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if I remove my 2011 MB Pro hard drive and put a blank one in will I be good to go?
- Thread starter jesusplay
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Your new blank drive will not have any operating system on it, and so you'll not be able to boot the computer.
2011 models did not have the internet recovery, You will need to boot up off the system disks that came with the Mac. Another option is to clone the old drive to the new drive, by getting an external enclosure and copying the contents before swapping the drive.
This looks like a pretty decent guide to cloning your HD using Disk Utility which is already included in MacOS (no need for third part software).
I was similar to you and didn't need much from the old disk and used Disc Utility to do it. Seemed the most straight forward at the time. I think you will need a hard disk enclosure though. Inatek do a good cheap one on Amazon
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0...+enclosure&dpPl=1&dpID=41HPyPYuXRL&ref=plSrch
http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Crucial...ur-old-hard-drive-to-your-SSD-Mac/ta-p/112072
I was similar to you and didn't need much from the old disk and used Disc Utility to do it. Seemed the most straight forward at the time. I think you will need a hard disk enclosure though. Inatek do a good cheap one on Amazon
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0...+enclosure&dpPl=1&dpID=41HPyPYuXRL&ref=plSrch
http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Crucial...ur-old-hard-drive-to-your-SSD-Mac/ta-p/112072
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https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202313
Your Mac is on this list, so it should have Internet recovery. So just install the new disk then hold command-option-r (all three at once) when you boot. Pick your language and wifi then you will see a spinning globe while the recovery utility downloads. Once the recovery utility comes up use Disk Utility to erase the new disk to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Then quit Disk Utility and click reinstall OS at the top and wait for the ~6GB OS to download and install.
That will give you a fresh install of Lion 10.7. From there if you like you can update to El Capitan.
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While the 2011 models may not have shipped with the capability, a firmware update later added the ability. I believe these automatically showed up in software update.