Hard drive swap on MacBook Pro Non-retina

[marddin]

I plan to buy a macbook pro 13" for my son. The i7 model comes with 750GB hard drive but I'd like to buy a solid state for him and keep the 750gb.

Since mountain lion doesn't ship with disks how would I image the new solid state with mountain lion?

Thanks
Martin

 

[xShane]

I plan to buy a macbook pro 13" for my son. The i7 model comes with 750GB hard drive but I'd like to buy a solid state for him and keep the 750gb.

Since mountain lion doesn't ship with disks how would I image the new solid state with mountain lion?

Thanks
Martin

I believe it's attached to the Apple ID account that the computer is registered with. As long as you set up everything initially on the 750GB drive and then swap the drives and do a reinstall you should be fine.

At the very worst, you could contact Apple Support and it's easily provable whether or not a new MacBook Pro is eligible for the Mountain Lion upgrade.

 

[johnnnw]

Assuming you know how to do the optibay install and everything, this will help to install it.

OS X Internet Recovery

If you happen to encounter a situation in which you cannot start from the Recovery System, such as your hard drive stopped responding or you installed a new hard drive without OS X installed, new Mac models introduced after public availability of OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion, automatically use the OS X Internet Recovery feature if the Recovery System (Command-R method above) doesn't work. OS X Internet Recovery lets you start your Mac directly from Apple's Servers. The system runs a quick test of your memory and hard drive to ensure there are no hardware issues.

OS X Internet Recovery presents a limited interface at first, with only the ability to select your preferred Wi-Fi network and, if needed, enter the WPA passphrase. Next, OS X Internet Recovery will download and start from a Recovery System image. From there, you are offered all the same utilities and functions described above.

As with the Recovery System, reinstallation of OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion from OS X Internet Recovery requires an Internet connection. See "Supported network configurations and protocols" below.

Some computers that did not ship with OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion installed may have a software update available that allows them to use Lion Internet Recovery.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718



Don't clone the HDD to the SSD like some will recommend. This method isn't good. It can cause problems with the SSD. Way better to do a fresh install. You might as well since it's brand new and won't have any data besides the OS anyway.

 

[robvas]

A couple of ways:

A) Internet restore
B) Make a USB install for Mountain Lion
C) Image your new drive in a USB enclosure using Carbon Copy Cloner