Macbook to macbook HDD swap

[sidefx]

I currently have a late 2009 polycarbonate unibody macbook and im looking at a late 2008 aluminum unibody macbook for sale. I was wondering if I could just swap the HDDs between the two or if that would cause problems.

 

[yadmonkey]

I currently have a late 2009 polycarbonate unibody macbook and im looking at a late 2008 aluminum unibody macbook for sale. I was wondering if I could just swap the HDDs between the two or if that would cause problems.

While the hard drives are compatible and there wouldn't likely be any major issues, I wouldn't recommend it. Sometimes Macs ship with a machine-specific build of OS X and technically that could cause issues.

Why not simply use migration assistant to move your data over?

 

[Yebubbleman]

I currently have a late 2009 polycarbonate unibody macbook and im looking at a late 2008 aluminum unibody macbook for sale. I was wondering if I could just swap the HDDs between the two or if that would cause problems.

Don't bother buying it unless it's the 2.4 GHz model of the Aluminum generation; otherwise it's a clear downgrade. But even then, I've heard that the Early generations of NVIDIA GeForce 9400Ms were more unreliable than the later revs. Worth looking up further though.

Otherwise, I completely agree with the other poster. Just use the migration assistant.

 

[aceaceace]

Macbook to Macbook Pro HDD swap worked fine

I just swapped the HDD from a white 13" Macbook 2006 model into a 2010 Macbook Pro 13" aluminum body and vice versa. No major issues. I was sort of surprised it worked so well. So I would figure a Macbook to Macbook would be easier. I posted how I did it here: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=11860662#post11860662 I'm sure there are opinions both ways on doing this swap, but I don't mind taking a few risks and it worked fine.

 

[MacModMachine]

Don't bother buying it unless it's the 2.4 GHz model of the Aluminum generation; otherwise it's a clear downgrade. But even then, I've heard that the Early generations of NVIDIA GeForce 9400Ms were more unreliable than the later revs. Worth looking up further though.

Otherwise, I completely agree with the other poster. Just use the migration assistant.

i dont remember him asking whether it was worth it.....

9400m's are all the same, later ones would not be any better.