Been thinking about one for while as my 2012 MacBook Pro has started to slow.
Amazon had Crucial SSDs on sale over the weekend so I got a 1TB drive for £150.
They look reasonably easy to backup and fit, but never tried this before. I've got multiple time machine backups in advance.
anything I need to know?
There are loads of sites on the web with step by step guides. Follow one.
It's worth getting a sheet of paper and putting the screws you remove in roughly the same place on the paper as they were in the laptop, less chance of putting a thing in the wrong hole then.
It's pretty straightforward. I have the same model MBP and did it myself. One thing to watch out for is that these machines have an issue with the data cable that runs from the HD to the main board. Over time it degrades to the point that while it'll still work with a conventional mechanical HD, an SSD with its higher transfer rates, can overwhelm it.
If you fit the SSD and the computer doesn't see it, it could well be this. You can check it by putting the SSD in an external enclosure and seeing if it's recognised. If there's nothing wrong with the SSD, it's almost certainly that cable. Mine has failed two or three times now. Not expensive or difficult to replace, but slightly alarming if you don't know what's happened.
I paid for someone to do mine but the results are brilliant. Ive not wanted to throw it out of the window since it was upgraded.
Good to know - I've had the back off when upgrading the ram. So I think fitting it will be fine, it was more the cloning the hard drive which ive not done before
Good to know – I’ve had the back off when upgrading the ram. So I think fitting it will be fine, it was more the cloning the hard drive which ive not done before
This is the easy bit with *nix based OSes like Apple use. Just literally copy it across and it works pretty much, the drive will come with software to help you do it.
such a worthwhile investment, i have a 2011 mpb and the SSD has kept it running sweet years later, boots up quicker than my year old work PC
Which model of 2012 MacBook Pro is it? If it’s retina you’ll need a specific SSD, the crucial one won’t fit.
Non-retina 2012 MacBook Pro.
I used the crucial part finder utility to get the model I needed, it just happened to be £30 cheaper on Amazon
just needed to buy a 7.5mm to 9mm spacer
Is it this one?
i always follow these guides
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2012+Hard+Drive+Replacement/10378
Easy process is to buy a copy of carbon copy cloner.
You will need a cheap enclosure or cables to apply power to the new drive.
Make a bootable copy of the drive, then boot the Mac to the new drive to test it’s OK.
Then swap the drives over, I do a monthly back up using this software then you always have a bootable copy of you Mac if you ever have issues.
That's the one and that guide is very similar to the one on the crucial site.
I thought you could use 'disk utility' to clone your hard drive. I'm only going to be doing it once so I'd prefer not to spend £35 on cloning software if I can avoid it by using built in software.
Ive bought the necassary USB cable to connect the SSD for copying purposes
I've always just used a Time Machine back-up when swapping drives. Works fine for me, but maybe I'm missing something?
Taken a few days as i found out i'd encrypted my old hardrive on the Mac, so i had to decrypt the drive which took over 2 days!
The restore and copy of the 640gb on the HDD went easy after that and the install was fine, i already knew what the inside looked like from the RAM upgrade last year to 16gb.
Its like a new computer my 400gb of photos now load and move around them near instantly. Thoroughly recommended and a bargain for £150gb for the 1TB SSD. Even tempted to buy the 1TB portable SDD thats on amazon and do away with all my flash drives