What is the best method for copying data from old internal drive?

Here at iFixit we use a program called SuperDuper to copy and old hard drive to a new hard drive. You can download it here. We have a hard drive installation guide that will walk you through the process of setting up a new hard drive. You will need an external hard drive enclosure to complete the process.

I've done this to my MacBook Pro 17" and wife's MacBook Pro 13" - twice on each (larger drives). I usually use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the entire drive to the 'new' drive...which is connect via external firewire drive enclosure. Once copied, I boot up to the 'new' drive - still attached via firewire (to verify that all is good.)

I also most recently did this and cloned from my MacBook Pro 17" to a new (new to me) Dual Intel Mac Pro -- again, using Carbon Copy Cloner. Worked GREAT!

I second the recommendation to use SuperDuper, but if you do a lot of swapping/cloning of drives I also recommend you get yourself a Newertech USB 2.0 Universal Drive adapter or similar adapter - same purpose as an external drive enclosure, but for temporary use and it will support 2.5"/3.5" ATA/SATA drives.

Both SuperDuper and CCC are great; I tend to prefer CCC because it will not stop if it encounters an error like SD does; and it will log all errors, so you get a list of bad files (say, if your old drive was suffering from failed sectors.)

Your Time Machine will want to start all over with its backups because TM uses the source HD's UUID (unique identifier). There is a way to tweak the backup to change the UUID to the new drive's; I've done it, but unless absolutely necessary, it's a lot easier to just let the backup start over (assuming your backup drive has room), then delete the old one after a few weeks or months. You can still access the old backup directly in the Finder.

Re-connect TM backup to new drive: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?s...