Swapping harddrives between 2 macbooks

This is actually quite easy. Just swap the hard drives on the two Macs, then boot them while holding option-command-R. That starts internet recovery. Install the latest version of the OS through internet recovery, and you'll have an up to date OS on the swapped-in hard drive properly configured for its new hardware. All of your applications and files will be there.

No. There are machine specific files on your computer's drive that won't work on a different model. The other model might boot, but there are sure to be problems(video graphic drivers and other hardware issues). You could partition your one external hard drive into two volumes and clone both computers to it(as long as the external hard drive has enough space on it).

What is "forever"? Have you tried it? If you boot the other machine in Target Disk Mode, it shouldn't take that long. Is the hard drive in the MacBook 1,1 the original? If so, the new machine should have plenty of free space to store the contents. If it is the original, 5 year-old drive, it is likely to die any day now, so you should probably get a new hard drive regardless.

It certainly is possible to swap out the drive but you might encounter some activation/authorization difficulties with the app launching. Each app is associated with the UUID [Universally Unique ID] of the drive and the machine on which it was originally installed and activated. This is a measure to counter piracy especially with the more costly applications such as AutoCAD. The normal process of double clicking the file to have it opened by its associated (default) app could stop you in your tracks here and you would need to re-activate with installation codes and so on. It could involve phone calls to support departments to prove that there is no piracy at play.

You can't swap out the drives and boot a different model mac. There are machine specific files on each drive. Since both computers are using different hardware, i.e. processor, video graphics, ram, trackpad, etc., there is a very slim chance much would work if you swapped the drive and booted from it.

James Holzer wrote:

Okay.....i appreciate your response. So if i clone both of our drives and then clone them again to the opposite machine, that should work? I thought that was the same as physically swapping the drives.

No. You don't want to do that. That will leave two machines unbootable. You want to put the files you need onto an external drive and just access them from the machine you want to use or do as etresoft suggested and use Firewire Target Disk Mode. But do not try booting one of the macbooks with a OS specifically installed for a different system.

Let's clear this up.

Macbook 1- cannot boot from the hard drive from Macbook 2 nor can it boot from a cloned version of Macbook 2

Macbook 2- same thing, cannot boot from the hard drive from Macbook 1 nor can it boot from a cloned version of Macbook 1

If you want to access the files from the other computer, either copy them from that computer to the other computer or copy them to an external drive and just access them from there.

Again, you cannot boot one macbook from another macbook's installation. You found that out when you tried to boot via Firewire Target Disk Mode.

I've never tried booting from target disk mode. My suggestion was to use that to migrate the user over to the new machine. I thought that if you had the original drive in the old machine, you would have plenty of space for the data on the new machine.

I don't think cloning is the right approach here. All you need are the files from the other machine. If you connect to the other machine (which is running in Target Disk Mode), you should be able to copy the files over. Since they are just user files and not applications, you should be able to transfer them with a simple Finder copy.

If the drive is only 2.5 years old and not exhibiting any problems, it is probably fine. However, the last notebook failure I had was on a 2.5 year-old drive. You do want to have good backups.