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Some advice about upgrading to SSDs.

N

NoahMini35

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 27, 2013
3
0
Hi there, I'm new. So sorry if this has been asked.

I'm pretty clued up when it comes to I.T but just wanted to make sure. My Early 2011 Macbook is slowing up a little now.

Its the base spec model, 2.3ghz i5, 4gb of ram. I will be replacing this computer at the end of the year early 2014 as I wan't to give it to my sister so she can have a computer to use whilst at university. But for now it's still mine.

SSD's have dropped recently, and I plan to upgrade two things.

4GB of Ram - move to 8GB's of Ram.
320GB HDD - Move to 256 or 512gb SSD.

Now, here's my question, If I make a back up of my mac like I do with Time Machine, can I just copy everything back over?

What is the best way to smoothly convert?

When I first got my mac, it was a refurb, the disc drive was broken and apple replaced it with a brand new one, before the refurbished model went i backed it up and then when the new one came I set it up from a back up of the old one?

Can I do this with the SSD?

Cheers.

Noah.
 
  1. Buy an external enclosure and put your old drive in it.
  2. Install your new drive in your Mac.
  3. Boot from your old (external) drive by holding the Option key on startup.
  4. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the old (external) drive to the new (internal) drive.
  5. Boot from the new internal drive.
  6. Your now running on your new internal drive and your old drive is now an external drive, useful for backups or additional storage.
 
GGJstudios said:
  1. Buy an external enclosure and put your old drive in it.
  2. Install your new drive in your Mac.
  3. Boot from your old (external) drive by holding the Option key on startup.
  4. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the old (external) drive to the new (internal) drive.
  5. Boot from the new internal drive.
  6. Your now running on your new internal drive and your old drive is now an external drive, useful for backups or additional storage.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your help!

:)
 
If i were you, I would start with a clean install... at this point you only have to copy libraries and documents (from a time machine) into your new drive.
Even application can be copied from time machine... this is better to me and it is what i did when i switched to ssd.
 
srsub3 said:
If i were you, I would start with a clean install... at this point you only have to copy libraries and documents (from a time machine) into your new drive.
Even application can be copied from time machine... this is better to me and it is what i did when i switched to ssd.
Click to expand...

Problem is I'm on Mountain Lion, therefor have no re-install disc....

As this is a Snow Leopard computer originally.
 
These videos are the way that I changed out my HDD to a SSHD earlier today. Process is pretty simple, and this guy explains everything in more than enough detail to get you through. Cheers.

Creation of bootable flashdrive/external hard drive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q247rzjDX_g

Install of SSD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_613370&feature=iv&src_vid=yxXm3Io_WsY&v=xewGJmr78Wk

Installing clean version of OS X onto your mac
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxXm3Io_WsY

Also note, that you should definitely back up all of your data to an external hard drive. Once your new drive is installed, you will be easily able to use Time Machine to get all of the data from your time machine backup that you have. It's what I did earlier today. Simple process, and now I have a speedy 1TB SSHD. Hope this helps!
 
NoahMini35 said:
Thanks for your help!

:)
Click to expand...

I have done it the following way many times with no issues. Booting from an external drive will take forever. I think this is a much cleaner way of doing it.

  1. Buy an external enclosure and put your SSD drive in it.
  2. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the old (internal) drive to the new (external) drive.
  3. Replace old drive with new
  4. Boot from the new internal drive.
.
 
phpmaven said:
I have done it the following way many times with no issues. Booting from an external drive will take forever. I think this is a much cleaner way of doing it.

  1. Buy an external enclosure and put your SSD drive in it.
  2. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the old (internal) drive to the new (external) drive.
  3. Replace old drive with new
  4. Boot from the new internal drive.
Click to expand...

Some have encountered problems cloning from the internal to the external, then swapping them, which is why I recommend you swap them first, then clone from the external to the new internal.

For more info on this: Can't Boot From Cloned External SSD
 
Last edited:
NoahMini35 said:
Thanks for your help!

:)
Click to expand...

Add #7 to the above list... once running on the new SSD go to the Startup Disk pane in System Prefs and select the new SSD as the boot disk. Otherwise boots will be delayed while the system searches for all available boot sources.
 
My method was pretty straightforward, basically the same as using CCC but instead used Disk Utility.

- Reboot and hold down command-R to boot into Recovery Mode
- Open Disk Utility
- Clone from your old disk to the new disk
- Replace drive

Took a while, but it worked fine.
 
Yahooligan said:
My method was pretty straightforward, basically the same as using CCC but instead used Disk Utility.

- Reboot and hold down command-R to boot into Recovery Mode
- Open Disk Utility
- Clone from your old disk to the new disk
- Replace drive

Took a while, but it worked fine.
Click to expand...

Do you know if this Disk Util method moves the Recovery HD partition over? I have never tested it.
 
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