Swapping internal HDD from MacBook to MacBook Pro

Is it possible to take a hard drive from a MacBook and put it in a MacBook Pro without reformatting or making any other modifications to the disk? Obviously, the dimensions are the same. But, are there likely to be software complications? Has anyone tried this?
I would assume that the OS would read the hardware configuration and adapt. Is that accurate?
Thanks!

Are you talking about similar models, such as unibody MB to unibody MBP?
There's been a number of threads here of people who cloned their old hard drive/ copied it to their new and ran into problems.
All in all, it should work, but if you run into problems you'll never know if its incompatibilities introduced into using the other HD or another problem. Personally I'd not do it. I found when ever you cut corners, you run into problems - just my $.02
If you go that route, you'll need to zap your pram

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Internal HDD installation guide for MacBook Pro 13" mid-2012 model

Hello,
Can someone please share any step by step guides or instructional videos for installing a new internal HDD in a MacBook Pro 13" mid-2012 model. Also, please advise on how to format the new HDD as it is an unformatted one.
Thanks in advance!

To format your new HDD, connect it to your MBP and open Disk Utility>Erase. Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and then clone the data from the internal HDD to the new external one. You may use Disk Utility>Restore or use Carbon Copy Cloner (third party software) to do the cloning. Test the new HDD via Startup manager and then perform the swap.
Ciao.

Can I swap a HDD from a MacBook to a MBPro?

I currently have a unibody MacBook that I am thinking about donating to a new college student and buying myself a new MacBook Pro. I just put a 1TB HDD in my MacBook and would like to know if I could expect to just pop that into a new MacBook Pro and expect it to work? Otherwise I would have to migrate all my applications and data files which I know works pretty good but if I could just swap the HDD into the new MBP, that would be simpler. I intend to replace the removed hard drive with the original 250gb drive that was in the computer from Apple. Thoughts?

I would expect that to work fine, I've done it in the past even going from a G3 to a G4 Mac. You may get advice that it is better to re-install in the new machine and I wouldn't say that is wrong. Look at it this way; if you try the swap and it doesn't work, then you know you have to start over with the current drive in the new machine. I would have to believe you can't hurt anything by trying, I would expect your worst case to be the new machine won't boot with that drive, or it boots and runs into other issues, but nothing that would actually harm anything.
I would bet that it will likely work just fine.

Sharing connected external hdd from imac to macbook?

problem explained here http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1749755&tstart=0
thanks

First make sure that both computers have the 'file sharing' box checked in the system preferences>sharing panel. Assuming you are running Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), open Finder and the computer should show in the sidebar under sharing. Select that computer and in the top right of the window choose 'connect as' and it will ask for a user name and password (for the other computer - not the one you are using). If you've already done these steps before, you may need to select disconnect first so you can log in again. To gain access to all the volumes mounted on that computer (internal or external) enter an admin user name and password. If unsure who admin users are, check the other computers system preferences>accounts panel.
NOTE: Both computers also need to be connected to the same network for this method (whether wired or wireless).

Can I swap an HDD from A1226 into an A1150?

I have a friend with 2 older MBP with different parts either going or gone. The logic board on the A1226 is shot but the HDD and Optical drive are good(and just so happen to be bad on the other MBP A1150). I want to swap out the 2 drives into the A1150. I know I can swap them out easily,I've done it several times on my old MBP, but will the computer boot up as is ?

If the machine in which you are going to transplant this HDD requires Snow Leopard, then you cannot boot it with a Tiger system. However, the other way around will work fine.
Simply put you cannot use an OS X version earlier than the version of OS X that shipped with the computer when it was new.

Can I swap my HDD from compaq 621 to compaq C700 (FF411PA#ACJ)

I have a two laptops of same company compaq but different models both shows a problem. One problem is HDD and another problem is motherboard sothat I decided to that I changed the HDD. (1) Compaq 621 - Support for 9.5-mm, Serial ATA, 160-GB, 5400-rpm and (2) Comapq C700 (FF411PA#ACJ) - Support for 9.5-mm, Serial ATA, 320-GB, 7200-rpm. Am I changed or not because difference of 5400rpm and 7200 rpm ?

Maybe a tiny bit more heat but the laptop will have no problem handling it. If heat concerns you get a solid state drive. They have no moving parts so generate almost no extra heat. Seriously, today's 7200 rpm drives produce less heat than 5400s from a few years back. If you get one with a large cache of 32 megs it can actually produce less heat than a 5400 rpm with an 8 meg cache because the drive will be accessed a bit less.

Swapping out internal hard drives within the Mac Pro

I'm thinking the answer is a huge NO but was curious to know for sure. Is it safe to switch out internal drives from within a Mac Pro while the machine is up and running? Meaning if the drive is ejected from the machine by unmounting the drive in the finder window can one then physically pull out the drive tray while the machine is still on? The same question applies to popping another Mac formatted drive into an empty slot (say from another mac pro). Kind of like popping in a thumb drive to a USB port. Just curious. Thank you.

Oh, absolutely NOT! Those slots are not designed for hot swapping hard drives. Doing so will most likely damage the drive, the computer, or both.

More than 1 internal hdds?

Is it possible to have 2 internal HDDs installed in a macbook?

Well well well... MCE is the Optical Drive-Hard Drive conversion place to go. I think the price is crazy though. I would go with an external fast RAID box if you intend to do Video or with a smaller unit. I swapped out my drive for a larger one and then installed the old one into a 2.5" harddrive enclosure with my old Pismo. This might be an option.
MCE used to make hard drive units for the Wallstreet,Lombard and Pismo. These would fit into the expansion slots (pop out the optical drive and pop in the harddrive). For these power books the swap-in swap-put approach works for me. For the MacBook... you are stuck if you ever need an optical drive while you are on the go. I think it is a good idea though for a small group of folks who need the extra internal hard drive capacity. I use my iPod when I need extra drive space.
D2

Internal HDD Won't Mount

I have an Aluminum 2007 20" iMac. Running Yosemite 10.10.2 and all Apple apps upgraded to latest versions. I have installed a Kingston 120GB SSD in the optical bay, which is the boot drive. I have replaced the original internal HDD (250GB) with a Western Digital 1TB, which I use for file storage (music/docs/pics, etc). I added the SSD and replaced the internal HDD about 12 months ago and everything worked like a charm. Yesterday (Feb 19), when I booted up the computer, the internal HDD was missing from the desktop and did not show up in System Profile as a SATA drive, nor a an option for a Start-up drive. Not a calamity, because I have an external HDD as a Time Machine backup, so all files are available for recovery.
I restarted using a USB Bootable drive, and the missing HDD shows up as an available drive for restore/restart. So I can restart off the (previously missing) internal HHD, and everything is normal that way (the SSD also mounts normally as a second drive). I ran Disk Utility and OnyX on the internal drive when it was the boot drive, and there is no indication of a problem. I also restored the internal HDD from Time Machine using the last back-up before it disappeared. When I restart again from the SSD, the internal HDD is gone again.
Any ideas?

I ended up re-installing Yosemite 10.10.2 on both drives, and things are (so far) back to normal. I'll be back again if I have this problem recur.

Cloning an internal drive from an external bootable copy

Hope this makes sense...
I work in an edit facility using Avid that's only recommended to use with 10.5.5 and some of our machines run 10.5.8. My thought was to create a bootable external disk image from one of our "good" edit computers and then wipe the hard drive of a 10.5.8 machine, replacing it with the 10.5.5 image. Is this possible or will it muck up the towers I'm replacing with the external disk image?

As long as these other computers do not require a later version of OS X, then it's quite possible. The two basic steps are:
1. Repair the hard drive and permissions of the HDD you are going to clone.
2. Clone the drive to the external drive.
3. Boot each target computer from the external drive; Restore the clone from external to internal.
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. Select the language. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. Select the internal HDD from the sidebar and click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. Click on the Repair Permissions button.
a. Select the External volume from the sidebar.
b. Click on the Restore tab in Disk Utility's main window.
c. Check the box labeled "Erase destination."
d. Select the External volume from the sidebar and drag it to the "Destination" entry field.
e. Select the Internal volume from the sidebar and drag it to the "Source" entry field.
f. Click on the Restore button.
Use the external clone to boot one of the target computers. Repeat the above steps but reverse the "Source" and "Destination" fields. "Source" becomes the External volume and "Destination" becomes the target computer.

How to Make my Macbook Pro's internal HDD external, when I get a SSD?

Hey, I know there are other posts on what enclosure you can use and if it's a possibility, but I haven't seen any that tell me how I get OS X on the SSD without a disc? Can I download the installer on a flash drive somehow? Also, I am wondering if this really is a good idea, using my Macbook Pro's HDD for a backup HDD, instead of buying one? I have no use for it anyway, if and when I get a new SSD. BTW, the HDD is the upgraded factory 500gb 7200rpm. Also, do you think it's smarter to have a bigger backup drive than internal drive? In other words, I would like to get a 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD, and my current HDD is only 500GB.... I am a musician and need a lot of storage for musical purposes. I use Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro X, Ableton Live 9, Office, and Photoshop.... My Macbook Pro is a Late 2011 Macbook Pro 15.4' 2.2ghz quad core i7 8gb RAM. Oh yeah and a mother thing is, I think I should get an enclosure that has a thunderbolt port with usb, what are your thoughts?

How to Make my Macbook Pro's internal HDD external, when I get a SSD?
Get an externel enclosure at the same time.
You can order from OWC
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/
Put the SSD in the externel enclosure and use something like Carbon Copy Cloner, to clone the internal drive and all it content to the SSD. Then swap them out.
Always good to have more than one backup.

MacBook Pro doesn't recognise new Internal HDD

Hi there, I was hoping to get some help on this ...
I purchased a WD Scorpio Blue 750GB internal HDD and Apricorn kit and used SuperDuper to clone my current internal HDD. The clone copy worked fine and I can boot the OS via the new WD HDD if it’s connected via USB, but when I install it inside, the Macbook doesn’t recognise it and a folder with a blinking ‘?’ appears.
I’ve tried booting up from the disk utility on start up to hopefully select it and that doesn’t work either as it cannot find the HDD.
I’ve tried booting up from disk utility and using my Time Machine back-ups to copy over the new WD HDD but it doesn’t recognise the new internal HDD either.
I did format it before I cloned the new drive to be OS Extended (Journaled) but I didn’t make multiple partitions and not sure if this is a step I'm missing.
When I put the old HDD back in it boots fine.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Cheers, Sam

Didn't matter how many times I reformatted, partitioned mapped the HDD when it was connected externally, the issue was was the Super Duper clone. (even though it would start up as an external start up disk.)
Had to install the new HDD internally and reformat it from boot up through Disk Utility then do a restore from a previous Time Machine back up.
Works fine now, no issues.

Dual Internal HDD in MacBook Pro? How? Which Models?

Alright well it's official; my logic board failed on my 2011 MBP, and now I need to replace it. I have been trying to research the mythical dual internal hard drive setup in the MacBook Pros but haven't found any specifics on which models can and which models can't.
The cheapest avenue which I can take is to simply adopt my older sister's laptop, but I wanted to figure out whether or not it's dual internal HDD capable.
Here are the specfications on that laptop:
And if this laptop is capable, can it handle 16GB RAM? I've heard conflicting anwers in regards to that, half stating that 16GB is possible but that Apple refuses to acknowledge the fact, and the other half stating to heed Apple's warning that 8GB is the max.
The second (much more expensive) route is that if laptop is indeed incapable, as I fear it might be, which models should I look at? Was this just a thing of the past that is no longer possible?
Thanks, and I appologize if this is a "dumb question"

PocketFool wrote:
So the 2012 MBP is capable of supporting a 2nd internal HDD? Can you link to the OWC website that you mentioned?
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/data+doubler
The MBP *can* accept the 16GB RAM but does this void any warranty since Apple technically says that you shouldn't/can't run that much?
Only on the RAM itself, not the rest of the MBP. The RAM vendor guarantee will cover that.
However installing the data doubler will void the Apple warranty.
Ciao.
Re: RAM: It is not that Apple prohibits the installation of 16 GB RAM, it is a case where they simply have not tested 16 GB of installed RAM.
Message was edited by: OGELTHORPE

MacBook Pro will not recognize internal hdd

my macbook pro MB991LL/A 13" 2.53 ghz will not recognize the internal hdd, but when external boot drive is connected it will boot. ive tried two diff internal hdd and the same problem with both of them. i want to upgrade to an internal ssd but im not sure that its the drivee. any ideas on what the problem could be?

My hard drive is now connected. But Time Machine will not let me select the hard drive as my back up drive. This hard drive was used on another Macbook, so Time Machine doesn't seem to recognize the hard drive on the new one. Do I need to reformat the hard drive? I hate to do that because I have the previous backups on there.

MacBook Pro won't mount internal HDDs

I have a mid-2012 MacBook Pro that has been awesome for me, until last weekend, when it stopped booting up. I get the grey screen with folder icon and flashing question mark. I booted up in Internet Recovery, but the OS couldn't write the backup to my HDD. I went into Disk Utility, and saw the disk, but Disk Utility couldn't repair it or erase it.
So then I shut down the computer, and restarted in Internet Recovery again. This time, Disk Utility didn't even see my internal HDD. I replaced the HDD with a spare I had, and same result: Disk Utility does not see an internal HDD. Now I don't know what to do.
I don't live close to an Apple Store/Genius Bar, so I'm hoping someone can give me a little advice before I commit half a day to a Genius Bar appointment.

Thanks, Brody.
Do you that that will work, even though switching the HDD didn't make any difference in my inability to mount an internal HDD?
John

Swapping internal HDD from MacBook to MacBook Pro

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