Replace macbook pro Hard Drive with Windows only drive

[niccoa]

Hello,

I recently upgraded my hard drive in my PC desktop from a 250GB ssd to a 512GH ssd

I have the old 250GB SSD with my whole windows 7 OS still installed.

Is it possible for me to swap this left over SSD with the boot drive in my MacBook Pro and have the laptop boot up?

Thanks in advance,
Sorry if this has been asked before I couldn't track down a answer.

Cheers

 

[macenied]

Move your "old" SSD to the Mac, but perform installing everything from scratch.

A MBP without OS X cannot support functions like updating EFI or SMC. It cannot boot from a recovery partition. Plus, Windows is not plug n play enough to auto-detect every HW change applied. You can keep the OS X partition small, something around 30 - 40GB to be able to update to whatever you want. Then install Windows using BootCamp.

I'd recommend this.

 

[Gjwilly]

Your old hard drive will probably boot on the Mac but you won't have the right keyboard, mouse, or network drivers. Probably sound and video card problems also.
If you've got a spare USB mouse and keyboard then why not give it a try.
If you're comfortable working with laptop hardware then you're not likely to hurt anything.

The suggestion above to keep a small OS X partition is certainly the preferred method but if you insist on leaving OSX behind then you should run Bootcamp Assistant on the Mac first to download the necessary drivers and then copy them to a USB drive before the hard drive swap so that you can install them afterward.

 

[Altemose]

It will work when swapped in but you will need to have the Boot Camp tools on a USB flash drive. You will need to reactivate Windows following the swap of the drives. As noted above by macenied and Gjwilly, you will lose the ability to upgrade EFI and other OS X updates.