Upgrading Mac Pros - swap & drop hard drive??

[CaptSaltyJack]

Hey all,

I have an old'ish Mac Pro from around April 2007, quad core, GeForce 7300GT. If I were to buy an octo-core today (with the GeForce GT 120), can I just take out my HD from the old Mac Pro, drop it in the new one, and boot up and be good to go? Or is it like Windows where it's new hardware, so I have to reformat & reinstall the OS from scratch??

Please oh please tell me I can just drop the HD in and be good to go.

 

[Zyniker]

Much more likely than not, if you simply place the old hard drive in the new machine...everything will be just fine. OS X doesn't have the screwy registry and hardware recognition issues that Windows does with changes in the hardware configuration.

 

[bigbossbmb]

I wouldn't do that with your boot drive. You can put the old drive in the new MP and then move your data to the pre-installed boot drive with the migration assistant at the beginning of the first startup.

 

[CaptSaltyJack]

Ugh, you mean I'm going to have to reinstall all my programs again? Double ugh.

 

[GoCubsGo]

I wouldn't do that with your boot drive. You can put the old drive in the new MP and then move your data to the pre-installed boot drive with the migration assistant at the beginning of the first startup.

I did this. Old HDD from early 2008 MacPro was swapped from that one to a brand new one, still the early 2008 model but it was a brand new MacPro all the same. Everything but Time Machine was fine.

 

[Tesselator]

I wouldn't do that with your boot drive. You can put the old drive in the new MP and then move your data to the pre-installed boot drive with the migration assistant at the beginning of the first startup.

Yup, that's the smart way. Although all things considered I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work just dropping the drive in.

 

[ThirteenXIII]

Ugh, you mean I'm going to have to reinstall all my programs again? Double ugh.

You shouldnt have to, i just migrated from a MP 2.8 to a MBP, and i selected install my User Accounts + Apps + Network Settings + Files & Folders and i was back in the game.

i could have done a quick superduper clone over, but then i owuldnt have access to switch between the intergrated and high performance GPU, since the build is alittle different.

better safe than sorry i suppose.