Becca 0 Report post Posted March 9, 2018 My macbook Pro 2011 is slowly dying. I've bought a new 500gb samsung SSD to go in there. My friend is telling me to take out the CD drive (as has never even been used) and to add it in that bracket instead and keep both hard drives in my macbook. In one sense Im like yeah that's well resourceful of space, time (not having to move all my files etc) but then Im thinking... that my macbook is going to be HEAVY I don't know what do you guys think? Thanks Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted March 9, 2018 This should not add so much weight : you remove the CD and replace it's weight by the SSD. So, having two disks will incredibly speed up your macbook, this will widely compensate the effort of manipulating a HEAVY computer! 1 Becca reacted to this Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Becca 0 Report post Posted March 12, 2018 Oh yeah I never thought about that you are so right!!!! I'm glad I asked. I can set up myself which disk to boot can't I? SO It doesnt matter that I've placed it in the cd area. Thanks Yordan! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted March 12, 2018 On 12/03/2018 at 10:39 AM, Becca said: Oh yeah I never thought about that you are so right!!!! I'm glad I asked. I can set up myself which disk to boot can't I? SO It doesnt matter that I've placed it in the cd area. Thanks Yordan! Ouch! Seems that you have rather few experience with macbook hardware. So, please, don't do it by yourself, find a fried who knows what he does, or forget about adding the disk! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Becca 0 Report post Posted March 25, 2018 I only know how to take out RAM On 3/12/2018 at 11:39 AM, yordan said: Ouch! Seems that you have rather few experience with macbook hardware. So, please, don't do it by yourself, find a fried who knows what he does, or forget about adding the disk! 3 Thanks! My caddy has arrived now. I'm going to watch a youtube video and following it step by step! I never know how to do anything until I research and follow a guide. It should be fine Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted March 25, 2018 OK, please tell us if you were successful! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Becca 0 Report post Posted March 25, 2018 Hiiii . It was successful-ish =) I just had to unscrew everything and take out the optical drive and then put the SSD into a caddie case and slot it in. I booted it up and it works I'm trying to install macOS sierra in it now and change the start-up disk to my new one? I hope it works IrRead online if it doesnt... might have to swap the main HDD and 2ndary over which is annoying Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted March 25, 2018 Hi, Becca, Congrats, now we see that the LIUSSD hardware is installed and is usable, and macOS Sierra want to install. Before doing this, did you backup all your personal files ? Just in case? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Becca 0 Report post Posted March 25, 2018 50 minutes ago, yordan said: Hi, Becca, Congrats, now we see that the LIUSSD hardware is installed and is usable, and macOS Sierra want to install. Before doing this, did you backup all your personal files ? Just in case? 2 Thanks I saved important files onto another external as I wanted a clean reset I want to reset my old internal old HDD to use just as memory(not have mac OS running on it) but my disk utility wont let me????? I can't find any information online. Is there a way to stop it running an OS ??? Or run Windows on it so the coputer is dual OS windows/mac ? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted March 25, 2018 OK, the problem is that currently running OS does not accept erasing himself... And you cannot boot of the installation CD because you removed the CD reader. The thing you want to do is to clone your hard-drive MacOs to your SSD disk. You can do this with the disk utility, but of course you have to do some preliminary tasks before that. I found a nice tutorial, how to clone your hard hard disk to a SSD - Mac Unfortunately it's a french document, if you don't feel comfortable with french texts google an English version. Roughly, you first resize the current MacOs partition to make it smaller than your SSD disk. Then you boot on the off the recovery HD partition and you start the disk recovery program, you choose restore, as source volume you choose the current internal disk and as destination volume the new SSD. Here below a google translation of the link I mentionned : Quote 2. From Mac OS, open the Disk Utility application 3. In the left column containing the list of disks, select your hard disk 4. Click the Partition tab 5. Resize your Mac partition to the same size or smaller than your new SSD (example: if your original drive is 512 GB in size and your SSD is 256 GB in size, you will need to resize your original partition to 256 GB) at. Drag the resize slider to the desired size and click Apply b. If your new SSD is the same size or larger capacity than your original drive, you do not need to resize it 6. Shut down your Mac and reboot to the Recovery HD backup partition (Lion or higher) or from the operating system installation CD (Snow Leopard or higher) at. At startup, hold down the "Option" key to access the boot manager b. Select "Recovery-10.x" or the installation CD 7. Choose your language 8. Select Disk Utility 9. Choose the boot disk from the Disk Utility list of devices 10. Click on the "Restore" tab 11. Click the source volume (the line below the source disk) and drag it into the Source field if it does not appear in the Source field. 12. Click the destination volume (the line below the one showing the SSD) and drag it into the Destination field. 13. Tick "Clear destination" if the option is present (in version 10.8.2, it is checked by default) 14. Click "Restore". Once cloning is complete, you must then make sure that it has been correctly completed. Here is the procedure to follow : 1. Restart your Mac Hope this helps.... Regards Yordan Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted March 27, 2018 What news? Please tell us! Were you successful cloning the Operating System from your "legacy" hard drive to your new SSD drive? Did the laptop boot from the SSD ? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
