Clean reinstall methodology for a laptop

I need to completely reinstall Snow Leopard & (newly install) FCP 7, along with many other apps to my MBP 2.4GHz system. This will take some time. Well, a lot of time when everything is taken into consideration. Instead of cloning the existing Laptop system drive (already done) then installing Snow Leopard and applications to the MBP's internal system drive over the course of days and losing the use of my the machine during that time, I was thinking of proceeding this way:

Do all OS & application installs to an external Firewire drive, then use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone that external drive to the internal drive of the laptop.

This let's me keep using my fully functioning, fully loaded laptop online & operational over the course of the new OS & FCP installs to the external. The only productivity hit I end up taking is when I CCC the newly installed external drive to the MBP's internal drive.

Any thoughts, pro & con, about the viability & efficacy or general workability of this approach? Thanks so much!

Reid C

I can't put my finger on it, but something about it feels hinky to me. Maybe it's nothing and I just ate some bad tuna fish or something.

It's worth noting, though, that you definitely will not lose the use of your laptop for days. First of all, surely it doesn't take DAYS to install your OS and applications. But beyond that, you can always boot off your cloned system drive and work that way.

It's also worth noting that if you have a relatively recent MacBook Pro, it's absolutely trivial to swap the hard drive. It's right by the battery, held in by like two screws. There's not even a cable. So you can always just pick up a new laptop drive, install it, get it configured to your heart's content, but always be able to go back to the old drive just by swapping them.

Yeah the fresh drive method I find is the best. I have four drives in my Mac Pro at home, one just the old known system with everything intact in case of critical failure, and one the brand new chuck-every-update-on-it drive that I work with from day to day.

Yeah, I did things just that way, back when I had a Mac Pro. I had three system drives in it, though. That's how paranoid I was. One was my known-good configuration, one was my I'm-using-this-right-now configuration, and one was whatever I was using right before I applied my last update. Eventually I'd get confident enough with a configuration to make it my known-good.

Gosh, I wish the OS would handle some of that work for me. It's a pain.

Oh, and whenever possible, keep your files off your system disk. Saves time and trouble when doing the period rebuild that we editors must do.

ReidCAULFIELD Wrote:
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> Do all OS & application installs to an external
> Firewire drive, then use Carbon Copy Cloner to
> clone that external drive to the internal drive of
> the laptop.

Won't doing this take pretty much the same amount of time as installing normally? Of course, you would have the DVD drive slowing things down but you could make disk images of the discs to overcome this.

It just seems like a lot of work for not much time saved IMO.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

Actually, Jon, when all is said & done, it will take longer doing it my way. Saving time on the install isn't so much the point. It's keeping this critical laptop up & running as long as possible and not taking it completely dow. For better or worse, it's really my primary system at the moment. I think I'm going to give it a shot (installing to external, cloning to system), unless anyone has definitive information that this is a bad idea.

Reid