In a previous thread, someone said I can put the SSD in an enclosure, hook it up to the MBP, and use Carbon Copy Cloner to, I guess, move everything from HDD over to SSD? Does the booting from CD, as you mentioned, and cloning method serve the same purpose? Do I still have to boot from CD if I do the cloning? I'm not understanding what purpose booting from CD serves...
Yes, you can do this. But, this would make you buy an extra equipment you won't need after everything is done. Especially since your MBP will be brand new, I would just recommend doing a quick swap of the SSD and the HDD. Basically, take out the HDD, put the SSD in, put your installation CDs in your drive that's still inside your MBP and install everything. You would need to boot from the CD since the SSD has nothing on there. The restore CDs will reinstall everything. I think this is better than the cloner. But that's just me. And plus, you won't need to buy an extra equipment that you won't use after unless you have a 2.5" drive laying around somewhere.
My MBP's estimated delivery date is tomorrow, so there's nothing on the HDD.

But assuming I had stuff on the HDD, how do you reformat on Mac?
Use Disk Utility. But of course you can't format f you're actually using the disk or partition the program is running on. You can also perform this via booting up from your CD and the utilities menu would have the Disk Utility there.
Not sure what you mean here. Are you just saying in those programs' settings, to set it to where they look for the media files from HDD rather than SSD? (I also plan on using HDD for all my media)
iTunes and other programs are automatically set to look for the data in a certain folder on the same disk. Therefore, you will need to go to the settings and change it and redirect it to your HDD drive.
And make sure you those photo/music/etc folders "look" the same. Example, drag the entire music folder onto HDD and copy it onto there. Leave the one in the SSD alone, don't delete. Make sure all the files and folders are all in there. You can put a "music" folder within any folder just as long as it has its complete files and data inside. (i.e. My HDD for my music is /Media/Music/)
I was going to buy this enclosure for the cloning to the SSD drive, as recommended:
http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-NexSta...UTF8&coliid=I3E3PG3HRM7Z09&colid=8NW136AIEWGK
Would this enclosure also work for the Superdrive?
Looks like I'll finally officially be a Mac owner tomorrow.



I'm trying to fill in as many pre-ownership holes possible and step my Mac knowledge game up. Thanks for your help!
EDIT: I see now that it looks like the optical drive enclosure is different from the hard drive enclosure. So, scratch that.
I don't know what you want to do regarding getting data on the SSD, it's your choice. I think mine is quite simple and you need to buy 2 enclosures, just 1 for the SuperDrive that you will be taking out. However if you do the cloning, you have to get an external enclosure to connect to your computer since it is internal. You won't need this enclosure again unless you have a 2.5" HDD/SSD laying around.
SuperDrive enclosure is actually the toughest around, I spent a lot time looking and I just finally gave up and got the OWC one. And it actually looks great and it's pretty slim. I put one of my white apple stickers on it and it looks like an Apple product.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/VLSS9TOPTU2/
It's 39.99 which is pretty steep, but I was tired of looking around. I don't trust ebay when it comes to anything electronic so the enclosures there weren't available but there were a few options. There are a few options on Amazons too, most are PATA/IDE which the SuperDrive is NOT. You need SATA. Also, some of those have no front cover since those cases are normally designed for tray loading drives that would fill the space in the front. I had a case like that with this drive, there's just a big empty space, it looks unfinished, and I just wasn't liking it and it was only a $20 difference (I think) but the S&H at OWC. OMG.