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User profile for user: jayzy
jayzy Author
User level: Level 1
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Upgrading MBP '11 Early model's Hard Drive

Hello everyone,


I am planning to upgrade the hard drive of my mac. But I don't know what is the best way. To clone the hard drive or fresh install. But if i'm going to do a fresh install, I don't know how to make a recovery disk because the Mac OSX Lion is already built in on the mac itself. There's no disk or anything included in the package. So how can I do a fresh install with a new macbook pro early 2011 moodel. Thank you and happy holidays to everyone 🙂

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2), Replacing a Hard Drive

Posted on Dec 18, 2011 9:01 AM

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User profile for user: Shootist007
Shootist007
User level: Level 6
16,703 points

Posted on Dec 18, 2011 9:41 AM

If your Mac came with lion pre installed then there is a recovery partition on the drive. You can connect the new drive to a USB port with a SATA to USB adapter, Boot the system and hold down the Options key and you will get a screen to select which hard drive or partition on a hard drive to boot to. Select the recovery partition. From there you can install the Lion OS on the USB connected external drive. Doing that will re-create the recovery partition on the external drive so if need be you can always boot to it to do maintenance or reload the OS.


If you clone the original drive to the new one you will be OK also except that all cloning software will not clone the whole drive. It will not move over the recovery partition. In that case you would need to make a USB boot stick that contains the recovery files. Not a bad thing to have anyway because if the drive fails you won't be able to get to the built in recovery partition.

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User profile for user: Shootist007
Shootist007
User level: Level 6
16,703 points

Dec 18, 2011 9:41 AM in response to jayzy

If your Mac came with lion pre installed then there is a recovery partition on the drive. You can connect the new drive to a USB port with a SATA to USB adapter, Boot the system and hold down the Options key and you will get a screen to select which hard drive or partition on a hard drive to boot to. Select the recovery partition. From there you can install the Lion OS on the USB connected external drive. Doing that will re-create the recovery partition on the external drive so if need be you can always boot to it to do maintenance or reload the OS.


If you clone the original drive to the new one you will be OK also except that all cloning software will not clone the whole drive. It will not move over the recovery partition. In that case you would need to make a USB boot stick that contains the recovery files. Not a bad thing to have anyway because if the drive fails you won't be able to get to the built in recovery partition.

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User profile for user: Shootist007
Shootist007
User level: Level 6
16,703 points

Dec 18, 2011 10:30 AM in response to jayzy

You are welcome.


You don't need an external enclosure. In fact I don't recommend them to any one. All you need is a SATA/IDE to USB adapter. These are available in a lot of places. they work with all SATA drives (Notebook or desktop drives as the connectors are the same) and older IDE desktop and notebook drives (their connectors are slightly diferent).


I realize you don't have one of those either.


I find the enclosure just contain the heat given off the drive and if you need to connect a different drive you have to take the enclosure apart, switch drives, reassemble. With one of the adapter you just plug the drive in to the USB Bridge and connect the power supply that is supplied with the adapter.

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Upgrading MBP '11 Early model's Hard Drive

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