Software :: Swapping Drives Between Mac's
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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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 28, 2010
I have a 15 i7 with 4gb of ram. I can't seem to make it through my normal day which is nothing intensive except maybe 1 or 2 compressions in handbrake without running out of RAM and swapping off my SSD.
I switched off safari and went to chrome which has helped a bit. Currently i have 713mb free but for some reason my computer is still swapping 9mb off the sdd, why does it insist on using my SSD. I don't see any speed difference when it starts to swap which is great but its going to kill the SSD overtime with all these writes.
Programs running for a day:
Chrome - 5 to 10 tabs
Safari - sometimes but only 1 or 2 tabs
Itunes - open but not always playing
Pandora - through chrome
handbrake - once and a while compressing something
VLC
Word
I'm I being unreasonable to think that 4gb of ram would be alright for this many programs. I used to have a g4 with 2gb running leopard and never had an issue like this.
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Jun 6, 2010
I don't understand this thing. Mac Pro is slowing down as its swapping etc. but I have plenty of inactive memory. What is wrong here? I'm on 10.6.3here are pic. First is just normal and second is after about 30 mins
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Sep 13, 2009
I'm looking at the specs page for the MacBook Pro and it reads this...
Your MacBook Pro comes standard with a 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive. Choose a hard drive with a faster speed for greater performance. Or you can choose a solid-state drive that offers enhanced durability.
Basically suggesting that the HDD option has a performance advantage over the SSD, but is this the case? I always thought SSDs could read & write quicker because they use solid-state flash memory as opposed to hard disks.
I want to go with the 256GB SSD but I want to know how it ranks in speed.
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Sep 27, 2010
I have a question regarding Time Machine functionality. Here's my situation. I have two hard drives in my Pro: one that operates as a Boot drive, and one for storage. Right now I have Time Machine set up to backup my storage drive, but I was wondering if it was possible to have plug in a second external drive and use it to back up the Boot drive. I searched for a similar thread, but couldn't really find anything. Has anybody successfully done this?
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May 15, 2009
As the title says, can you combine 2 drives to one large without the expensive raid card?
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Jan 5, 2011
I was recently given 2 Powermac G5's,one of them works but the case itself looks like it was dropped out of a window,it is a 2.0DP and the second is a 1.8DP that isn't working but the case is nearly perfect.Would there be an issue with swapping the 2.0 into the 1.8?
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Feb 10, 2008
My wife and I have been using one for several years now, but seeing that we are the only ones in our circle of friends and family, we are hardly experts.We decided to upgrade, and this led me to a question.
Basically we are upgrading from a 600MHZ G3 iMac DV (or SE. I forget which) running OS 10.3.9 and OS 9.2.?, to a powermac G4 MDD 867 mhz dual processor supposedly running OS 10.3.8 (I don't have the machine yet.)So, I was wondering if it is possible to pull the hard drive out of the G3 iMac, and install it in the G4 powermac as a secondary drive slaved to the primary? This would be the easiest way I can think of to keep all of our files, music, etc.
I have done this many times with PC's and usually you just need to set the jumper on the older drive to "slave" and all is well. is it the same with Macs?
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Oct 16, 2010
When running large keynote files (with some embedded videos) my Keynote pauses sometimes for 30 seconds or so to swap. I figured I'd just add memory, but now I have 2gig and the Activity Monitor shows that keynote is only using about 200 meg. The keynote data file is about one gig, so there is plenty of room to move it all in before I start my presentation. Any way I can make keynote run load all at once and run directly from memory? Obviously it works better for me if all the delay is at startup time when my audience is still out of the room .
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Jun 29, 2012
I'm about to have to give up my corporate macbook for an iMac. I have an external hard drive that has kept up as my time machine. Can I use this to move out and move in?
Info:
MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011)
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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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May 28, 2009
I currently have a 320gb Hard Drive in the New Aluminum Macbook and Will be switching to a New Whitebook. My question is can I just take out the 320gb and swap it into the New Whitebook?
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Jul 29, 2009
I have a new 2.53 Macbook Pro coming in the mail this week and I want to swap my current 7200rpm drive from a Second Generation 2.16 Core Duo Macbook Pro into my new computer. My question is this:
Would it be a better idea to erase the drive before swapping it to the new Unibody MBP, or can I just throw it in and run off the current OS installed on it (10.5.7). The OS should be the same on the new computer since its the same most current version of Leopard. I dont really know if this is possible since its an entirely different computer.
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Jan 20, 2010
I have a Mid-2007 MBP... I upgraded it to a 500gb HDD some time ago and I'm currently running 10.6.2.
If I were to buy a new MBP (hopefully a Core i5 one if/when they come out), would it be possible to simply swap the HDD from the old MBP into the new one?
I'm aware that Time Machine and/or imaging products like Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper are ways of achieving the same thing, but I'm interested whether the physical hard drive swap would work in theory.
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Apr 28, 2012
Is there a way to safely loosen the screws on the bracket holding the hard drive in place on a mac book pro 17 inch? I've got one loose, but the other one simply won't budge and the head is starting to strip. the amount of downward force I'm having to exert to try to get it to move seems excessive to the point of dangerous to me. i'm using a Philips 00 screwdriver which is the correct tool, I believe, but I just cannot shift it. given that Apple say this is a user replaceable part, there must be an easy wy to do it, but all I can see me doing is more damage and being stuck with a captive screw that no one can move.
Info:
iPodclassic
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May 28, 2012
I have a g5 which will not connect to my monitor as my monitor is adc and the g5 has 2 dvi connections its a 1.8ghz single processor g5 with 2gb memory. My friend has a dual processor mac with a dead hard drive and he says I can swap the video card as his has one dvi and one adc connection. He says its a nvidia card but he's not sure what one (came new on the g5 dual). Will this card work in my g5? Will save me getting an adaptor (expensive) or a new monitor.
Info:
PowerMac
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Jun 14, 2012
I'm going to purchase a Crucial M4 128GB SSD for my Late 2011 13" i7 Macbook Pro. I don't use my optical drive at all, so I figure I may as well swap that out for my current 750GB HDD, and put the SSD in the main harddrive bay. I know full well how to physically install the respective drives, but my confusion comes when cloning the current HD onto the SSD, then moving all your media files (music, movies, documents etc) over to the HD, while keeping your system files and applications on the SSD.
So what I really need, is a PROPER in depth guide from the start of the setup process (First boot after installation of physical drives) detailing how to copy my system files and applications over to the SSD so I can boot from it, while keeping my data & media files on the HD and being able to access them all as I normally would through finder.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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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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Nov 12, 2010
So my question is -- do you know if this would be an issue swapping drives from a 2009 Mac Pro to a 2010 running 10.6.5 on the drive? Is there an OS performance hit running the 10.6.5 from the 2009's drive on the 2010 Mac Pro?
The reason I ask is because I am upgrading to a 3.33GHz 6-core, it's ordered and on the way. When it comes, I would just like to swap my SSD from my 2009 to the 2010 (running 10.6.5) and hope that everything runs OK. I don't want to have to re-install the new OS X build from the system disks and then update it, I would like it just to work correctly on the new Mac Pro.
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