How to Move System to New Hard Drive, Reblessing System, Moving Desktop

In other words how to move your fully functioning system over to a new replacement hard drive rather than reinstalling a clean system from a system install CDROM and going through the pain of getting all your extensions and menu items back to the way it was.

FYI, this was done on my older PM6500 but will apply to any Mac with up to OS9.0.4 and either SCSI or ATA/IDE hard drives.

If you have another hard drive or large storage device you can save a lot of time by just copying your startup drives system over to the new drive. This is done by first copying your entire system on the old drive to a secondary drive, large memory card, CD-R/W, DVD-RAM or even another Mac via its ethernet connection. The easiest method is to move it to a bootable drive and restart from that drive after reblessing the system that was copied there. So this article will only address the method when having a bootable second device.  Also, to move any application or file over to the new drive, you would do the same thing, just drag them over to the secondary drive while holding down the option key, (this assumes of course you have enough space to do this temporary move). Later on you would again copy them over to the new drive using the same method.  Only do this last step once you get your new hard drive and system happy. Remember to trash all this extra stuff once you are done to recover disk space on your secondary drive or device (NOTE: always hold down the option key before dragging over files and folder to assure you made full copies and didn't just relocate their icons to the desktop. If you get a copying time bar graph you know you made actual copies.  This is especially important if you intend to trash the old originals. I have been fooled a few times moving files from drive to drive and trashing what I thought were the old items on the desktop but which were never really copied to the other drive. The desktop is not a drive itself, only an invisible folder on the startup drive).

Step 1, Copy your entire System Folder to your secondary drive or device, by simply dragging it to that secondary device (I recommend holding down the Option key before selecting the System Folder to assure an exact copy is made to your secondary drive or device.  Also this process will NOT copy your items seen on the desktop.  They must be copied manually.  To copy your desktop contents (folders, and files only, not drive or device icons) make a new folder near where you put the copied system on the second drive or device and call it TempDesktop. Drag and drop all your desktop folders and files to this folder while holding down the option key.

Step 2, Rebless this copy of your system by taking the System "suitcase" icon and Finder "face" icon out and placing them on the desktop, close the system folder and take both System and Finder icons and put them back in the copy of your system folder. This system folder copy should now have the face icon present on the outside of the folder. This special face folder is a reblessed system and can be used as a startup system.

"Reblessing Old System Folder After Clean Install"
http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n18611

Step 3, Go to the control panel called "Startup Disk" and choose the drive the system copy is located on. Restart the computer.

If all went well you should start up on the secondary drive and everything will work and look as it use to with the secondary drive icon now being at the top.

Step 4, Shutdown the computer and replace your old main drive with your new replacement one (this assumes you have matched the old drive type and all the jumpers are set right for your Mac, which is beyond this discussion subject).  Reset the cuda switch on the mother board (usually near the RAM, which also resets the PRAM), and restart the computer.  On iBooks you would use a paper clip and poke it into the small hole up near the power on switch.

Step 5, If all is OK the system will start and ask you if you want to initialize the new drive. Select yes. If the option is given for a custom initialization, do so. This is your chance to setup partitions and if you want to use the more efficient HFS extended format (be aware that you must be using OS8.1 and above on each of your Macs to be compatible with this type of format, like sharing them on ethernet or sharing physical SCSI drives). If you are not given any custom initialization option, just let the computer finish starting up.

If all is still OK you will have a default desktop only showing you the drive icons including the new drive and/or its partitions as drive icons and the trash can. This OK, don't panic, you now need to do some more work to get things back to normal.

Step 6, If the new drive icon is on the desktop you are fine. If you want to partition the drive different or further, now is the time. Find the Apple Drive Setup software, its either in the utilities folder on your secondary drives utility folder or use a recent OS CDROM disk and find it there.  Click on it and select the new drive and all its partitions in its menu and select initialize and custom if you want to change things (this step will erase anything on the drive so it must be done prior to moving any files to it). Follow the screen prompts for HFS extended and the number of partitions you would like (each partition can be formatted differently and acts like a drive icon on your desktop when done). Try a low level format if its a new drive (zeroing the drive can be safer on an old drive that had lots of prior use, but takes many hours to do on a large drive). You can change the partition sizes using the partition boxes that appear in the drive setup window and by dragging the partition box edges for each partition to make it larger or smaller. When you are happy with the partitions or none if you prefer, its time to quit the setup and move your old system copy to the drive.

Step 7, Take the entire system copy and move it to your new drive or one of its partitions. Also move the temp desktop folder there too (remember to hold down the option key while dragging these files onto the new drive to assure you a moving only exact copies. Rebless the new drives system as before, dragging the System and Finder icon out onto the desktop and closing the folder and moving it back onto the folder so the new hard drive system folder shows the face icon on its surface. Go to the control panel select startup drive and choose the new drive or partition. Restart the machine. It should look as before, with the new drive icon at the top of the icons (the startup drive is always the top one BTW). If everything looks OK you are almost done.

Step 8, Unbless the system on your secondary drive that you used to startup just prior (take the Finder out and place next to the system folder and leave it there, the secondary system folder will loose its face and look like a generic folder). Keep this system copy as your backup if you ever need to either go back to the old drive or if you ever have system problems (you can rebless this system and startup from that drive or copy any of the preferences and extensions there to fix system problems on the new drive in the future). Now move your old desktop files to your new desktop by holding down the option key as you drag them to the desktop.  I recommend rebuilding the desktop at this point (hold down the Option and Command (Apple) keys while the system is starting up until you get a message asking if you want to rebuild the desktop. Select yes and wait).

"Rebuilding Desktop File and Icon Recovery"
http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n10182

Step 9, Now you will need to fix some alias links and set your clock and calendar, desktop pictures and any other things that seem to not work or look right. When you change drives you are stating with a new desktop and drive Finder. For instance, Netscape may not know where your user profile is located. To fix that when it wakes up, direct it to your user profile located in the new hard drives, System, Preference folder under Netscape Users, and under your user name. Stop once you see your user name and select it (if you stop short, a new generic set of files will be created and you will have to replace all the Netscape preference folders from your back up system and start over).  Many of the alias items in you Apple Menu Items folder (located in the system folder) may not know where the actual application or file is anymore. So you can either make new alias files from the original application (one click on application and hold down the Command (apple) key while typing M) and drag those new alias back to the Apple Menu Items folder, of if you get a message to fix the alias, than do so by showing the computer where the original application is located. This is a normal problem when physically removing startup drives and there is no way to avoid it that I have found. Also some software registration codes will be lost and when you wake up that application you will need to re-enter your code. So far this only happened with I-Jam MP3 player/recorder (apparently this code is not stored in its preference file). I also had to reactivate my Kaleidoscope desktop appearance scheme by just telling its control panel where the schemes were located.

But still, this is a lot easier than doing a clean system install and trying to figure out all the extensions, control panels and preferences and proper versions that need to be replaced to get your system back together (including any software registrations usually stored in the preferences). In my opinion its worth buying a small bootable drive for $170 (like a 13 gig BUSlink/Segate USB type, P#54016 in MacMall) just make sure its a bootable device and test it with a system copy selecting it as your startup drive) to be able to do this system copy and rebless method.

NOTE: Its not a good idea to have more than one blessed system (system folder with a face on it) at a time on any drive except for your startup drive of course. Or even worse, two blessed systems on one drive or partition. If you have the disc storage room, always keep a copy of your entire working startup system folder so you can use parts of it to fix things. Always hold down the option key during drag and drop coping of old system parts to your new drive system. This assures you will only drag a copy of the selected item rather than moving or taking out the original.