2010 MBP Upgrade to SSD

BennyC · 25 Sep 2015 at 17:21

Hi Guys,

I finally given in (due to lack of free space and lagging performance) and will be upgrading to an SSD.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-192-SA&groupid=701&catid=2104

This will be more than an adequate boost in performance and also storage for me.

Now I've never reinstalled a Mac OS before. I have my original DVD's for Mac OS X and also Applications but did get the Maverick update when that came out about 2 years ago or so from the App Store.

I know that there are applications you can use that will do all this for me however my drive size will increase from 320GB to 500GB and I'm not sure if this will complicate matters? I do TimeMachine periodically if this could be of any use?

I have 5 years worth of clutter on this machine, most of which will not be missed, so I think it would be easier and possibly better to just take what I need and start a fresh.

Any advice on how to approach this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

BennyC

Invertigo · 25 Sep 2015 at 17:46

If you have any way of connecting the SSD externally via USB, you can use CarbonCopyCloner or similar software to literally copy everything over, swap the hard drives and away you go.

Also possible to use an external drive, similar process but when swapping SSD's you would boot from the external drive and, again, clone the drive to the new SSD.

Bear in mind, you'll have to format both the new drive and the external (if using this method) as Mac OSX Extended

BennyC · 25 Sep 2015 at 18:40

Invertigo said:
If you have any way of connecting the SSD externally via USB, you can use CarbonCopyCloner or similar software to literally copy everything over, swap the hard drives and away you go.

Also possible to use an external drive, similar process but when swapping SSD's you would boot from the external drive and, again, clone the drive to the new SSD.

Bear in mind, you'll have to format both the new drive and the external (if using this method) as Mac OSX Extended

Thanks, do you have any idea how CarbonCopyCloner handles cloning to a larger drive?

I currently have 3 partitions, so would it leave a 4th or room to adjust the existing partitions? (As the new drive is bigger)

Invertigo · 25 Sep 2015 at 20:40

Far as I can remember, it worked fine when I upgraded my old MacBook. Just make sure you format the drive first, then it should just copy everything over and leave the blank space available

timmeh · 25 Sep 2015 at 21:48

Could you put all the stuff you don't want to keep in a folder and tell time machine to ignore that folder or just tell Time Machine to ignore all the folders you don't want to keep? I guess it's not that simple?

I've used Time Machine a few times to restore a backup and it's worked perfectly every time. I can't vouch for any other the alternatives though.

Feek · 26 Sep 2015 at 08:54

I've used SuperDuper! quite a few times as I've moved around different devices and find it better than CCC. It works perfectly well to larger drives and CCC used to have a bug which didn't copy Adobe packages properly. I don't understand why it didn't work but I've never had any issues with SuperDuper!. It's also quicker than using Time Machine.

BennyC · 26 Sep 2015 at 19:57

Feek said:
I've used SuperDuper! quite a few times as I've moved around different devices and find it better than CCC. It works perfectly well to larger drives and CCC used to have a bug which didn't copy Adobe packages properly. I don't understand why it didn't work but I've never had any issues with SuperDuper!. It's also quicker than using Time Machine.

Thanks, I just need to buy the drive and force the change