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Put hard drive from 2010 Macbook Pro into 2011 Macbook Pro - direct swap?

N

noodlelegs

macrumors member
Original poster
May 24, 2010
97
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I am thinking about purchasing a new 2011 15" Macbook Pro. On my current 2010 15" Macbook Pro, I am running a 500gb hard drive, and I use Windows 7 mainly on it.
I have read that using Migration Assistant will only transfer stuff from my OS X partition, not my boot camp partition.
I really don't want to go through the hassle of reinstalling and reconfiguring Windows again.

Can I just take the hard drive out of my 2010 Mac and pop it in the new 2011 Mac? That would be the easiest thing to do if it would work.
 
Nathe said:
I'm pretty sure this won't work, the 2011 MBP's use a newer version of SL afaik.
Click to expand...

Agreed - the MBP 2011 uses a custom build of 10.6.6 which has the drviers for the SandyBridge chipset. That is why, for example, the Lion developer release won't load on a new MBP.

This may be resolved by the release of 10.6.7 (for which there is no date yet) but even then given that the chipset is entirely different, I would probably want to do a fresh install of OSX on the MBP.
 
aznguyen316 said:
It won't, I tried it. Had to do a disk image via disk utility and Time Machine apps over. No big!
Click to expand...

Did you have boot camp installed on the old hard drive? Would the disk image utility help with transferring the Windows partition?
 
Nathe said:
I'm pretty sure this won't work, the 2011 MBP's use a newer version of SL afaik.
Click to expand...

You mean the intel 160GB SSD which I have in my 2010 15" i5 MBP will not work?
I dont want to use the new 2011 MBP's HD as I already have the SSD.
So, do I have to clone my SSD to a external HD, then do a fresh install the OS in the SSD and then again transfer the data?
Will that how it will work?
 
I tried moving the 500 GB hard drive I had in my 2.4 GHz 13" MBP to my new 13" i5 and it got to the gray Apple screen but did not go any further.

I think it's because the new MBPs come with their own, and the hardware required bits were not in earlier versions of Snow Leopard.

So I think you have to use the restore disc to install the OS and then migrate everything from your backup.
 
There are threads already about this. Just install the disc and start up with the included disk from the 2011 MBP. Reinstall the os over the top and all of your settings and data will be intact. No need to install from a backup if you don't want to. I did exactly this when I transferred the HDD from my early 08 MBP to my new early 11 MBP. Restart afterward and it is like everything was before. The kernel is different on this version so it needs to have the os reinstalled.
 
I swapped my hard drive from my 2010 MBP into my new 2011 and initially it would not boot to OSX.. So I rebooted with the OS disc in and ran the installer thinking I would have to start over. Turns out it just upgraded the OS for me so I did not lose any data or programs.

So just swap the drive and throw in your OSX that came with your 2011 MBP and run the installer. Back up your data first just in case but it worked for me.
 
Ok I see the for the OS X installation, it will be a simple transfer... just put in the old hard drive into the new laptop and then boot with the new Snow Leopard disc.

But how about my Boot Camp installation of Windows 7. Will that still work? I am one of those weirdos that uses Windows 7 mainly on my Mac.
 
noodlelegs said:
Ok I see the for the OS X installation, it will be a simple transfer... just put in the old hard drive into the new laptop and then boot with the new Snow Leopard disc.

But how about my Boot Camp installation of Windows 7. Will that still work? I am one of those weirdos that uses Windows 7 mainly on my Mac.
Click to expand...

I just went to Disk Utility and mounted the Bootcamp partition. I was able to reboot to bootcamp (holding option) and use it in parallels as well.
 
My 2011 macbook pro has arrived.

I am going to complicate my switch from my 2010 mbp to 2011 mbp slightly.

Previously I was planning on taking the hard drive out of my old laptop, put it in the new laptop, turn the new laptop on with the OS X disc in, and then reinstalling the OS overtop of the existing OS, and all of my files and even Boot Camp partition should have been fine.

Well now I have a 128gb ssd (just received it, no data on it yet) that i want to be my boot drive, and I will put the 320gb hard drive that came in the new laptop in my optibay for storage. any ideas on how to get up and running on my new 2011 mbp as quickly as possible?

edit: now that 10.6.7 is here, can i just do a direct swap of the 2010 hard drive into the 2011 laptop without reinstalling anything? i can worry about the ssd later.
 
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