faster, apps will launch quicker, and everything just feels snappier. Plus, if your old HDD is starting to sound like a dying walrus, cloning it to an SSD is a great way to avoid data loss disaster. Trust me, I’ve been there. The *click…click…click* of impending doom… not fun.
Now, about the tools. There are a few different ways to tackle this. You could go the *Disk Utility* route. Yeah, it’s built-in and free, which is awesome. But, I gotta be honest, I’ve had mixed results when trying to clone a drive with Bootcamp partitions using it. Sometimes it works flawlessly, other times… well, let’s just say it ends up with a scrambled mess. (Maybe it’s just me, and I’m just a noob, but I do get frustrated with the Disk Utility). It *should* work, using the “Restore” function to do a block-level copy, but seriously, *caveat emptor*.
Then you’ve got the dedicated cloning software. I’ve heard good things about *CopycatX* and *Drive Genius*, that they do block level cloning and can handle the whole shebang in one go, Mac and Bootcamp too. I’ve used ’em before, a while back, and they worked great. But, I haven’t touched them in ages, so, you know, things change. Software updates, maybe a cat walked across the keyboard during coding, who knows?
Another option, if you are just wanting to move your bootcamp partition, is *Winclone*, which from what I read is super useful for making an image of just your Bootcamp partition. This could be useful if you are short on space on your SSD.
Here’s a tip though, regardless of what software you use: Make sure your SSD is at least as big as your current HDD. Sounds obvious, right? But it’s easy to overlook. And, while you *could* technically try to clone to a smaller SSD, it’s just asking for trouble. Trust me, you don’t want to deal with resizing partitions and all that jazz. It’s a headache.
And speaking of headaches, don’t forget to back up EVERYTHING before you start. Seriously. If something goes wrong (and things *can* go wrong), you’ll be glad you did. Time Machine is your friend. Cloud backups are even better. Redundancy, baby!
Another thing I’ve seen people do is put the SSD in the optical bay (if your Mac still *has* one!). That way you can run both the SSD and HDD for a while, and have the HDD as a backup. Pretty clever, huh?
