Upgrading my MacBook

Discussion in 'MacBook Pro' started by Danmickread, May 20, 2013.

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  1. Danmickread, May 20, 2013

    Danmickread macrumors newbie

    Joined:
    Nov 12, 2012
    #1
    Hi

    Mr brother has a MacBook Pro I'm not sure of the year but it has snow leopard 10.6.8 with 2 gigs of ram a fairly small hard drive and a core 2 duo processor.

    He wants to install windows using boot camp, do I need to upgrade him to mountain lion first or does snow leopard have boot camp? I will install windows 7 but which version 64 bit or 32 bit do I install.

    The other upgrade is he wants a bigger hard drive so I was wondering the best way to do the switch.
    For example do I upgrade to mountain lion first, back up with time machine, then I will have recovery so when i put new hard drive in I can do fresh install of lion and then use boot camp to install windows and time machine to transfer files and settings.
    Or do I clone hard drive first as it is now and then upgrade to lion etc after.
    What would be the best way to do it and can anyone recommend a reliable hard drive.

    Thanks
     
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  2. RedRaven571, May 20, 2013

    RedRaven571 macrumors 65816

    RedRaven571

    Joined:
    Mar 13, 2009
    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    #2
    If it were me, I,d do a TM backup of snow leopard, install the new HDD, install ML, transfer my files and apps from TM backup. Then bootcamp and install windows 7. You can install either 32 or 64 bit version of windows, 32 bit has greater compatibility with older programs. I would seriously suggest boosting the ram to at least 4 GB, 2 is a bit skimpy these days.
     
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  3. Laco, May 20, 2013

    Laco macrumors 6502

    Joined:
    Apr 23, 2008
    #3
    Bootcamp comes with Snow Leopard so you do not need to upgrade to Mountain Lion to install Windows. Personally, I would not upgrade to mountain lion, especially since this computer only has 2 gigs of ram which is the bare minimum. If you can it is always best to do a fresh install but it can be very annoying to have to reinstall certain software, especially if you lost some serial numbers - which happens to me sometimes. I would also upgrade the ram to the maximum.

    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3777?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
     
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