first, i know this is a poor place for this topic, but it could/will spark some interesting debate about overall system performance. i have just purchased a seagate 80 gig 7200 drive and want to take out my existing 5400 rpm system drive. what's the best way to do this? i thought about temporarily removing my other seagate 80 gig (my audio drive) and installing the new drive, copying the system and apps to it, then removing the old 5400 and putting the audio drive back. can this work? can you merely copy the OSX sytem files and all other apps from one drive image to another? i really hope so, because my set up would take forever to reinstall!!!! A N Y I N F O would be REALLY appreciated. to recap: i want to REPLACE my old, sluggish 5400 drive (has the OS on it) with my new, 7200 drive. this way i will have the OS and apps on a fast drive and still have a fast drive for my audio files. PLEASE, ANYONE, HELP.

'mon please...

This has been covered a few times...but....NO, you can't just copy the files and apps across from drive to drive. You'll need to use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or Retrospect or similar, otherwise you'll be inviting disaster (like not being able to boot at all). Yes - you can just pull out your audio drive and replace it with your new one - but you'll need to check whether your new drive is set to slave or master and make it the same as your audio drive before you install it using ther jumpers provided. Then you'll need to swap the jumpers on the new drive to match your old system drive before booting from it. Pretty easy really.

thanks clutch. i'll give it a try.

CCC will do it if you insist, but take a moment and think about re-installing everything - that way you can start from a clean table and you get the top performance. also, partition wisely! don't give system partition more than 20GB, and try to make it even smaller. i have a 15GB drive and was planning to make it 12GB but chickened out the point is, the smaller the free space in your system drive, the less it will fragment over time. and if you can separate user files (/Users folder) into another partition (by modifying /etc/fstab file), you get your system partition totally isolated from all your user preferences and such. i can tell you, that makes your system not to suffer from slowdowns as the time goes by...

well, i cloned my old system drive and and replaced it with the clone. now when i boot up i get the question mark and a strange clicking in the new drive. it clicks at like 60 bpm. then i shut down and checked to make sure the new drive had the jumper set to slave; it was. rebooted and still the same crap. getting scared. good thing i got my old system drive to post this message here. H E L L L L P me please!

why don't you just make a clean install? those clonings however SHOULD work, but it seems it's not bulletproof...

well, can someone respond about the clicking i;m hearing? gonna try a reinstall tonight. again, i really do appreciate the knowledge and time people put in on this forum. it has saved my life more than a few times. thanks DUCers!

You are removing your old drive, right? Otherwise you'll have two masters and nobody likes having two people wearing the pants in a relationship. Take out the old drive, make sure your new drive is the only one in the computer and try and boot from that. If it has issues figuring out where the boot drive is try booting holding down the Option key and choosing the drive from the icons that appear. When you've successfully booted from your new drive, repair the permissions using the disk utility (just in case anything got a little screwy in the process) and the shut down and add your other drives. Remember that you've already got a master on one bus, so you may want to put both your old drive and your audio drive on th other bus - one is already a master and the other is already a slave so you should be sweet there.... Let us know how you get on...