Exclude temporary system files and caches?
 

I'm upgrading the internal drive on my MacBook and I want the transition to be as smooth as possible. By default, I have the "Backup - all files" script chosen, but I'm wondering if I should remove its rules to exclude certain temporary OS files. Essentially, I want my computer to not even know I've swapped the drive. I'll give the new drive the same name and hopefully no links will be broken and everything will pick up where it left off. Any thoughts on whether I should or shouldn't exclude temporary system files as SuperDuper! recommends?

No, do not do that. If you would like some helpful steps on installing a new drive, drop me an email to support.

Okay, I cloned and installed the new drive in my MacBook. It's been smooth sailing, with a few noticeable but insignificant differences.

Firstly, I use Undercover to track my notebook in case it ever gets stolen. The OS asked me if I would allow that process to use my current location (à la iPhone and iPod touch). I hit "OK" and checked off "Don't ask me again."

Then I noticed some folders in my dock had question mark icons but that's because I changed their path and had never clicked on them before. They maintained their folder icon but had I clicked on them when booting off the old hard drive, they would have immediately displayed the question mark icon. I guess in this case, since some temporary files didn't come over, the system automatically checked and saw that it couldn't find them.

Spotlight is reindexing, which is only taking about half an hour because my drive is so speedy. The reason it's reindexing is because of the excluded temporary files from the original drive, right?

What other changes will I notice due to the cloning and swapping of my drives? Will anything break or require reconfiguration because I decided to rename the new hard drive? Will Time Machine do a complete backup because of temporary database files that didn't get copied over? Or will it go through an entire backup because I change the name of the hard drive?

Actually, no. The question mark items are because the aliases couldn't find their targets any more because their path *and* file numbers had changed. It has nothing to do with temporary files.

Spotlight is reindexing because the path to the drive changed, not because temporary files were excluded.

It's likely Time Machine will recopy because it's a different drive.

The path means the location (which could be thrown off by folder name changes), right? I just dragged a photo to the Dock, renamed the folder it's in, and the icon in the Dock still points to the photo.

Right, the location. Aliases try to relocate the file if it moves or gets renamed. If it can't, it'll sometimes change to a ?, sometimes it'll point to something else entirely.