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Hi, via the search I know that this has been covered a few times but there always seems to be something I don't understand!!
I have bought a Samsung 840 evo SSD; a Dynamode SSD-RAIL 2.5 inch HDD or SDD Conversion Cradle for 3.5 inch Drive Bays and a SATA 3 6Gbs LOCKING SATA High Speed Hard Drive Cable Lead 45cm. I have my doubts as to whether I needed the last two!
Does anybody have the time / patience to highlight the steps I need to perform to get this thing installed? In REAL simpleton terms?
Do I back up the HDD to an external HD first or just to Time Machine?
Or do I back up to the SSD drive externally before I install it.
I hear talk of cloning the HDD but don't really understand it.
Basically I need the complete A-Z!
Thanks
There will probably a tutorial with step by step instructions somewhere.
Like this:
[url] http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_install_ssd_unibody_macbook_pro [/url]
I think you are correct and you don't need the cable or caddy. What would be useful is an [i]external[/i] 2.5 inch drive enclosure, USB 2 or 3 is fine.
Basically, you'd fit the ssd into that and connect to the mac. Format the drive using disk utility, matching the settings for your current hd.
Then download and use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your current hd to the external drive. This will copy over everything including the os. You shouldn't need to change any CCC settings other than setting source as your current hd and destination as the ssd.
Then, the ssd is removed from the external enclosure and replaces the internal drive.
Did this on Wednesday with a Mac Pro, which has the benefit of 4 drive bays so no facing with external enclosures. CCC worked fine and is free for a 30day trial.
Also you want to have the ssd and your current drive but don't use the optical drive, you can probably bus something to let you mount the ssd there. Post back if you'd want to go down that road and I'll google.
Thanks RichPenny
I sort of understand all that! The format bit I don't quite get. When I plug in the external drive I will see it on the list of options on the left of screen. The options that seem to be available on the right are First Aid; Erase; RAID or Restore.
At the bottom I have Verify or repair disk
What do I need to select to format the new drive?
Thanks
I used disk utility, it was very easy, not sure why folks insist on using 3rd party tools. There are some easy to follow instructions [url= http://nyacomputing.com/how-to-create-a-bootable-clone-of-your-mac-hard-drive/ ]here[/url]. You basically put your new drive in a caddy (pennies from amazon), format it, boot your mac into recovery mode and then clone your current drive to the new one.
I went from a 120GB HDD to 512GB SSD and didn't lose any space etc.
check out ifixit.com
they do a teardown of all apple's devices and have very good instructions with images for you to copy from. they are very good
thanks tonyd and keef