Will a MacBook Pro handle the OS installed on a swapped hard drive from a MacBook?

Question

Will a MacBook Pro handle the OS installed on a swapped hard drive from a MacBook?

How will the MacBook Pro handle the OS installed on a hard drive from a MacBook?

I need to return a MacBook Pro backwards in its OS to 10.6.8 from Sierra in order to smoothly operate an expensive Vectorworks CAD program; my only need for this Mac.

I verified that, in fact, the hard drives are compatible using an AI search. My question is focussed on this:

Since the 10.6.8 OS was installed on the drive while inside an old White MacBook is there any reason to believe that during the installation the OS was somehow customized for THAT Mac that if dropped into the MacBook Pro it would somehow cause problems? I expect it to work but am looking for any small detail to watch for when I make the swap.

(Doing the swap will gain me more hard drive memory and both the CAD program and OS will be installed as working entities. This save me from erasing the Pro's hard drive and upgrading back up to 10.6.8 etc. and installing all the software from scratch.)

Earlier Mac models

Posted on Jan 9, 2026 2:38 PM

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Answer 1

l3xor88

Level 1

18 points

Jan 9, 2026 3:07 PM in response to Brian Schreiber

If the Mac you want to downgrade came with anything newer than Mac OS X Snow Leopard(10.6.8), then the OS can't boot, The Mac must be a late 2009 Model

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Answer 2

Jan 9, 2026 2:51 PM in response to Brian Schreiber

What year is the MacBook Pro? If it originally came with an OS later than Snow Leopard (10.6.8), then it would not work.

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Answer 3

Jan 11, 2026 12:44 PM in response to l3xor88

As it turns out when I opened the MacBook Pro and saw it had no mechanical hard drive-- all Hard memory.

So, I erased the Memory chip based drive and installed the HFS on it and then used my DVD of 10.6.3 to place the OS on it, upgraded it to 10.6.8 etc. and installed the CAD program. It works fine.

I expected iPhoto or Photo or something to show up on this but nothing for photos.

How could that possibly be? It would have come in with the DVD install of the OS, right?

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Answer 4

Jan 11, 2026 1:07 PM in response to Brian Schreiber

Brian Schreiber wrote:

I expected iPhoto or Photo or something to show up on this but nothing for photos.

How could that possibly be? It would have come in with the DVD install of the OS, right?

In the early days, Apple sold iLife and iWork as packages separate from the OS.

Wikipedia indicates that at various times, iLife "included iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, iWeb, and GarageBand". iLife was sometimes preinstalled on new Macs, but I don't believe that it came with Mac OS X upgrade DVDs – except in the case where you bought a "bundle" upgrade that included both the OS upgrade DVD and the iLife one.

Wikipedia indicates that Apple released the first version of iPhoto on January 7, 2002, and that Apple at first made iPhoto available as a free download from their Web site. In 2002, there were no Intel-based Macs and no Mac App Store. The Mac App Store did not appear until the release of the final revision to Snow Leopard, and thus if Apple ever offered a Snow-Leopard-compatible version of iPhoto for free download, it would be (or have been) in a now-lesser-visited section of the Apple Web site.

The following download, which the description says is compatible with Mac OS X 10.6.3 (Snow Leopard) or later, might require you to already have purchased, and installed, iPhoto '11 (on DVD). Or it might be a full version. I'm not sure which.

Apple – iPhoto 9.1

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Answer 5

Jan 11, 2026 3:39 PM in response to Servant of Cats

Holy Cow, thanks!

That really should work. But, still, surprised that here I have an official DVD with the leopard ON the top face from Apple OS 10.6.3 and it failed to be placed on it during the OS build on an erased disk.

Curious though. Maybe this is my fault. I suspect but can NOT recall(I'm 75) that since I had dedicated this old Mac to CAD, in the back of my mind I had relegated to a "bare bones" operation prioritized to CAD-- period. IF, just saying!, IF I had actually deleted iTunes in this manic tirade or dedication to CAD, it would not have been resident on the disk as I used Disk Utility to erase it, before the fresh Install of 10.6.3. Would the system have "noted" its absence and therefore quite purposely NOT installed a "fresh" version??!@

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Answer 6

l3xor88

Level 1

18 points

Jan 9, 2026 3:10 PM in response to Brian Schreiber

Since the macbook pro is macOS Sierra, then I would say its usable with snow leopard

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Answer 7

Niel

Level 10

741,773 points

Jan 11, 2026 3:43 PM in response to Brian Schreiber

Tiger and newer don't include iPhoto; Photos didn't get added until Yosemite.

(262439)

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