How to install an SSD to MacBook Pro (Early 2011)

[bozz2006]

Great!

 

[crazee928]

ive been wanting to do this for awhile too, but I'd like to use the original hdd in the optibay as additional storage, ridding the optical drive. but I thought i read somewhere that the hdd will spin continuously and consume battery - do you guys have any comments on whether this is the case? if so, any fixes?

thanks in advance!

 

[Anthony81586]

Just posting my impressions of the SSD. First off, it was extremely easy to do and get set up. Secondly, this thing is fast! I mean blazing fast. Everything opens as fast as I can click and is loaded instantly. Finally, I never realized how much noise the HDD makes, because the SSD is silent. It's awesome.

Thanks again for all the help and advice.

Crazee, I'm not sure about that as I didn't do the whole opti-bay thing.

 

[shortcut3d]

Wirelessly posted

ive been wanting to do this for awhile too, but I'd like to use the original hdd in the optibay as additional storage, ridding the optical drive. but I thought i read somewhere that the hdd will spin continuously and consume battery - do you guys have any comments on whether this is the case? if so, any fixes?

thanks in advance!

If you set the hard drives to sleep when possible in Preferences the drive will eventually sleep. It doesn't seem as aggressive as the main hard drive bay. You can always eject the drive from the desktop to turn it off. Then mount the drive again when you need it.

 

[nikhsub1]

Cool thanks. Two quick question regarding the SSD. First, its pretty much just a swap right? Then I can use a time machine back up to put me right back where I was, or is it more in depth then that? Secondly, what's an opti-drive? I've read a few threads mentioning it but am unsure of what it is and how it pertains?

I went to crucial.com and did the scanner for SSD's and the kits had no mention of it, that I noticed at least.

Yes you can do it that way no problem. I have timecapsule so it runs wirelessly... when I put my ssd in I did a clean install then used my old HD hooked up via USB to my MBP and restored from that. Took about an hour as opposed to several hours with timemachine via wireless.

If it were me, I'd do it this way.

1 Put the SSD in external case.

2 Open applications->utilities->disk utility
3 select the drive from the pane on the left.
4 click erase from the menu on the right side
5 in "format" select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and rename the drive if you like
6 Click erase. Now it's formatted.

7 Use your clone software to clone your HDD to the SSD.
8 put the SSD in the computer and turn her on. Done.

If you want Time machine it's a little different. I thought you were going to use SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner. I never get Time Machine to work the way it's supposed to so you might be better served by searching the forums for threads that say "install SSD time machine" or something similar. I'm happy to help any way I can. Let me know.

I've swapped many drives, cloning never seems as good as a fresh clean install to me, IDK why but it just doesn't.

 

[bozz2006]

I've swapped many drives, cloning never seems as good as a fresh clean install to me, IDK why but it just doesn't.

Fair enough. I've never had a problem with it. I did a clean install on this current SSD though, because I moved from SSD + HDD --> SSD and downsizing doesn't work easily with cloning.

 

[crazee928]

Wirelessly posted



If you set the hard drives to sleep when possible in Preferences the drive will eventually sleep. It doesn't seem as aggressive as the main hard drive bay. You can always eject the drive from the desktop to turn it off. Then mount the drive again when you need it.

thanks! I still need my DVD drive until i rip my cd collection - hopefully by then the SSD prices will drop some more

 

[Murgatroyd]

Lion internet recovery is a great. I used Lion recovery to do a clean install on my SSD and it worked flawlessly and was actually rather fast considering the size of the file and I was on wifi it only took like 90 minutes. …

How did you get Lion Internet Recovery to recognize a blank though formatted SSD? Did you first clone the SSD with the original HDD? I went through the first steps of Lion Internet Recovery and assume the disk that's doing the requesting for the fresh install will be the target of the erase and install.

I just bought a SSD for a MacBook (7.1) and will be going through the procedure of installing it soon. A clean install is the preferred way. Then SuperDuper! the files.

Update: I found the answer. Firmware Update

 

[bimmeracer]

I have a early 2011 MBP with OSX 10.6.8. Do I need to upgrade to OSX Lion to use the lion recovery method?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

I have a early 2011 MBP with OSX 10.6.8. Do I need to upgrade to OSX Lion to use the lion recovery method?

Since the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Recovery Partition is tied to having a Mac running Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, thus you need to upgrade in your stated case.

But then again, you could clone your Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard DVD onto another partition on the HDD of your Mac and thus have a bootable installer without the need for the DVD.
That is how I did it in my 2009 MBP.

• SSD in Optibay adapter
• HDD in HDD bay, partition into three partitions
  1. Partition 1 with Mac OS X 10.6.3 installer
  2. Partition 2 with clone (daily backups) of SSD
  3. Partition 3 with all the other data **** I can't throw away