New MBP owner with questions!

[d4m1r]

Hey guys, just picked up a new 13" MBP (as per my siggy) and while I'd like to think I'm a Windows and Linux guru, I am new to OS X so have a few questions;

1) How many cells does the stock battery have? Is it possible to upgrade to a larger battery that fits in the stock enclosure?

2) How long does it take to charge the battery from 0% to 100%? I don't care about 0-80%

3) I picked up a Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 128GB SATA III SSD after reading good things about it on here. I usually prefer better brand names but you Mac guys seems to like this SSD so I went for it. Does Crucial have an OS X firmwire updater app?

4) I already went through the setup on the initially hard drive, but I could just rip it out, pop in the SSD, and reinstall the complete OS using Control + R, correct?

Thanks in advance guys!

 

[switon]

RE: congratulations...

Hope you enjoy your new MBP.

1.) Don't believe it is possible to upgrade to a larger battery, as Apple tends to use almost all available space to pack in as much battery as they can.

2.) Depends upon which power brick you use, the 60W (which I believe came with your 13"), the 45W (primarily for MBAs), or the 85W (which comes with 15" MBPs but can be used to charge 13" MBPs). It also depends if you use your MBP while it is charging, and how much you use it (100% CPU, 10% CPU, etc.). A 2009 13" MBP takes roughly 3-5 hours to recharge. I don't know what the 2012 13" MBPs will take.

3.) Can't answer this one.

4.) The Recovery HD partition is on your original HDD. So, when you "rip it out", you must insert it into a "carrier" and use it as an external boot drive. Your SSD is installed in the MBP, but you boot off of the old drive, now as an external boot drive, from the Recovery HD partition in order to configure and migrate the OS to your new SSD. (There are numerous instructions on precisely how to do this, some with videos even.)

Good luck and have fun,
Switon

 

[d4m1r]

Thanks for the reply. Do I still have to boot from my old HDD if I am looking to do a clean/new install and not a migration/cloning? How I understood it was, hitting Control + R on an empty HDD (my new SSD in my case) would start downloading an image of OS X 10.8 from the internet and I could install it from that image...

Is that incorrect? Do I need the recovery partition on the old HDD to access Control + R?

 

[switon]

RE: Recovery partition...

Hi,

I still think that you will need the Recovery HD partition in order to boot your machine (Command + R boots off of this partition) ... you can then download a new copy of the OS and do a clean install of the OS and all of your apps. You can, by the way, make your own OS Install USB thumb drive with its own Recovery HD partition on it so that you can boot off of the USB thumb drive with its Recovery HD partition and then download and install OSX.

Switon

 

[nephilim7]

Command-R (not control) on boot will cause EFI to first check for a recovery partition, boot it if present, and if missing will prompt for wireless info or use a wired connection, download an image, and install it. I've used it a few times when installing a new drive in apple machines.

Thanks for the reply. Do I still have to boot from my old HDD if I am looking to do a clean/new install and not a migration/cloning? How I understood it was, hitting Control + R on an empty HDD (my new SSD in my case) would start downloading an image of OS X 10.8 from the internet and I could install it from that image...

Is that incorrect? Do I need the recovery partition on the old HDD to access Control + R?

 

[switon]

this is correct, command-R (not control), will first check for a recovery partition, and if missing, will prompt for wireless info or use a wired connection, download an image and install it.

Cool, I didn't know that if the Recovery HD does not exist that Command + R will prompt for an Internet connection and download the image. Cool!

Thanks for the info,
Switon

 

[switon]

RE: no Recovery HD...

Hi nephilim7,

Let me ask: if the Recovery HD partition does not exist, then you obviously won't have access to the other tools on the Recovery HD, is this true? The primary one that comes to mind is Disk Utility to format your new disk? Or do you somehow format the new disk from an Internet tool? Where do you download the image to, I suspect it is downloaded to a RAM disk? So is a standalone Disk Utility-like program downloaded to a RAM disk and then executed to format the new disk?

...just curious how this all works when you don't boot from the Recovery HD. I suspect that it must use a RAM disk instead, kind of like how new Linux kernels are distributed?

Thanks,
Switon

 

[davidlv]

3) I picked up a Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 128GB SATA III SSD after reading good things about it on here. I usually prefer better brand names but you Mac guys seems to like this SSD so I went for it. Does Crucial have an OS X firmware updater app?
4) I already went through the setup on the initially hard drive, but I could just rip it out, pop in the SSD, and reinstall the complete OS using Control + R, correct? Thanks in advance guys!

Re. #3: Crucial has an iso firmware updater disk available on their website. But the new drive probably has the latest firmware already. And of course the retina models don't have an optical drive.... so you will have to try an external drive and see it that will boot the iso disk (insert the disk, hold down the Option key on boot).
Re #4: As explained above, that will work, but it does take some time. If you have or can buy a cheap USB 2, or even faster 3, external case, you can install the new SSD in that, and first format it to one GUID partition, then use Carbon Copy Cloner in trial mode to clone your internal drive to the external. After that just swap the drives and you will have a bigger backup disk too.

 

[alphaod]

You can use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup the recovery partition from your old disk and restore to your new SSD.

 

[Weaselboy]

Hi nephilim7,

Let me ask: if the Recovery HD partition does not exist, then you obviously won't have access to the other tools on the Recovery HD, is this true? The primary one that comes to mind is Disk Utility to format your new disk? Or do you somehow format the new disk from an Internet tool? Where do you download the image to, I suspect it is downloaded to a RAM disk? So is a standalone Disk Utility-like program downloaded to a RAM disk and then executed to format the new disk?

...just curious how this all works when you don't boot from the Recovery HD. I suspect that it must use a RAM disk instead, kind of like how new Linux kernels are distributed?

Thanks,
Switon

Here is a good aticlke that explains it all. If you boot with a blank drive in the machine it will ask for network info (wifi password) then DL to RAM a setup that looks exactly like the the Recovery HD screen you would get. It looks and works the same once the DL is complete.

 

[switon]

Here is a good aticlke that explains it all. If you boot with a blank drive in the machine it will ask for network info (wifi password) then DL to RAM a setup that looks exactly like the the Recovery HD screen you would get. It looks and works the same once the DL is complete.

Ah, so it does download an image to a RAM disk, just like the Linux distros... Thanks for the link, I'll read it later.

Thanks Weaselboy,
Switon

 

[d4m1r]

Thanks for the reply guys, lots of good info for me when my SSD gets here

Just wanted to clear up a few other things tho;

1) I don't plan to reuse the 500GB drive for storage or anything else. 128GB is more than plenty so I'll probably sell the OEM drive.

2) How do I check what firmwire the SSD has loaded if Crucial doesn't offer an OS X app?

2) How easy is it to install Windows 7 Ultimate x64 using boot camp and can I expect 100% of the performance and battery life I get in OS X under Windows 7?

Hopefully, soon I'll end up with the exact setup indicated in my siggy

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks for the reply guys, lots of good info for me when my SSD gets here

Just wanted to clear up a few other things tho;

1) I don't plan to reuse the 500GB drive for storage or anything else. 128GB is more than plenty so I'll probably sell the OEM drive.

2) How do I check what firmwire the SSD has loaded if Crucial doesn't offer an OS X app?

2) How easy is it to install Windows 7 Ultimate x64 using boot camp and can I expect 100% of the performance and battery life I get in OS X under Windows 7?

Hopefully, soon I'll end up with the exact setup indicated in my siggy

1. Given the small amount of money you will get for a used drive like that, it might be a good idea to hang onto it as a backup in case the SSD dies. You can get a cheap USB SATA enclosure to pop it in if you want and use the drive for backups also. Just an idea.

2. Go to the Apple at top left then About and System Info and under the serial-ATA section you can select the drive and see FW versions.

3. Dunno.

 

[d4m1r]

Thanks for all the info guys! SSD came in, so I replaced the stock HDD (took about 30min) and the Command + R trick worked like magic...

Connected to my wifi, and downloaded a recovery image to my blank SSD. That took about 20min on my super fast internet, and I was able to format my SSD through the recovery console, and install a fresh copy of mountain lion, which it is in the process of doing now

Oh and....pics ofcourse