Need help with SSD upgrade for christmas gift

[triple-tap]

Hey all

My mom is still rocking my old 2008 white macbook.

I purchased an SSD as a christmas gift for her, but I am struggling with how to go about the installation.

I know how to do the physical install of a new hard drive. The problem I am having is that I don't know which software to use to copy the old HDD.

Her macbook is running on 10.5.8.

I don't want to upgrade the OS because she has office suite for Mac loaded on to the macbook, and we don't have the CD or code to re-install. We also don't have extra $$$ for a new office suite at the moment. She uses Powerpoint, Word, and Excel regularly.


Any advice on this procedure is GREATLY appreciated.

FWIW, the SSD I bought for her is a Sandisk Extreme 128gb. Her current usage HDD is a 160gb, and it has over 100gb free.

I am headed to Staples now to get some type of dock or USB cable to transfer the data.

Thanks all.

 

[DaKKs]

Superduper should do that for you. You'll probably need to shrink the current partition though.

 

[Weaselboy]

I don't want to upgrade the OS because she has office suite for Mac loaded on to the macbook, and we don't have the CD or code to re-install. We also don't have extra $$$ for a new office suite at the moment. She uses Powerpoint, Word, and Excel regularly.

I'm pretty sure this is going to be a problem. MS Office registration is tied to hardware and my experience has been when you move the install to another hard drive, MS Office will force you to reregister.

FWIW, the SSD I bought for her is a Sandisk Extreme 128gb. Her current usage HDD is a 160gb, and it has over 100gb free.

I am headed to Staples now to get some type of dock or USB cable to transfer the data.

It is fairly easy. Just install the new drive then put then old one in the enclosure you buy and option key boot to it. Then start Disk Util and in the Erase tab format the new drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Then use either the free trial of SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the data from old to new. You won't need to resize the partitions.

Now shutdown and disconnect the enclosure then startup. Now go to System Prefs and in the Startup Disk pane set the new SSD as the boot drive.

That should be a really nice speed bump on that system.

 

[triple-tap]

copied with Super Duper, everything is working great now. No issues with Office.

Thank all for the help.