Swap hard drives between MBPs?

[dusanv]

I just got a unibody 17''. Can I swap the hard drive in it with a 15'' Santa Rosa MBP? Just to save time installing everything plus the 15'' has a newish 7200 rpm hard drive. I noticed the trackpad System Preference is different between MBPs so I'm wondering what else is different.

P.S. I like the keyboard on the 15'' much better. Also, the hinge on the 17'' is so loose. I'm having second thoughts about this despite needing higher resolution of the 17''...

 

[Colonel Abitbol]

I swapped the hard drive from my black 2007 macbook to my new 13.3 MPB so this is possible (make sure you have the latest update though). Once I've booted it, the prefpane for the touchpad was the correct one.

However, even if the system behaved well, I noticed some strange thing like verbose mode activated during boot and halt procedure so I've made a clean install afterwards.

So you can do it but if you notice anything strange, make a clean install & archive, you will still gain some time.

 

[sushi]

Something that we didn't need to worry about in the PPC days, was the build of the OS if you installed the complete version.

Now days, we have the same limitations as a PCs do and that is the chip set issue. If the chip set is the same on both motherboards, then the install should work. If not, then you will need to do a clean install.

As for copying the HD, what I would recommend is to clone the drive using Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) or SuperDuper (SD).

 

[dusanv]

Thanks for the responses. Well, I just did it. So far, so good. I don't see any problems yet (got the correct trackpad), knock on wood. If I find any, I'll be reinstalling all right...