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I have a MacBook Pro (early 2012) with Lion and Windows 7 installed on the internal HDD. I use Bootcamp to swap between them when booting the machine.

I want to replace the optical drive with an SSD. There are lots of instructions online, but my question is this: can I just install the SSD in the machine, then use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy my HDD to the SSD, then afterwards wipe the HDD to be partitioned as storage space? The HDD is 750Gb but the SSD is only 256Gb - but there is minimal data on the HDD at the moment.

What I'm thinking of doing is: 1. install the SSD in place of the optical drive. 2. Clone the HDD to the SSD. 3. Boot from the SSD (how?) 4. Wipe and partition the HDD to be shared as storage space 50/50 Windows/Mac.

Thanks for your help,

David

David Conlisk
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    Make sure to check if the CD connector has same speed with the HD connector or SSD will be pointless if its lower. – latusaki Jul 02 '12 at 11:00

2 Answers2

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Yes, you can use CCC to clone your OSX partition, but not the Windows/Bootcamp. (source: CCC Help). If you read that carefully, it says that it can clone the win partition, but won't make it work afterwards.

To clone and make your windows partition bootable, you need to rely on a Windows utility. Take a look at this thread (or google "clone my bootcamp partition") for a good starting point.

Booting from the SSD will be a matter of putting the SSD in the machine and turn it on, if it's the only drive, it will boot from there.

Martin Marconcini
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  1. you already know how
  2. yes CCC is fine for all OS X partitions. You can have a look at Winclone for the Bootcamp partition
  3. open System Preferences -> Startup and choose your SSD partition. Alternatively, hold the option key alt at start, you will be prompted with a bootable partitions list
  4. once you have cloned your data on the SSD and booted from it, you are free to do what you want with the HD
cdelacroix
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