Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

LemmycautioN

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 29, 2008
84
0
Seattle
So I am about to get the 15" i7 MBP.

As of right now I have the late 2008 MBP (first unibody)
500 GB 7200RPM 2.8 GHZ and I was thinking this........

It seems that it would be a lot faster and easier if I were to just crack my current MBP open, taking out the HD (I just put in the new one a few months ago - the original was a 250) and putting my current HD right into the new one as opposed to spending hours importing from one identical drive to another.

My question is, do you think this is a good idea?
Will it void the warranty?
since the hardware is totally different will there be issues?
 
Just no. Spend the two or three hours deactivating high dollar software on your current machine, export bookmarks and e-mail accounts, uninstall all third party software, move your user docs to external storage and nuke the drive.

Then do the reverse on your new machine and run system update.
 
I'd just copy the drive over. It's painless, takes a few hours, and a lot less sweat. If you swap your hard drives out, you risk losing all of your data to static shock.
 
I mean, I have swapped plenty of hard drives in my life, even built a desktop out of three broken powerbooks - seriously - so I'm am confident that I can swap the two hard drives in less than twenty minutes. It took me ten minutes to swap the drives out of my current MBP.

Is there seriously any real reasons why this isn't a good idea???????
 
I'd just copy the drive over. It's painless, takes a few hours, and a lot less sweat. If you swap your hard drives out, you risk losing all of your data to static shock.


I have worked on plenty of computers in my life, I'm not worried about static. I'm more worried about drivers, extensions, etc. and warranty.

Any way you'd have to be an idiot to static an HD. I'd worry about that with a logic board, but hard drives are not very susceptible to static shock - not very at least. I mean I have loose HD's floating around I swap them between my enclosures all the time.

I do know how to handle hard drives.
 
Just did that today with my brand new 13". The swap took less than 10 minutes, and the new Mac worked perfectly with the new Macbook Pro.

Come to think of it, I did the same thing with the drive from the last computer, so this drive has been in three MacBook Pros. Never had any issues doing this, and it beats having to spend the time setting everything up with the new computer.
 
Just did that today with my brand new 13". The swap took less than 10 minutes, and the new Mac worked perfectly with the new Macbook Pro.

Come to think of it, I did the same thing with the drive from the last computer, so this drive has been in three MacBook Pros. Never had any issues doing this, and it beats having to spend the time setting everything up with the new computer.

Thanks for the response

I couldn't do it on my last computer because one was an IDE drive and the other was a SATA and the IDE (powerbook) was a replacement for a stolen comp so I didn't do it before either.

Could you tell me the three different computers that drive was in ???
 
All three MacBooks were the 13" Unibody, starting in 2008,2009, and 2010. I'm also running BootCamp, and I have more trouble getting Windows to pay nice with the new hardware, but so far Ive been able to make the jump three times without any issues. I'm impressed with OSX's ability to jump chipsets without skipping beat. Apple's got a rock solid OS on their hands.

Go ahead and give it a try, you have nothing to lose. If it doesn't work, you can go the migration route. Good luck.
 
Did you finally get round to doing this?

I did the same thing with my SSD out of my mid-2009 C2D 2.8 MBP to my 2010 i7 MBP but it is not booting (stuck on :apple:).
Reading around it looks like I just need to put the installation dvd that comes with the actual machine and do an Archive & Install but not many posts out there so not sure and do not want to do anything stupid (although I do have TM + extra backup)...
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.