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HIMAN1998

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 24, 2013
338
0
Richmond, VA
I'm possibly getting an Early 2008/Late 2007 MacBook Pro. I was wondering if there would be any troubles putting my HDD from my current MacBook Aluminum into it? The HDD has Mavericks on it. The laptop I'm going to supports Mavericks.
 

DeltaMac

macrumors G5
Jul 30, 2003
13,403
4,378
Delaware
There should be no serious problems with transferring the hard drive.

The older MacBook Pro can't have as much RAM installed as you have now in your MacBook.

If I were doing that swap from one Mac to another, different model - I would boot to the Recovery partition, and reinstall Mavericks. That will assure that the various hardware drivers are detected as part of the OS X install, and installed properly (I think of that kind of reinstall as a "re-fit" )
That may not technically be necessary, but it's what I would do.
 

HIMAN1998

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 24, 2013
338
0
Richmond, VA
There should be no serious problems with transferring the hard drive.

The older MacBook Pro can't have as much RAM installed as you have now in your MacBook.

If I were doing that swap from one Mac to another, different model - I would boot to the Recovery partition, and reinstall Mavericks. That will assure that the various hardware drivers are detected as part of the OS X install, and installed properly (I think of that kind of reinstall as a "re-fit" )
That may not technically be necessary, but it's what I would do.

OK, I might do that. Would it be possible to hook up an HDD that I will use by USB and install Mavericks to it through USB? I'm gonna be working on this laptop during Winter break, so I have time to reinstall software. And for the RAM thing, I will be fine with 6GB, because the only time I run a VM is with Windows 7, but I might go back to Bootcamp with that when I get the Pro. I need the better GPU over more RAM.
 

DeltaMac

macrumors G5
Jul 30, 2003
13,403
4,378
Delaware
You didn't say in your first post that you wanted to reinstall everything (a wipe and restore) - and that's not what I was suggesting - unless you already know the software on that drive is having problems.
An OS X reinstall is just that, and doesn't remove all your other software.
You may be OK without even doing that.

But - yes, you can put your hard drive in a USB case, or a drive dock, and do installs, or file transfers to that external drive, and then swap out the drives when that's ready for use.
I STILL like the idea of an OS X reinstall in place, even after using an external drive for an install or volume restore.
 

pastrychef

macrumors 601
Sep 15, 2006
4,753
1,450
New York City, NY
I'm possibly getting an Early 2008/Late 2007 MacBook Pro. I was wondering if there would be any troubles putting my HDD from my current MacBook Aluminum into it? The HDD has Mavericks on it. The laptop I'm going to supports Mavericks.

The Late 2007 and Early 2008 MacBooks can not run Mavericks. The highest version of OS X they can run is 10.7 Lion.

The hard drive itself should work fine but you will have to install an older version of OS X on it for it to be bootable on the Late 2007/Early 2008 MacBook.
 

HIMAN1998

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 24, 2013
338
0
Richmond, VA
The Late 2007 and Early 2008 MacBooks can not run Mavericks. The highest version of OS X they can run is 10.7 Lion.

The hard drive itself should work fine but you will have to install an older version of OS X on it for it to be bootable on the Late 2007/Early 2008 MacBook.

I'm not talking about the Regular MacBook. I'm talking about the Pro from that year, which according to Apple's website, can run Mavericks.
 
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