so i recently got a great deal on a macbook pro, at a pawnshop no less lol. i got it for 400 bucks cuz someone was evidentally in great need of money and hocked it, and the pawn guy knew nothing about comps and said he would sell it for 500, and i talked him down to 400 lol. anyways, it is in great condition, it is the 15 inch version and it has 2.2 ghz and 2 gb of ram, but the weird thing is i guess the person took out the hard drive and put in a little 60 gb hard drive before he pawned it off....cuz it has 60 gb hd, so i am upgrading to a seagate 320 gb hard drive. well obviously i dont have the OS disk, it currently has leapord 10.5.5. im not super with computers, i mean i know a bit, but not much and am fairly new to mac. but is there anyway to burn the OS from the hard drive before i upgrade it to a dual layered dvd? or transfer the OS after the hard drive switch? i just need a way without having to pay 200 for a new OS disk or to get an OS installed. any help would be appreciated. thanks!!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Upgrading HD, no OS disk, what can i do?
- Thread starter scoobydru23
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
no way that I know of. even time machine restores require you have the os installed before hand. maybe someone knows a way to do so but im thinking its not possible
think of it this way, you saved 100 from the pawn shop so a mbp with 2 gigs of ram and leopard is 530
still a sweet deal
are you a college student? if so you can get leopard for even cheaper at your campus bookstore
If you have another Mac handy, connect a FireWire cable between them and boot the MacBook Pro into target disk mode by holding the T key until a FireWire icon appears on the screen. It will show up as a drive on your other computer; use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone to a disk image. Turn it off, replace the hard drive, then return to target disk mode and restore the image.
Another alternative is that you can always call Applecare and purchase a set of Software Restore disks identical to the ones that originally shipped with that machine (with the advantage of having the iLife software that shipped with it which the retail Leopard disk does not have).
You just tell them the serial number and they will use that to determine the exact set of disks you need (usually two disks). A recent set I purchased that way was $32 shipped BTW- a pretty reasonable price IMO.
You just tell them the serial number and they will use that to determine the exact set of disks you need (usually two disks). A recent set I purchased that way was $32 shipped BTW- a pretty reasonable price IMO.
awesome thanks!! where do i get 'CCC'?? and how exactly do i go about doing the cloning? thanks for your help and info.
and to plinden, i have replaced hard drives in quite a few laptops, but not a macbook pro and i have read up on the complication of doing so, i could probly do it but wouldnt risk it, im having a computer shop here in my state that is mac specific do it for me. it costs 55$ which is worth it. thanks for your concernt though.
Here, its a simple process
1 download CCC
2 put new drive in enclosure
3 format new drive ( in disk utilities, HFS+ GUID partition Map )
3 clone OS to new drive
4 boot from new drive ( just to make sure its Ok )
5 swap drives ( put old drive in the enclosure, you now have a new external )
6 boot machine up
Oh heck- you beat me to it Neil321!
That is a nice concise guide to the process- but I would add one step to it (added as step 2a above).
Here, its a simple process
1 download CCC
2 put new drive in enclosure
2a. Use Disk Utility to format the new disk as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with a "GUID" partition map scheme or you won't be able to boot from the result!
3 clone OS to new drive
4 boot from new drive ( just to make sure its Ok )
5 swap drives ( put old drive in the enclosure, you now have a new external )
6 boot machine up
That is a nice concise guide to the process- but I would add one step to it (added as step 2a above).
Oh heck- you beat me to it Neil321!
That is a nice concise guide to the process- but I would add one step to it (added as step 2a above).
Ha, yep forgot about formatting but looks like i edited my post before you did