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Using a used HD with Windows 7 on mac

W

wmjackson

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 31, 2011
13
0
Hi there,
I'm currently running a 2.26Ghz MBP 2009 and it has 4GB ram and a 250GB HD.

I'm wanting to upgrade to 8GB of Kingston RAM which i've found on eBay and i've found the right stuff but I'm unsure about the HD. After reading many forums on here I think i'm going to go for the 500GB WD Scorpio Blue but I've found a second hand one on eBay which comes pre-installed with Windows 7.

What would happen if I put this into my mac?

I have my whole mac backed up to an external FW Time Machine so the original plan was put in a new HD into the mac and just load it from the TM and copy it across however I wonder if there's anyway I could make use of the Windows 7 OS. Any help would be useful as I'm a bit stuck.

Regards

Will
 
Yes you can

You can put in a new HD and partition it and use Win 7 on the other partition. I think it involves bootcamp, or another program. I don't know how to do it. Google and forum search. Might have to get a USB enclosure to get the HD with Win 7 onto the new partition.
 
If I partition the hd drive in an external bay attached via USB to my mac, will this wipe what is all ready on that hard drive? Has anyone had any experience doing this?

Will
 
Yes

Pretty sure if you format it in an external enclosure, it will wipe everything on the disk. It will warn you also.
 
Thank you.
I have a spare external hard drive as well. Would I be able to clone the windows 7 hd onto an external hd using ccc then partition the new intense drive then copy back onto the new internal drive using ccc from the external drive?

Regards

Will
 
Last edited:
You have to install Mac first if you intend on using Mac on it at all. There's a way to single boot Windows only, but I'm sure that's not your plan anyway.

As for the external HDD, just format it as FAT32 (I think it's called DOS-FAT or something in Mac). Just remember file sizes can't exceed 4 GB on this drive.

As for Time Machine, you can't Time Machine your Windows partition (it will be NTFS format, and the Time Machine would be Mac-journal or whatever the hell it's called).

If it's preloaded with Win 7, boot it, take the serial key, do a re-install. There are legal downloads all over the place.
 
formatting any disk will wipe the whole thing, yeah.

and unless that second hand one comes with a partition with Mac OS journaled disk format on it, you're gonna have to figure out a way to put it on there so it can install SL/Lion. Does this mean formatting the whole disk, or just a partition? I don't know. I've never done it.
 
Thanks for the help guys. Been really helpful to get an insight into. You're correct I am looking to have both installed. How would I go about installing lion fresh on the hd. Should I boot from my SL disc and then use another licence of Lion or will I be able to get one of the USB memory sticks that users have been talking about on here. I have AppleCare on my MBP 2009

Cheers

Will
 
Genius?

Maybe take it to the Apple store and have a genius do what he is allowed to do and you do the rest after talking to him/her
 
You can install Lion anyway you want, either a bootable USB, or fresh installing SL then upgrading.
 
What would I have to say to the AppleCare guys in order to get the bootable USB with Lion on for free?

Regards

Will
 
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