Looking to replace stock HDD with an SSD.. have some questions

Hi All,

I am sure this has been asked a bunch of times, so forgive me if I ask again...

I have a late 2010 MBP (Model A1278). Currently the machine has 4gb of memory and a 256gb hard drive on it. The machine is starting to show its age and is slowing down considerably, so I was thinking of upgrading the memory to the max allowable 8gb, and swapping out the HDD with a nice 256gb SSD. What I am looking to find out is if I have daily time machine backups, can I just swap out the drives, reboot the machine into recovery mode and then select a TM backup to restore to this new drive?

My main concern with all of this is that I have been reading stories of people having to first create a partition on the SSD, then transferring over the TM backup, but I am not sure how I would set a partition when the drive itself is internal... Do I need to get an enclosure? Is there some other easy way to accomplish this? Is it even necessary?

My ultimate goal is this:

1. Open laptop
2. Replace memory
3. Replace hard drive with SSD
4. close laptop
5. Boot Laptop into recovery mode (Command + R)
6. Restore from Time Machine Backup
7. Select backup date
8. Restore finished.
9. Reboot Laptop into normal boot mode
10. Enjoy a slightly faster laptop

Thank all!!!

Just curious how I would access recovery mode if the new SSD has no OSX on it... Is Recovery mode built onto the laptop somewhere outside of the OSX?

Thanks

DeltaMac said:

When you have the new (blank) SSD installed - start up your MBPro, holding Option-Command-R. There will be a short delay, and you will see a spinning globe. That means your MBPro is connecting to Apple's servers. You'll get to the same menu screen, with one of the choices being Disk Utility, where you can format the SSD. When you have that, you can then quit Disk Utility, then continue on with an OS X install. On that model, the system that will be offered will probably be Lion.

This all will work best (and fastest) from an ethernet connection.

Click to expand...

If after I partition the drive and it loads Lion, can I just do a straight update to Yosemite? Or do I need to do all the incremental updates first?

JTToft said:

- You don't need to do any installations of OS X. You can simply restore everything from your Time Machine backup and be back where you left off with your old hard drive.

Click to expand...

Oh ok... I was curious, become some above your post said I would need to follow these steps:

When you have the new (blank) SSD installed - start up your MBPro, holding Option-Command-R. There will be a short delay, and you will see a spinning globe. That means your MBPro is connecting to Apple's servers. You'll get to the same menu screen, with one of the choices being Disk Utility, where you can format the SSD. When you have that, you can then quit Disk Utility, then continue on with an OS X install. On that model, the system that will be offered will probably be Lion.

This all will work best (and fastest) from an ethernet connection.

Click to expand...

So I wasnt sure if I had to do the OSX install, or after using Disk Utility, I could quit that and then just use a TM backup?

JTToft said:

- Basically, there's a thousand possible ways to do it. You can do a conventional install of OS X and then restore the rest of your stuff from Time Machine. But the easiest way is simply:

1. Install new SSD
2. Attach Time Machine drive
3. Boot while holding down Option/Alt
4. Choose to start from your TM
5. Choose restore
6. Wait

And you're done. You don't even need to go into Disk Utility first.

Click to expand...

The method you laid out seems simple, is there no need to partition the drive then? I assume that if I boot while holding Option/Alt and start from TM, when I choose restore, it will setup/create a partition?

DeltaMac said:

It does take only a few seconds to erase the SSD using Disk Utility.

That can reassure you that the SSD is both properly prepared, and that a partition can be created without producing an error.

Click to expand...

Yes, but I do not own an external enclosure, nor do I want to spend the additional money on one, if I am only planning on using it one.

Thanks

Thank you everyone for your assistance with this!

I will let everyone know how it goes...

So I just wanted to let everyone know I completed the update tonight and now I have a blazing fast 2010 MBP, and I am so happy.

The swapping of the memory and HDD were a snap, but I hit a tiny snag when I powered the machine one for the first time. When it booted up into a menu asking what I wanted to do, I went right for the Time Machine backup, and when it started to search for the new drive, it could not find it. I had to reboot again, but this time select Disk Utility and then format the drive for MAC.

Once the format was complete, I went to Time Machine restore, picked the backup to restore, it now found the drive, and did a full restore.

I love how easy it is to restore a backup to a mac.