Swap the stock HD to a SSD

[vincent66]

Hello,

I just bought a mcbook pro 15 i7 2.3. It came with mountain lion.
Previously, I had a crucial m4 SSD with Snow Leopard on it.

I would like to install the SSD in place of the stock HD.

Question :
How can I transfer my Mountain lion on the SSD without loosing all my data. Can I just "upgrade" snow leopard to M-Lion from the copy installed on the stock HD ?

Thanks for your help.
Vincent.

 

[Orlandoech]

Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper

 

[vincent66]

Thanks for your help.

so, how shall I do ?

I make a copy of my SSD, delete everything on it, and then ?...

 

[dubels]

So basically you want to keep the data on your SSD and still have Mountain Lion?

To do this don't use the SuperDuper or CC method right away because it will copy your Mountain Lion over your data on your SSD. The best method would be to setup your new computer from a TM backup of your SSD. Then use SuperDuper or CC and create a copy of the drive (your SSD data but on Mountain Lion) over from the HDD to the SSD. Now you have all your data on Mountain Lion and on the SSD.

 

[Dark Void]

I don't think SL will run on the ML unit. I'm not even sure cloning it would work because you it will clone your SL format.

I might be misinterpreting your post.

 

[vincent66]

I don't think SL will run on the ML unit. I'm not even sure cloning it would work because you it will clone your SL format.

I might be misinterpreting your post.

okay, let me try to make it clear.

I just bought a mbp 15 with mountain lion on it.
I would like to replace the HD by my SSD.
But, there is already Snow Leopard on the SSD.

If i put the SSD in the mbp without having the OS updated to ML, will it work ? will the computer propose me to upgrade for free ? Will I have to format my SSD ?

thanks again.
Vincent.

 

[Dark Void]

I don't believe so, like I said I don't think that SL will run on models that were shipped with ML. You would have to do something like put the drive in an enclosure and wipe it via Disk Utility before proceeding with putting it into your computer and then install ML separately or do a TM migration/clone from that point.

Do you still have the computer that ran the SSD with SL on it? Theoretically I suppose you could use that machine to update to ML and then clone the drive.