Install Mavericks onto SSD for another Mac

[drccw]

My sister in law's Macbook Core 2 Duo 2 2.26 hard drive died. The Apple store wants $300 to repair it but I have a better plan. My wife's 250 GB SSD is getting full so I plan on replacing it with a larger drive. My plan is to put my wife's old SSD into my SILs macbook. However she lives 4 states away so I was hoping to ship the drive to her and have her install...

My question is how to install a fresh copy of Mavericks on a SSD- I have an adapter that I can use it as an external. Is there a manner to specify a specific type of Mac; or can I do a generic install that should work? thanks

drccw

 

[ricede]

If your sister has a Time Machine backup of her old drive then she can install the SSD and then do a Restore of all her stuff, using the recovery partition.

Otherwise - if you have the Mavericks installer ( from the App Store ) you can connect the SSD as an external & install Mavericks on to it directly & then send it to her.

 

[prisstratton]

Download a Mavericks install and create a bootable USB stick (if you do not know how to do this, reply back).

Mount (insert) the external SSD and bootable USB stick.

Restart the system and perform an option boot and select the USB installer.

Go into Disk Utility and format the (External SSD) drive to Mac OS Extended Journaled and select a GUID partition.

Exit the Disk Utility and start the installation.

You do not need to configure anything to allow this installation to work on you SIL’s system. As long as it is supported hardware (and it sounds like it should be) then the drive will “just work” when it is installed in the system.

 

[Weaselboy]

My sister in law's Macbook Core 2 Duo 2 2.26 hard drive died. The Apple store wants $300 to repair it but I have a better plan. My wife's 250 GB SSD is getting full so I plan on replacing it with a larger drive. My plan is to put my wife's old SSD into my SILs macbook. However she lives 4 states away so I was hoping to ship the drive to her and have her install...

My question is how to install a fresh copy of Mavericks on a SSD- I have an adapter that I can use it as an external. Is there a manner to specify a specific type of Mac; or can I do a generic install that should work? thanks

drccw

Please clarify? So you now have Mavericks on the wife's SSD? If that is the case just command-r boot to recovery and use Disk Util to erase Macintosh HD then quit Disk Util and click install OS X and you are done.