I have an SSD card in a 13 inch Macbook Pro....and I just bought a brand new Macbook...so my question is: Can I just take that hard drive out of the 13 inch Macbook Pro and install it into a brand new 2010 white macbook without doing anything else? and would that keep all of my existing software and files intact? Would that work? (I was wondering if it would since most of the hardware specs are basically the same in each laptop).....or do I need to go through the entire process of reformatting, doing backups, and reloading all of the software and files,etc? I guess I could just try it, but figured I would ask the Macrumors Forums first to see if anyone else has done this.... Thoughts?
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Can I take an existing harddrive in a macbook pro and drop it in a brand new macbook?
- Thread starter md4941954
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No, it's not an automatic thing like that. You'll need the specific drivers for the system, and depending on which revision the original is, the graphics processor may even be different. Boot off of the installation DVD with the SSD attached to the primary SATA connector and run an archive and install operation.
The hard drive (ssd) is currently in a 2010 13 inch macbook pro...and I simply want to take it out and put it in a brand new 2010 "white" regular macbook. I have not even taken the new macbook out of the box yet....so, I was just wondering if I could take the back off the new white macbook and drop the SSD drive in the new machine and fire it up....and to just have everything already be there....and then maybe just do the regular Apple updates to catch everything up to speed....I just don't want to mess anything up....I have no problem putting the SSD drive in the new white macbook and then going to disk utility and reformatting everything and starting all over...but was just wondering if my idea of just "swapping" them out would work or not...any other feedback would be great....it looks from the 2 feedbacks I have already received here that one person says it would work, and the other person is saying it won't work.....
On review of post #3, I must agree with aethelbert, do what he says. However, my method (post #2) is worth a try and it may work without a problem. If you do post #2 run the Combo 10.6.4 update when it's in the Whitebook. This should take care of any driver issues.
Your system would most likely be functional, yes, but not to the extent where everything would run without issue. Different hardware attached to the motherboard needs different drivers. I don't know if this has been fixed since I tried something similar in Panther, but the computer may still request updates for the original install machine. You'd have to eventually overwrite the system files with those relevant to the macbook, thus replacing the old ones. Archive and install will do just that, probably in less than thirty minutes.
Further thinking about this, If both of your Macbooks have the 320M graphics, then a simple swap will work perfectly. The all the other drivers are already there and will continue to work fine. Like I said before, some settings may not carry over, so go back through the System Preferences application to double check your settings.
No, it won't be seamless. Different I/O boards and power settings (possibly other parts as well) will require their correct drivers.
Your wrong buddy, Apple computers are not hardware specific like a PC computer is. The installation of the operating system installs all drivers that you will need. The only thing that you might run into is if you are currently running Leopard on the SSD and want to put it in the Macbook which if its brand new will require snow leopard.
Running updates after the drive is installed will garentee that everything is properly updated.
Hey everyone. Last night I backed up my hard drive (just to be safe), and opened up both computers and swapped out the hard drive. It worked flawlessly. Fired up just fine and I didn't miss a beat. I am thinking that maybe one reason this worked out so easily is because the 2 computers were so similar in specs? Anyway, thanks for everyone's feedback. It sure was nice to not have to reload or reinstall everything. I am using a 256GB Western Digital SSD drive, and I am sure it would have only taken a few hours to reload everything, but nonetheless, it was a nice surprise to not have to do anything except screw the back cover back on!--- Have a great week everyone and thanks for all of your suggestions and feedback. Mark.