A new drive and and an external drive (1 Viewer)

Hello all,


I have a MacBook which is more than six years old. I bought it as a refurbished unit, more than five years ago. Last September, I thought that its age had made it unreliable, so I bought a MacBook Air. Sure enough, in May, the MacBook would not start, and the recommendation from the Apple Store was retire it. In December, 2011, I had bought a new battery, so I had something invested in its life.

When I returned home, from the Apple Store, I was set to send it in, for recycling and small gift certificate. My brother asked if the MacBook was dead, and I said it looks that way. He then slapped it on both sides and pressed the “on” button, and it resumed service. I always thought of my brother as a technophobe, but he has his moments. I updated the RAM to four Gigabits, used Samsung, purchased from that electronic auction site, and decided on a new project: converting it to solid state drive (SSD).

I bought a new drive from Crucial and afer a false start, I got a SATA to USB adapter [and unneeded PC Software]. Then I “cloned” the new drive, externally, which took an hour to transfer a little more than 20 Gigs, as the MacBook had been stripped of all files. With the SSD still hooked up, externally, I started up using the “Option” key which allowed me to choose between the hard drive and the SSD, which worked perfectly. I then removed the old drive and installed the SSD, which took a little bit of persuasion. The instructions did not clearly indicate the need for an included shim. My old MacBook now starts faster and should have longer battery life, but it’s still heavier than the MacBook Air, whose portability has been very useful, on occasion

The old hard drive was placed in an OWC brand enclosure with a SATA to USB 3 connection. It can now function as a portable backup drive, or storage for photos, should I ever go digital, and it can make full use of the latest USB 3 port on the MacBook Air. The old MacBook has been supercharged and when it dies, I can alway switch back to the hard drive, before recycling.

I will admit to getting some help from Crucial, but I thought that I did well for an OAP [Medicare recipient to those in the States]

Happy bird watching,
Arthur Pinewood :scribe:

Computers usually just last, it's the things that move, the fans and the hard drives, that give out.
Still, getting the software to play nice is a real achievement. There is always at least one gotcha.

Well done, Arthur!

Hello Étudiant,

Thank you. In 2005, I had a Toshiba laptop whose hard drive failed. I think that it would have been even easier to reclaim. I passed it on to someone who got it running, again. It is still working but it is rather obsolete.

Happy bird watching,
Arthur :hi:

I am typing this on a six year old HP laptop to which "my local computer man" replaced the worn out hard drive with an SSD solid state drive and decrapified what was on the old drive. The difference is incredible. It boots up in about ten seconds and has been given a complete new lease of life. I have a newer laptop but use this HP one more often as it seems to be far quicker and much more reliable.:t:

Hello Geoff,

My old Macbook just gave me a scare, as it took two tries to get started. It took about thirty seconds with the SSD. However, my iMac takes a full minute.

I want to be my own "local computer man." Computers are very modular, so replacing the hard drive is fairly simple; while Mac made it easy to do the "cloning."

Happy bird watching,
Arthur :hi"