right way to replace HDD with SDD

I just did this with a Samsung 830 series. I put the new drive into a enclosure and Formatted it. I then rebooted holding down "option" and launched recovery and followed the steps and I had it install Lion on the new drive (doing this it will put the recovery partition on the drive as well as the OS. After the install I used the migration assistant to move everything over. This worked great for me but YMMV.

 

This sounds like the best way based on my research as well. Will do it exactly this way.

 

Make sure you check the firmware version on your new Crucial SSD before you install it. There will be a sticker on the drive with the firmware version on it. Check the Crucial website for your drive model and see if there is a firmware update for your drive, and see if yours is the most current version. If its not the most current version, you will want to update the firmware on your SSD after you install it so you get the best performance and stability out of it.

For your install you could also download superduper for free, and just clone the internal hard drive completely over to your new drive, then its all ready as a bootable duplicate you can just install and you are good to go.

 

I tried it that way, but then you don't get the recovery partition. I used Carbon Copy Cloner.

 

Not only that, but you technically get a clean install too, although any bad pref files are copied over.

 

Exactly that is why I went back and did it the way I did in post #2 in this thread. I wanted the recovery partition just in case if something went wrong I don't need the original drive to go back and fix everything. I have not enabled trim with the trim enabler. I am still debating on whether I want to do that or not.

 

I finally did this with much hesitation, but it wasn't really hard when I actually started the process. For my SSD, I have a Crucial M4 256GB and my HDD is a 500GB Momentus XT SSD Hybrid. The SSD's firmware version was on a sticker outside and it was the latest version, so no update required.

It seems like some people are placing the SSD in the optibay and the keeping the HDD in the original. While others do the reverse, HDD in optibay and SSD in the HDD bay. I decided to the latter since I read that there may be "issues" and I didn't want to encounter them even if there wasn't any. Also, I read that there some sort of SMS mechanism in the optibay like there is for the HDD bay. It's been tested by "dropping" it and it worked like it should have. So, I guess either option works.

I decided to do clean install of Lion on my SSD and install basically all my apps and everything else. But, as far as music and photos, those will go to my HDD. Redirecting iTunes, iPhoto, Aperture, and Lightroom was not as difficult as I thought it would be. And I still got to keep all my previous settings, presets and playlists in each program.

And oh yeah, this thing is unbelievably FAST.

 

got two ssd's and currently running os on the intel 320 series sata II in my optical bay.

i did a clean install and reformatted the apple ssd after using time machine to back up my apps and other little things like pictures and various programs.

let us know what you do and how it works for you, but it was a pretty easy task and im a brand new mac user.

 

I placed a new Crucial 128 SSD in an enternal hard drive SATA enclosure docking station (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153066) and used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the new SSD from the resident 750 GB HDD in the MBP. Once the drive was cloned I swapped out the HDD for the SSD, told the MBP that the SSD was now the main drive and the rest is history. I did not do a clean install and have had NO problems.