Swap hard drive between MacBooks?

[Buzzworms]

I'm considering buying an Early '08 MacBook 2.4 GHz w/ an apparently bad hard drive ("drive not recognized"). Obviously I want to test before I buy. In order to determine if the HD is the only issue w/ this MB can I remove the hard drive from my functioning MB (1st gen. Core Duo 2.0 GHz, 160 GHz HD, OS X 10.5.7) and simply install it in the non-working MB to see if it starts up? I have a spare 160 GB HD pulled from another MB, but it's wiped clean. Advice?

 

[NewMacbookPlz]

I'd use the wiped clean one, and install the OS fresh on there.

A drive from an older model like yours may have some driver conflicts. It may boot, but may not function to it's fullest, it's difficult to say.

 

[Buzzworms]

I'd use the wiped clean one, and install the OS fresh on there.

A drive from an older model like yours may have some driver conflicts. It may boot, but may not function to it's fullest, it's difficult to say.

The drive in my MB is a new Western Digital just installed. The only OS disc I have is the original Tiger DVD that came w/ the 1st generation Core Duo MB. The 2.4 GHz I'm looking at came w/ Leopard 10.5.2. Could there be an issue installing the older OS in the newer early '08 MB?

 

[harcosparky]

Could there be an issue installing the older OS in the newer early '08 MB?

It could choke and fail to install.

I recall once using a RETAIL PACK OS disk, tried to install it on a computer that was newer and it failed to install.


What I had to do was take the HDD, put it in an older Mac ... do the OS install there and move the HDD over to the newer machine.

In this case it was a matter of the OS Disk being 10.4.1 and the computer was orignially 10.4.5 or something like that. You get the idea.

 

[NewMacbookPlz]

It could choke and fail to install.

I recall once using a RETAIL PACK OS disk, tried to install it on a computer that was newer and it failed to install.


What I had to do was take the HDD, put it in an older Mac ... do the OS install there and move the HDD over to the newer machine.

In this case it was a matter of the OS Disk being 10.4.1 and the computer was orignially 10.4.5 or something like that. You get the idea.

For future reference...

I've heard that if you bought the retail version of the OS, and it's too old to install on a newer machine, you should be able to go to your local Apple store and swap out the disc for the most recent version.