Mac Mini :: Swapping Hard Drives Between Mini And Macbook
May 31, 2010
I just got a mac mini and was wondering if it's possible to just take the hard drive out of my macbook and install it in the mac mini and then boot up. Will it work? Or do I have to set it all up again? The reason I want to do this is because the mac mini has a 320 GB HD and my macbook 500GB, so I want the bigger drive in the mac mini. But, I don't have a "transitional" hard drive to throw everything onto before I wipe the macbook hard drive and install it in the mac mini.
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Sep 2, 2010
i have two exact same 17 inch MBPs i am thinking on selling one , one has a lot of stickers and marks on it and the data on that is not at all important (i can format the hard drive no problem). the other one body has very clean and data on that is important lots and lots of photos and videos. i want to sell the one which has clean body so i can get better $ for it. it is possible to just swap hard drives between these two identical MBPs and sell ? would that make any different in performance and also the serial number on ABOUT THIS MAC is that written on hard drive or some place else?
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Jan 12, 2011
I have a older mac mini and a 6 month old macbook pro, the mini's hard drive is full, can I take the one from the mbp, wipe it, and put it in the mini and get a larger one for the mbp? If so are there any recommendations for a HD larger then 500GB for my mbp?
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Jun 21, 2012
I have a 1tb, 5,400rpm harddrive on my old laptop (mid 2009) and wish to transfer it for the one in my new 15" Macbook Pro, 750gb 5,400.(Mid 2012)
What steps are needed to make this successful?
Info:
MacBook
Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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Aug 23, 2009
I have a 15" MBP with 256ssd installed and a 13" MBP with a 250gb 5400 drive. I prefer to use the 13" as my main computer and want to take the 256ssd drive from the 15" and put it in the 13". Then take the 250gb drive from the 13" and put it in the 15" How hard is this to do? I've not done something like this before. Since I'm swapping an ssd with a regular hd is it as easy as following the instructions on this forum, remove the screws and swap the drives? After that's done I'll need to overwrite the 15" software and load the OS and drivers for the 13" on to the ssd drive. Is that as simple as taking the restore disk for the 13" put it in the drive and reinstall the OS? Or, should I just take it to the local authorized Apple Dealer and have them do it? (We don't have an Apple store nearby.
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Jan 25, 2009
I have a Imac 20 with a small 3.5 hard drive and I have bought a bigger 360 gig 3.5 hard drive to replace the old one. I have the new one in an external case with USB 2.0 right now. Is there some way I can transfer the entire contents of the old hard drive on to the new one and then swap out the old drive with the new drive and not miss a beat?
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May 3, 2012
I want to back up the internal drive on my Mac mini as well as an external data rive using Time Machine with a dedicated second external drive.
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Mar 16, 2009
As I am looking around at all the usb 2.5" drives I have laying around, I was wondering if there is a limit to the number of bus powered drives that the Mac Mini could run at one time.
I have never run more than one self powered drive on a computer before - so I was wondering if there was a limit that the Firewire/USB bus power can support.
Ideally I would love to be able to run one bus powered firewire 800 drive, and three usb bus powered drives - I'm just not sure if that is possible or advisable...
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Apr 12, 2012
I would like to always have one external hard drive attached to my iMac for Time Machine backups, and another external hard drive off site - periodically swapping the two. The though is that if there is fire or theft, it won't help to have a hard drive onsite attached to the computer, because both the iMac and the hard drive could be lost. Is Time Machine smart enough to allow me to configure two drives, so that whenever I plug in one of the drives, it can figure out what needs to be backed up?
Info:
27' iMac i7 Quad-Core, Mac OS X (10.6.2)
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Mar 22, 2009
I'm need to upgrade my existing Mac, and although if I was wealthy I'd go for a used Mac Pro, or if I was extremely wealthy, a new one, it occurred to me that the new Mac Mini might be an option.
Presumably its 2GHz Core 2 Duo would be significantly faster than my existing Dual 1.25GHz G4 processors, I could spec it either to come with 2 or 4 GB of RAM, and according to this page it can support my existing 23" Cinema Display (1920x1200) with an adaptor, and even a 30" Cinema Display at some point in the future (2560x1600).
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Oct 12, 2009
I'm thinking about purchasing a used MacBook Pro that has a bad DVD drive. I have a PowerBook G4 that the logic board went out on and I was thinking I could put my PowerBook drive in the MacBook. Does anyone know if this will work? The look so similar, but I'm not sure.
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Sep 12, 2010
I have an Early 2009 Mac Mini with Mini DVI and Mini DisplayPort. And I have two 1080p HDTVs. The Mac Mini is capable of dual display, and I've gotten it to work before, so the issue is not the TV or Mac. And I have tried both Mirroring and No Mirroring.
I got a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter (#5311) and a Mini-DVI to HDMI Adapter (#4852) both from MonoPrice. And for some reason I can't get the Mac Mini to dual display, it's only one or the other.
Before I had a Mini Displayport Male and USB Male AUDIO to HDMI Female Converting Adapter (#5969) and I got video on both HDTVs, but not audio at the same time b/c one was USB and one was TOSLINK.
I'm not sure why I can't get video on both monitors. Any help?
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Apr 6, 2009
I need to connect my 09' Mac Mini to my Yamaha RX-V2700 receiver which outputs to my Sony XBR HDTV. I know the mini has both mini-dvi to dvi and mini-dp to dvi or hdmi available via adapters. I was thinking to go with option 1 however I was wondering what is your opinions? Is mini-display port better over mini-dvi or are they the same? Audio will be carried over optical toslink.
Option 1:
Using mini-dvi adapter to dvi: Connect Dvi-Hdmi cable to receiver and output audio with toslink adapter.
Option 2:
Using mini-dp adapter to dvi or hdmi: Connect Dvi-Hdmi cable to receiver and output audio with toslink adapter.
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May 4, 2010
I know the hard drives are swappable between computers (providing it has the same interface). My question though relates to formatted OS drives however. I have two Mac Pro's (MacPro1,1 and MacPro3,1). Can I swap the drives between them without losing software or reformatting? The reason I ask is with Windows, it seems to build the system around a specific motherboard configuration. Were you to replace the motherboard in that system, Windows will crash on bootup due to different kernel level drivers on the hard drive.
The reason I'm asking is because I like the way I have everything setup on my MacPro1,1, but want to get the speed boost from the MacPro3,1. Will this work or will I require a clean format of both drives when I swap them.
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Sep 18, 2009
Been trying to figure this one out, but can't seem to find a clearcut answer. Here's the dilemma: My 2 1/2 year old MP got replaced under AppleCare by my local Apple store with a new Nehalem MP when they couldn't fix it. The 3 user installed drives in my old MP were good, so they moved them from my old MP to my new one. One of those was the boot drive in my old MP, so the Apple store tech made it the boot drive in my new one. I had the drives arranged in order on my old MP (being the anal engineer that I am), however now my old boot drive is in bay 4, the newer MP boot drive is in bay 2, etc., i.e. all mixed up. Being that the old drives were almost 3 years old I decided to clone my old boot drive to the newer one and make it the startup drive, assuming that it being newer it would be more reliable long term. That all went fine.
Now I know that the OS doesn't care in which bay what drive is but does Time Machine? If I swap around the bays to put my boot drive into bay 1 from bay 2 will that confuse Time Machine and make it backup everything again, i.e. wasting backup space??? I.e., does TM go off of physical name and location or does it go off of logical name?? I know it doesn't matter which drive is where, but I just like having things in a certain order to troubleshooting purposes just in case.
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Aug 4, 2009
I am trying to use Mac Mini as my home server (as well as media server).I tried to share the folder and all, but I cannot see the external drives that are attached to Mac Mini.
If I remote in as Admin, I can see the main HDD, but nothing else. As Guest, I don't see anything.From Windows PCs, Mac Mini doesn't even appear on the network list.
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Sep 22, 2010
I added a second harddrive to my Mac Pro. As it happens, it is larger than the primary harddrive. What I would like to do is use the larger harddrive as my Mac OS disk, while using boot camp to set the smaller one up with windows. when I set up the larger one with 10.6, do I have to use the install disks, or can I just copy all of the files from the old disk to the new? Are there any hidden files that I need that might get left behind?
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Mar 2, 2009
Just curious can use both to drive the 24" LED ACD AND another 2nd monitor via mini dvi?? That would be a dream come true!
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Jun 23, 2008
Sometime I plug and unplug hard drives of my PC while it is on. Will there be a problem to do that on the Mac Pro? If the computer supports this, do I need an internal drive that is also hot-swappable in order to be safe?
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May 9, 2009
I connect 2 Iomega external disks and in the system profile I see them under the firewire tab.
I tried them on my macbook and it found them right away.
But on the mac mini they dont get mounted or it is like it is not proberly finding them What can be the problem?
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May 11, 2012
Is there a noticable difference between using a mini DP DVI vs mini DP VGA to external monitor that has both types of inputs?
Info:
17 MacBook Pro i7, Mac OS X (10.6.5)
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Jun 24, 2012
Can I put my macbbook hard drive in a new to me used Macbook Pro, both running SL and have the Pro work like the MB? Don't want to migrate, etc.
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Oct 6, 2009
thinking of relegating my mini to HTPC and buying a new base model 15" MacBook Pro. As both these systems have essentially the same hardware, including 9400M graphics, can I just swap the hard drives so my current 7200rpm mini drive goes into the new MacBook Pro, and the new, unused, 5400 rpm drive comes out of the Pro and into the mini?
Any reason this wouldn't work? I just think it would take a lot of time to back everything up to Time Capsule and then fresh install both hard drives.
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Mar 10, 2009
As per the title really. I have 2GB of alu MB ram sitting around doing nothing and wondered if I could install it into my new mini?
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Oct 21, 2009
The MacBook Air USB SuperDrive never worked with any other Macs without heavy hacking. What so different about the new Mini with Server OS X?
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Jun 10, 2010
How�s the performance of the 2.53ghz mac mini vs the 2008 macbook aluminium? My macbook has 4GB RAM, and is mostly decent but performance drops when running some photoshop plugins (which I use frequently). I�m looking for a desktop upgrade, and since I�m already using an external monitor and keyboard the mac mini seems more suitable than the imac.
But is 2.53ghz a significant upgrade from 2.0ghz on the macbook?
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Mar 14, 2009
If I swap my hard drive from an old macbook (with ilife 08) into a new macbook, can I use the new macbook's OS discs to upgrade to ilife 09?
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Jan 4, 2010
Does the Macbook Pro and the Mac Mini use the same type/size hard drive? (Looking to take a hard drive from a macbook pro and put it in the mac mini as a replacement)
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Apr 21, 2009
I have a 13" MacBook, and I'm swapping out the factory-installed 120 GB hard drive for a 320 GB one. I have been using it with the 120 GB disk, and I want to make a copy of it on the larger disk before I swap them. I have a fairly good idea of what to do, but I don't want to risk losing data, so I want to check and see what the best way to do this would be.Here's what I was thinking: along with the new drive, I bought an external enclosure. So, I was going to put the new disk in there, connect it to the computer with the original disk, and copy a clone of the internal disk to it. I was thinking of using Disk Utility or Carbon Copy Cloner to do this (although I have never done that, so I'd appreciate it if you could walk me through making a bootable clone with either one). Then, once I essentially have two disks which are clones, I'll swap out the old disk for the new one (I know how to do the physical installation).
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Apr 28, 2009
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My Intel MacBook is in the shop, and I swapped out my hard drive before I sent it in and put it in a USB enclosure. I was able to boot my friend's MacBook Pro from the drive, but my G4 Mac Mini is not seeing it as an option (upon startup or otherwise). I can read files from it, but I really need to boot from the drive for some other things (cookies, passwords, and especially the ability to sync my iPod touch).
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