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Please help with process for upgrading RAM and SSD

P

pquinn27

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 23, 2015
2
0
I have a mid-2012 MBP 13". It has slowed down dramatically with frequent beachballing and so I purchased new RAM and a Crucial MX100 SSD to hopefully prolong its useful life for a few years. I am trying to strategize the best way to go about replacing these components.

As for the SSD, I am not doing a double HD configuration, I am just swapping out the old HD with the SSD. I have everything I want to keep backed up, and I want to do a clean install of OSX on the SSD rather than a clone just in case I have some accumulated software/third party issues causing the slowness I am experiencing. So, my first question is: how do I go about formatting the SSD and having it ready to accept an OSX boot USB?

My second question is: should I replace the HD first and get the SSD up and running before replacing the RAM, or should I put the RAM into my existing configuration and do the HD swap second?

Thanks for your time!
 
GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
pquinn27 said:
So, my first question is: how do I go about formatting the SSD and having it ready to accept an OSX boot USB?
Click to expand...
  1. Buy an external enclosure and put your old drive in it.
  2. Install your new drive in your Mac.
  3. Boot from your old (external) drive by holding the Option key on startup.
  4. Prepare your new drive by formatting it to HFS+ using Disk Utility
  5. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the old (external) drive to the new (internal) drive.
  6. Boot from the new internal drive.
  7. Your now running on your new internal drive and your old drive is now an external drive, useful for backups or additional storage.
Some have encountered problems cloning from the internal to the external, then swapping them, which is why I recommend you swap them first, then clone from the external to the new internal. For more info on this: Can't Boot From Cloned External SSD
pquinn27 said:
My second question is: should I replace the HD first and get the SSD up and running before replacing the RAM, or should I put the RAM into my existing configuration and do the HD swap second?
Click to expand...
It makes no difference which order you follow.
 
Y

yjchua95

macrumors 604
Apr 23, 2011
6,725
233
GVA, KUL, MEL (current), ZQN
pquinn27 said:
I have a mid-2012 MBP 13". It has slowed down dramatically with frequent beachballing and so I purchased new RAM and a Crucial MX100 SSD to hopefully prolong its useful life for a few years. I am trying to strategize the best way to go about replacing these components.

As for the SSD, I am not doing a double HD configuration, I am just swapping out the old HD with the SSD. I have everything I want to keep backed up, and I want to do a clean install of OSX on the SSD rather than a clone just in case I have some accumulated software/third party issues causing the slowness I am experiencing. So, my first question is: how do I go about formatting the SSD and having it ready to accept an OSX boot USB?

My second question is: should I replace the HD first and get the SSD up and running before replacing the RAM, or should I put the RAM into my existing configuration and do the HD swap second?

Thanks for your time!
Click to expand...

Replace the RAM first to verify that the RAM works.

After that, put the SSD in.

To make a bootable OS X USB stick, download the Yosemite installer from the Mac App Store. After that, use DiskMakerX (free download, Google it) to make the bootable stick.

Startup from the stick and open up Disk Utility. Format the SSD first from there before installing.
 
P

pquinn27

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 23, 2015
2
0
yjchua95 and GGJStudios,

Thanks for the quick replies. I will do the RAM first to verify it is working and tackle the hard drive swap second. yjchua thanks for preempting my follow on questions about formatting the new drive from the usb.

I will let you know if I run into any problems and otherwise post a successful update to encourage any other would be upgraders.
 
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