Swapping information from an old MacBook Pro hard drive to a new SSD before the old drive crashes
OK - I would like to start over here, I am new to this community.
I have a MacBook Pro Mid 2012 running on Mac OS High Sierra Version 10.13.6. It has a 250GB internal Hard drive that I believe may be the original. It has become painfully slow but still works if you have the time.
My concern is the over 4,000 photos and years of meeting minutes from a Municipal Authority that are on that disk. I have a current back-up on a Time Machine and I have been trying to recover the data on there to a new 1TB SSD connected externally to the MacBook. I do not have a lot of experience with this procedure and although I am 73 years old I like to learn and I am a little stubborn. I refuse to be defeated by a machine. I am not fluent in Computer lingo so please bear with me. In my first two attempts the recovery process would not recognize the external drive that I wanted to restore to. Following instructions from a u-tube video (Which was also Painfully slow). I erased the new SSD, re-named it and added the extensions I was guided with. Then the restore process seemed to work. After about 15hours the restore was verified and my computer opened and booted much faster than I expected. I was elated and thought I had accomplished my goal. At that point I opened the MacBook and swapped the hard drive with the new SSD. The computer will not boot with the SSD inside. So I connected the old Hard drive externally with the gadget I had used for the restore, and the computer boots up and runs at the old slow speed. I am assuming whatever I installed on the SSD to allow the Time Machine to recognize it was not correct or complete. And I'm guessing I will need to start the process over. Please help - I feel like I am close to understanding this!!!
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.13
