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Moving SSD from MacBook Pro to iMac: what about macOS?

ciarals

ciarals

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 26, 2010
92
10
Italy
Hello everyone! I'm about to move my SSD Samsung 850 EVO from my MacBook Pro Late 2008 to an iMac 27" Late 2009. There is the latest version of El Capitan installed on it (because Sierra can't be installed). I have a few questions for you:
  • Do you think that the iMac will boot perfectly to El Capitan despite the different hardware that it will find instead of the one installed in the SSD?
  • At least, will the Recovery Partition work? Will I be able to use the El Capitan Recovery Partition of the SSD to reinstall El Capitan from scratch?
Thank you very much!
 
Last edited:
ciarals said:
Thank you! So you think that it will also boot to El Capitan? No issue with the different hardware?
Click to expand...
Correct. The 2009 iMac supports 10.11.6 fine. You could test by putting the SSD in a external enclosure and booting the iMac if you want to test.
 
While iMac will be compatible I wonder how about the firmware?

If the iMac was never updated to El Capitan it likely has older firmware because latest OS versions update the firmware during OS install. Using older firmware with never OS might cause problems.

Its possible you won't have any problems but I recommend making a clone of the SSD first and do not connect it to iMac until you are 100% sure everything works as it should.
 
Ebenezum said:
While iMac will be compatible I wonder how about the firmware?

If the iMac was never updated to El Capitan it likely has older firmware because latest OS versions update the firmware during OS install. Using older firmware with never OS might cause problems.

Its possible you won't have any problems but I recommend making a clone of the SSD first and do not connect it to iMac until you are 100% sure everything works as it should.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the suggestion. iMac currently has Sierra, while MacBook currently has El Capitan, so both systems are updated :)
 
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