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Upgrading my MacBook Pro to SSD

T

tdignj

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 30, 2011
2
0
My new macbook has been having problems booting and it seems to be the HD. Apple doesn't find any problems so I have to constantly power off and back on to get the laptop to boot.

So...I'm going to upgrade to an SSD! I've looked into this and it seems like I can connect a firewire external drive, clone my internal drive to this external drive, set this external drive to be the boot drive, replace my internal one with the new SSD one, format the internal one, restore the OS and data to the internal one, and then I'm done.

Is that all I need to do? Any help or comments will be appreciated.
 
I would do it like this:
Now you can also use the enclosure for the HDD as storage or backup medium.
 
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Is the laptop under warranty? You shouldn't have to shut it off then turn it back on to boot
 
simsaladimbamba said:
I would do it like this:
Now you can also use the enclosure for the HDD as storage or backup medium.
Click to expand...

The only problem with this method is he will not have a Lion recovery partition since a clone does not copy it over. I would follow the above procedure but in addition reinstall Lion at the end. That will create a recovery partition and still leave the user data in place.
 
Weaselboy said:
The only problem with this method is he will not have a Lion recovery partition since a clone does not copy it over. I would follow the above procedure but in addition reinstall Lion at the end. That will create a recovery partition and still leave the user data in place.
Click to expand...

Yeah, always forget about that Lion ****, but the OP didn't mention Lion and "new" can sometimes still mean six months old.
Maybe this can help:
Lion Recovery Disk Assistant
 
tdignj said:
My new macbook has been having problems booting and it seems to be the HD. Apple doesn't find any problems so I have to constantly power off and back on to get the laptop to boot.

So...I'm going to upgrade to an SSD! I've looked into this and it seems like I can connect a firewire external drive, clone my internal drive to this external drive, set this external drive to be the boot drive, replace my internal one with the new SSD one, format the internal one, restore the OS and data to the internal one, and then I'm done.

Is that all I need to do? Any help or comments will be appreciated.
Click to expand...

How much space are you using in your new macbook?

How big is your SSD?

Obviously you cannot move 200 gb of data into a 128 gb SSD.

It seems kind of funny that apple cannot find a problem with your hard drive but you are convinced that there is one. The diagnostics that they have available are probably pretty darn good ( just guessing ).
 
I would avoid cloning the drive altogether. Do a fresh clean install.

I cloned my HDD to SSD on my 2010 MBP, and did the same on my 2011 MBP. Both times it "Worked" just fine, but I was not impressed with the boot speed... was slower than than I expected. So I did a complete wipe and reinstalled the OS fresh and than all of my Apps. It shaved an additional 20 seconds off my boot time. My 2011 boots in 19 seconds flat at it's best.

It also really helps with "Cleaning House" to do it this way because you only end up installing what you really need... and with SSD's space is at a premium so you really want to make sure you don't have anything hanging around that you don't need. For example I had forgotten about a couple Ubuntu ISO's that I had laying around that were taking up a couple GB's of space. What a waste!
 
I can second the fresh install advice. My experience has been the following:


1. Most time consuming, but best results - Fresh install, manually copying across your files.

2. A bit quicker, and still good results - Fresh install, use the migration assistant to copy over your files.

3. Again a bit quicker, and still good results, but not as good as #2 - Make a Time Machine backup, boot off of a Lion USB key, recover the Time Machine Backup.

4. Quickest, but sometimes intermittent results - Cloning the drive.

I'm not sure why this happens - for example, #3 and #4 should result in a very similar drive, but in my experience they don't. My guess is it's something to do with how the drive is partitioned and how the allocation table is created on a clone vs fresh format, but that's just a guess!


I normally do number 2 when replacing my MBP / upgrading my drive, and every few years I do number 1. I do number 3 if I'm in a huge rush (recently had to squeeze an upgrade into a busy work week, and would do this if a drive fails at an inopportune time), and avoid doing number 4.
 
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