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Hello I have several software programs from when I was a student installed on my 17" unibody mid-2009 Macbook Pro, and need to retain this software while doing a hard drive upgrade if possible. I am curious if doing a Time Machine backup to an external HD, then somehow restoring from that external drive would work. Any feedback or resources would help Thanks very much
If you have an external FireWire HD case (this is best in your case) you can make this very easy. During the OS install process you’ll be asked if you want the migrate your data from your old system to your new drive. That allows you to copy over the apps & user data as well as the permissions. I do recommend you first make a backup on an external drive using TimeMachine just because the next action could mess things up. This is were you boot up under an external drive (USB thumb drive will work here) so you can repair your drives permissions and any disk errors. Then proceed with the upgrade.
