Upgrading System Drive Under Lion
 

Hello,

I know this question has been asked a few times in various forms, but things still aren't quite sinking in for me and I want to run through all the various steps to make sure I don't make any disastrous mistakes...

PRESENT
Right now I have a 2TB internal system drive. I use SD Smart Update to make a bootable backup to another 2TB internal drive connected via a NewerTech Voyager docking solution. Everything works great, I think. I've checked and I can boot off the backup. I have Lion 10.7.4 installed, but haven't had any disastrous failures to double-check the whole "recovery partition" issue, which is kind of confusing to me.

FUTURE
I want to upgrade my 2TB internal system drive with a 4TB drive. I'll also be using a second new 4TB for SD bootable backup.

Here's how I'm thinking of going about things:

1) SD Smart Update 2TB system backup one more time.
2) Replace 2TB internal drive with new "blank" 4TB drive.
3) Boot from 2TB backup in NewerTech dock.
4) Use Disk Utility to set new blank drive as 1 large GUID partition.
5) Use Disk Utility Restore tab to copy the 2TB backup to the new 4TB drive.
6) Reboot using the new 4TB drive as my system startup disk.
7) Done.

Is that it? Do I have to do anything with the "recovery partition"? Will I have to reinstall Lion? What about my purchased software (Adobe CS5, etc.)? Will all the serial numbers work or should I deactivate things before I switch drives?

Thanks in advance for any step-by-step walkthrough advice.

Jonathan

Please send this question via support email and I'll provide detailed steps.