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    Transferring hard drive into another macbook

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by niharjhatn, Oct 17, 2012.

  1. niharjhatn

    niharjhatn Notebook Evangelist

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    Hey guys.

    I have an oldish 15" macbook pro with a heavily used 1tb hd that I installed. Recently the screen size has been bugging me a bit and I've agreed to swap my pro with my sister's 2010-mid white macbook. AFAIK, my older macbook pro came with snow leopard installed on it (running lion right now) while my sisters white macbook has mountain lion on it. The problem is that her harddrive is 500 GB and so a direct file transfer is not possible. Whats the best way to get my 1 TB hd running in the white macbook and her HD in the macbook pro?

    Is it as simple as swapping the HD's? I am worried about drivers etc. and being forced to re-install an OS from scratch causing me to lose data.

    Is there a quick and efficient way to do it? Or will I be forced to back up my entire 1tb onto an external hd and then copy it back after swapping hd's and re-installing the OS?

    Thanks
     
    niharjhatn, Oct 17, 2012
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  2. EvolutionX

    EvolutionX Notebook Geek

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    Unfortunately, your going to have to reformat both. So back up the data from both drives onto an external hard drive and swap them. Then reinstall the OS. Afterwards transfer the files back and reinstall the programs you were using. Since the drivers are different as well as the version of the OS on each there really is no way to just swap the drives.
     
    EvolutionX, Oct 17, 2012
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  3. niharjhatn

    niharjhatn Notebook Evangelist

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    Thanks for the quick reply.

    But man thats sucks. Going to take ages to back up, going to have to move ~800 gb worth of files twice. I think my largest portable storage drive is only 750 gb, so I might have to toss some of it onto my desktop...

    Going to be a long night :D
     
    niharjhatn, Oct 17, 2012
    #3
  4. saturnotaku

    saturnotaku Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    You might want to invest in a FireWire hard drive enclosure or dock. They're on the pricey side but will make the transfer process much faster than USB 2.0.
     
    saturnotaku, Oct 17, 2012
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  5. corona4497

    corona4497 Notebook Enthusiast

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    doesn't apple support sata 3?
     
    corona4497, Oct 17, 2012
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  6. saturnotaku

    saturnotaku Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Not in 2010 and earlier MacBook Pros. If you meant USB 3, that's only on 2012 models.
     
    saturnotaku, Oct 17, 2012
    #6