Late-2011 MBP pre-upgrade questions

[zachiedoo]

My 2011 MBP is really slow. Running HighSierra, just installed the 2020-005 security update. There's not a lot of extraneous stuff on the current HDD. I'm planning on upgrading the RAM to 16GB and the HDD to an SSD, both of which I have on hand with necessary cables, etc.

My questions are:
1. Is it better to clone to the SSD or do a fresh install from a bootable USB? I do have a bootable USB of HS, but it doesn't have the latest security updates.
ETA: I don't think I can clone it because the existing HDD is bigger than the SSD I'm moving to. Is this right?

2. If I do a fresh install, can I then restore from a TimeMachine backup?
ETA: I found the following here :

"Download the High Sierra full installer from the App Store to your iMac.

Then install HS to your SSD. IF you want to use the APFS file system then you will instead need to format your SSD APFS before installing HS. To do this you must use High Sierra's Disk Utility. So, if you have HS installed on your iMac you can do it from there before launching the HS installer. Or you will have to make a USB thumb drive installer of HS and boot from it, then format the SSD as APFS from Disk Utility and install HS.

If the SSD were your internal drive then the APFS file system would be automatic. But, you have an external enclosure with your SSD so HS sees this as an HDD and won't auto convert to APFS. This is why you have to manually format it.

After your install of HS, you can use Setup migration to migrate your user accounts, data, apps and settings over to the SSD."

*I don't have an external enclosure, I have a USB adapter cable. Will the above process work via USB?*

*As an alternative to using Migration Assistant, I found the following here:*

"Clean install of the OS onto the SSD.
Restore from Time Machine backup.
Use your old disk as an archive. Put it on the shelf for safekeeping until you are darn sure you will never need the old OS again. You can use it to revert to the old OS if necessary.
Time Machine will resintall your 3rd-party apps as well as your data but will not touch the new OS,..."

Would I have to install the HS security updates before restoring from the backup, since the backup has the 2020-005 update?

3. Edit, question revised: The question remains, would I be better off upgrading the RAM and closing and rebooting the machine before beginning work on the new SSD?

I do know I have to format the SSD before doing anything else to it, and the MBP is doing a full, fresh backup via TimeMachine to an external disk now.

Have I missed anything?

 

[Amethyst1]

My questions are:
1. Is it better to clone to the SSD or do a fresh install from a bootable USB? I do have a bootable USB of HS, but it doesn't have the latest security updates.
ETA: I don't think I can clone it because the existing HDD is bigger than the SSD I'm moving to. Is this right?

You can clone it using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! as long as the data on it occupies less space than the SSD has. I've cloned my 500 GB SSD to a ≈300 GB partition countless times. If you intend to do this using Disk Utility though, it may indeed complain if the source partition is larger than the SSD.

*I don't have an external enclosure, I have a USB adapter cable. Will the above process work via USB?*

Absolutely. You can even boot the 2011 MBP via USB 2.0, but it'll be slow.

Would I have to install the HS security updates before restoring from the backup, since the backup has the 2020-005 update?

I would install all updates before restoring from the Time Machine backup "just in case". If you're transferring just your applications and personal data, the OS will remain untouched. If you're restoring everything including the OS, it doesn't matter because it will be replaced.

3. Edit, question revised: The question remains, would I be better off upgrading the RAM and closing and rebooting the machine before beginning work on the new SSD?

It doesn't really matter... but it would allow verifying that the machine boots after installing the RAM. If something weird happens, you know it's the RAM.

 

[zachiedoo]

You can clone it using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! as long as the data on it occupies less space than the SSD has. I've cloned my 500 GB SSD to a ≈300 GB partition countless times. If you intend to do this using Disk Utility though, it may indeed complain if the source partition is larger than the SSD.


Absolutely. You can even boot the 2011 MBP via USB 2.0, but it'll be slow.


I would install all updates before restoring from the Time Machine backup "just in case". If you're transferring just your applications and personal data, the OS will remain untouched. If you're restoring everything including the OS, it doesn't matter because it will be replaced.


It doesn't really matter... but it would allow verifying that the machine boots after installing the RAM. If something weird happens, you know it's the RAM.

Ah, so Disk Utility is picky.🤷‍♀️

Good point about the RAM. It's 'Mac Memory' by Crucial, but you never know until it's in there...

After researching a bit more, given how slow the MBP is now, I think I'll go with a clean install, do the updates, then transfer the applications and data only.

And I did think to do the backup via ethernet and not wifi, because I've encountered problems with wifi TM backups in the past, so 🤞

 

[zachiedoo]

RAM installed, MBP booted up fine. SSD tomorrow if I have time.

 

[B S Magnet]

RAM installed, MBP booted up fine. SSD tomorrow if I have time.

My 2011 MBP is really slow. Running HighSierra, just installed the 2020-005 security update. There's not a lot of extraneous stuff on the current HDD. I'm planning on upgrading the RAM to 16GB and the HDD to an SSD, both of which I have on hand with necessary cables, etc.

For what it’s worth, there’s also that final Security Update 2020-006 to factor into the mix. I forgot to do that for about a year and only got around to it once I realized the App Store updater wasn’t trying to nag me about iTunes (as I stilll use iTunes 10.6.3).

3. Edit, question revised: The question remains, would I be better off upgrading the RAM and closing and rebooting the machine before beginning work on the new SSD?

It won’t really matter to the OS on the SSD either way, but with a RAM upgrade, you’ll have a lot more head room to work with in the long run. Keep in mind there are folks here who run High Sierra on SSDs just fine with 4GB RAM (e.g., MacBook Air, OCLP-patched 2008 MacBook Pros, and so on).

Were I to prioritize what to upgrade first here, definitely start with that SSD. That’s where you’ll experience the greatest performance improvement from start-up. When setting it up with the High Sierra installer (or just setting it up with Disk Utility whilst connected, via USB, to your existing build of High Sierra on the HDD), you’ll want to be sure the SSD is set up in APFS format, which is what you will want for SSDs (for HDDs, staying with HFS+ is still the ideal).

After that migration to SSD is done and you’ve moved that new SSD to the bay inside the laptop, upgrading the RAM can follow. In the meanwhile, you should notice a pretty noteworthy improvement with the system.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Ah, so Disk Utility is picky.🤷‍♀️

Since the golden age of Snow Leopard, Apple has inexplicably and needlessly hobbled the functionality of Disk Utility in successive releases to the point where I had problems with even reformatting a USB flash drive in El Capitan.

 

[eyoungren]

Since the golden age of Snow Leopard, Apple has inexplicably and needlessly hobbled the functionality of Disk Utility in successive releases to the point where I had problems with even reformatting a USB flash drive in El Capitan.

Ah, yes, well…so Apple has improved the functionality of Disk Utility by removing features that Apple can't trust real humans to use properly. Better leave it to the Mac, kids, it knows better than you.

Watch out! Terminal's next - no UNIX commands for you!!!

/sarcasm

 

[TheShortTimer]

Ah, yes, well…so Apple has improved the functionality of Disk Utility by removing features that Apple can't trust real humans to use properly. Better leave it to the Mac, kids, it knows better than you.

Watch out! Terminal's next - no UNIX commands for you!!!

/sarcasm

 

[B S Magnet]

Ah, yes, well…so Apple has improved the functionality of Disk Utility by removing features that Apple can't trust real humans to use properly. Better leave it to the Mac, kids, it knows better than you.

Watch out! Terminal's next - no UNIX commands for you!!!

/sarcasm

bash-5.1~$ whoami
Access denied: macOS has deprecated Terminal.app <press any key to continue>

[Terminal.app closes]

 

[zachiedoo]

Well, I got it done. It dawned on me that we also have a late 2013 iMac running High Sierra, so I used it to format the new SSD and install the OS to it, then update HS. I had planned on only installing the 2020-5 update, but that wasn't an option, it went straight to 2020-6. Swapping the drives in the MBP was easy. (I realized I'll also have to switch out the battery eventually because the tab that holds the screw holding the battery in place is broken.) The problem came when I tried to use the TM backup to restore the new SSD: it couldn't find/see it on the Time Capsule.

So I put the old HDD in the enclosure I was using for the SSD, hooked it up to the iMac and booted it. It wasn't any slower than the 2011 MBP was before the upgrade. I updated HS on the old HDD to 2020-6, hooked them up by ethernet and used Migration Assistant to transfer the data.

The only thing I can think of that caused the issue is that the backup on the TC was done with HS updated only to 2020-5. Not sure, but I managed to get around it.

Rebooting the 2011 MBP after the RAM upgrade, but before the SSD switch, it wasn't any faster than before. But switching the HDD for the SSD decreased the boot time by 75%, and now apps open almost instantaneously, which is a huge improvement.

Working on the iMac got me thinking maybe it could use some updating, so while the HS install ran, I did some research. Switching the HDD for an SSD is not very complicated. upgrading the RAM is another story. You pretty much have to disassemble the whole thing. The changes I made to the 2011 MBP suggest we'd get better mileage from swapping the SSD anyway, and while it gets used daily, it's not for high-RAM use. My research in the forums seems to bear out that notion as well. So it's been added to my list of things to do.

Thanks to all for the help and input.