Swapping HD's - 09 13" MBP 2.53 ghz 256ssd to April 10 13" 2.66 ghz 320gb

[entatlrg]

With these two models of 13" MBP's can I simply swap the drives from one notebook to the other with out problems?

Or do I have to reinstall the OS on each hard drive after I swap them?

 

[entatlrg]

Anyone? Apologize for the bump but I'm anxious to get this done

 

[davidlv]

Anyone? Apologize for the bump but I'm anxious to get this done

If the hardware has changed (it has, comparing these 2 machines), the system may have new drivers, etc. designed to work with that hardware. In that case a simple HD swap can be very problematic, although a system install, overwriting the old OS, should add the new extensions etc., followed by a software update session. Apple will tell you you need to do a clean install, and indeed that may well be the best, if time consuming.
Check the build number of the OS on each computer, Apple menu, About this Mac, More Info, Software ----
example from my system; System Version: Mac OS X 10.6.3 (10D578)
The numbers in the (10D578) is the build number.
If the build number is the same (highly doubtful in your case) a simple HD swap should be OK.
Conclusion; I don't think it is a good idea.

 

[Mars478]

No no change or Reinstall will be needed. Mac OSX has all the drivers by default...
Ask me, I've switched this MacOSX install on this hard drive from 3 computers already
MSI Wind Hackintosh (EFI Installed)>MacBook Core Duo>MacBook Pro 15 Late 2008
And it was all good.

 

[entatlrg]

I've had about the same results when I search the threads,, 50% say it's okay to swap, the other 50% say don't do it

Can anyone say "for sure" that doing a simple swap of the two drives should work fine?

 

[Z06jerry]

I've had about the same results when I search the threads,, 50% say it's okay to swap, the other 50% say don't do it

Can anyone say "for sure" that doing a simple swap of the two drives should work fine?

No-one can tell you "for sure". The only way to be sure that you won't have issues is to re-install the OS that came with the computer, it takes less than an hr.

I tried moving the HDD from my 13" aluminum MacBook to my 13" aluminum MacBookPro and I had several minor issues that were resolved when I re-installed the OS for the new machine.

From now on I will always re-install the machine specific OS (or retail disk) after I move a hard drive to another machine.

 

[rockstarjoe]

I've read that this can cause issues with the battery reporting an incorrect amount of charge left... since they increased the battery on the new one. Better off doing a clean install and then restore from a time machine backup IMHO.

 

[Z06jerry]

Better off doing a clean install and then restore from a time machine backup IMHO.

It'll be much faster to swap the hard drive first & then run the new install disk on the new machine. This way you won't have to copy the data from your backup because it'll already be there.