A friend kindly donated an unused 2010 MacBook Pro. My OWC order of 8GB of RAM (maximum in this model) and an SSD (to replace the current spinning hard drive) finally arrived.

I knew shipping would take a while, as I opted to not pay for expedited shipping. I was surprised to follow (virtually) the package from Chicago, to Miami, to Fort Lauderdale, to Detroit, to Toronto, to Vancouver (with three weeks between Toronto and Vancouver).

I've got an old SSD that was removed from a circa-2012 iMac. Does it make sense to clone the old iMac SSD to the new SSD before installing? I'm hoping Chronosynch can clone this on a Mac Mini with USB 3 (instead of the MacBook Pro's USB 2).

Anything I should be concerned about? Will a cloned iMac SSD boot to a MacBook Pro? Will I need to register Adobe, Microsoft, and other software to a different computer?

Suggestions for a more efficient method?

thanks, Todd's about-to-be-resurrected keyboard

I'm not sure about any of the software issues, but be careful of the ribbon connector between the motherboard and the disk. It's very fragile. I've had to replace a few.

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Embarassing myself on the Internet since 1978.

It should work.

A slower but perhaps more concise way —> I’d be inclined to boot the laptop and look to see if it’s on an OS older than it can take. If so, I’d create a bootable USB stick and put whatever OS gets downloaded from the App Store onto that. If no updates are available I’d try getting the OS downloaded some other way or with some other Mac.

Boot from the USB stick to make sure that works, Cancel.

Install the new SSD and install the OS fresh. Use Migration Assistant to pull over your other user account so that the various app registration issues are mitigated?

But are you looking to move some tasks to the laptop, or do you want to be able to use it “sometimes?”

Thanks for the advice. I've never created a bootable USB stick. Will look into it. I have already cloned the SSD from my MacBook Air to the MacBook Pro.

The new Mac Mini (running Catalina) does not recognize my iPod Shuffle and older iPod. I listen to a lot of audiobooks on the iPod Shuffle and will use the MBP for that. Plus, the MBP has a Firewire port. I've got a lot of old Hi-8 videotapes of my students at the circus schools in Europe that I would like to digitize. Finally, I hope to use the MBP so I can continue to use my versions of Adobe CS and MS Office without having to go to a subscription.

thanks again, Todd's everything-new-is-old-again board

What model Air? What OS?

The latest OS version that a 2010 MBP will run is High Sierra.

Do you have any external drives or clones on an external? (How did you clone the iMac Drive?)


High Sierra (or others) can be downloaded from here:

[support.apple.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/2021 03:59PM by btfc.

Thanks for the questions. I'll have to fire up what I have when I've got a bit more time.

The SSD from the iMac is not a clone. It's the SSD that was pulled from a faulty iMac and has now got its own housing. The iMac was probably circa 2012, or so.

T's kb

My usual approach would be to install a fresh system on the new SSD, then migrate from the appropriate drive; the questions are to determine the best way to do that.

The Adobe apps might bug you for authorization, but should be solvable. Do you have the install disks and/or the serial numbers?


[helpx.adobe.com]

Don't those take up to 16GB?

I usually take the new drive, put it an external case (which can be $15 from Microcenter or wherever) and either clone or install OS and migrate.

Then I make sure it boots and then install into machine.

Quote
ADent
Don't those take up to 16GB?

I usually take the new drive, put it an external case (which can be $15 from Microcenter or wherever) and either clone or install OS and migrate.

Then I make sure it boots and then install into machine.

Exactly what I do..

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San Antonio, TX (in the old city)


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Success! Thanks again for the advice.

Am writing this on a newly-upgraded, mid-2010, MacBook Pro 15" with 8GB of memory and a 1TB SSD. (Courtesy of our sponsor.) The difference in speed is noteworthy. I'm not sure why I did not opt for 16GB of memory when I place the order.

What follows is lengthy. Before I get started I'd like to share some experience that may help someone. I also ordered an external case for the SSD, thinking it might come in handy. It did, as I ended up cloning the spinning hard drive from this MBP to the new SSD. The tip is: you need to push the SSD into the pins a lot harder than you first might think. I thought I had properly seated the SSD into the case, but it wasn't actually all the way in. It took quite an aggressive push to get the drive fully nestled. I found this out when I couldn't close the case properly until I actually did seat the drive in all the way.

OWC's video explained the procedure quite well. I was interrupted by a delivery that necessitated meeting the driver in the rain, so can't give an accurate account of how long it took. I would say a bit under thirty minutes. However, I forgot to prep the air blower until I had opened the case, so finding that also added some time.

More frustrating than the actual installation was prepping the SSD. My attempt to create a bootable thumb drive that was plugged into the spinning-driver version of this laptop from Apple's web site failed. Numerous updates showing a remaining time of 13 minutes dragged on for hours. I still don't have a bootable thumb drive.

My next strategy was to use the USB 3 ports on a newish Mac Mini to clone the new SSD from an SSD that was pulled from an old iMac. The cloned SSD could not boot the MacBook Pro as an external drive. It turns out, the SSD from the iMac also could not act as the start-up drive for this laptop. I'm assuming the iMac's OS was too new for this laptop, but don't really know.

The third—and final—strategy was to clone the hard drive of this laptop to the new SSD. The newly-cloned SSD successfully booted as an external, so I finally felt comfortable swapping out the drives and memory.

The old, spinning drive in this laptop was, itself, a six-week-old clone of a MacBook Air. While I would rather have this laptop be a clone of the iMac, I can live with a clone of the MBA. Now I need to deal with adding Adobe and other software. I'm pretty sure I have the original discs somewhere, so anticipate only minor problems.

Thanks again for the feedback and support,

Todd's older/newer, speedier keyboard