Upgrading 2012 MacBook pro to SSD

I did the same conversion about 18 months ago and it was like getting new computer.

The Samsung SSDs were, for a while, the gold standard but their reputation seems to have tarnished. We are seeing more issues with them here and my son, a computer engineer, found their support somewhere between dismal and abysmal. I went with OWC, specifically this "kit":

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/Y3SSD6E500/

Note it is not the high-priced model yet it increased read/writes score by about 8X and has been 100 percent reliable. The little USB3 drive enclosure proved invaluable to the process and I am still using it as a backup drive.

I put the SSD in the enclosure and used Disk Utility to format it as APFS, the preferred format for SSDs with OS 10.13 or higher. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the old HD to the SSD. The trial version works long enough to do this with time to spare.

I liked the way CCC recreates the recovery partition needed for troubleshooting and reinstalling the OS. CCC was kind enough to prompt me to be sure that partition was created.

⚠️ NOTE: Due to a design issue, the hard drive CABLE in 2009-2012 13-inch MacBook Pros can wear due to the vibrations of normal use and transport after 3-5 years. Best practice is to install a new cable at the same time you change the hard drive, regards of drive type. The cable is cheap (~US$15), available, and easy to install.

At that point I removed the SSD from the enclosure and placed it in the computer with the new cable. The computer booted first try and has works flawlessy ever since. OWC does not recommend enabling TRIM on their products. If you go with another maker, you'll need to ask them for a recommendation. You do not need a third-party app to enable TRIM. You use Terminal, already on your Mac.

And obviously--back up, back up, and back up before your do anything involving drives.

There are various means to do it. One could use Disk Utility to clone, where it does a good job although it’s not great for incremental backups. I’ve used an external enclosure and boot externally before installing internally.

Others recommend using Time Machine. You can boot externally from a Time Machine volume and format your new SSD in the MBP, the restore to your SSD. I would recommend formatting directly in APFS for various speed improvements.

I know there are all sorts of suggestions. A lot of the default suggestions are to use Time Machine, which I've personally never used before. I prefer to use CCC, but I've heard a few people openly criticize any cloning software as just guessing at how to do a proper clone without Apple providing support. Maybe I've just had good luck since I haven't noticed any issues with any of my clones.

Most of us veterans here recommend OWC and Crucial specifically. I won’t go into the whole Samsung story here but there were issues with the Samsung 850 and 860 series with 2010 and older MBPros. As a result, we stopped recommending Samsung - whether that issue would affect 2011 and newer computers I don’t know. In the early days we avoided other models because firmware updates were common and only provided for PC users. So we’ve accumulated a lot of experience with these two manufacturers as a result. I will say I’ve installed a lot of WD PCIe SSDs on PCs, including my own.

As far as I know to get the recovery partition you can use CCC or install the OS either before or after restoring from TM. I think the criticsm against cloning has been based on block level cloning as opposed to file level cloning. The senior tech at the store I used to work at felt that block level cloning of an SSD might, in the long term, damage the drive but admitted that this wasn’t likely to be an issue if you only cloned it after its initial purchase. His concern was about frequent or even yearly cloning one might do for backup purposes or provisioning in education and enterprise.

I wasn't sure that TM would create the recovery partition. And CCC creates bootable clones, something I figured was a good thing once the new drive moved to inside the MBP.