Upgrading 2012 MacBook Pro hard drive

[Barnum]

I have a mid-2012 15” macbook pro and I’m about to replace my 500gb HDD hard drive with a 1000Gb MX500 Crucial SSD. I’d like to copy the entire contents of my HDD to my new SSD. Is there some kind of software that easily does this? Also, after I install the new hard drive into my macbook is there anything that I should enable or disable in OSX Catalina (like TRIM, motion sensor, etc.)?

 

[hallux]

Grab an external enclosure and either use an app such as Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your HDD to the SSD before installing it, or install the SSD then install Catalina on it using Internet Recovery then copy the data from the old drive using Migration Assistant when prompted (with the drive connected through the external enclosure).

I did the second option when I upgraded my 2012, it worked very well.

 

[r6mile]

As @hallux said. I usually do the first route as it's faster over USB3, but the second route (Internet Recovery, and the Migration Assistant) is a good one as it will be close to a clean install but you will keep all your files etc.

After that yes you should enable TRIM. The command in terminal is:
sudo trimforce enable

Lots of life in these 2012 MBPs yet!