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Hello All,
I will be buying a Samsung 840 Pro Series Solid State Drive to instal into my Macbook (white) mid-2010. How do I instal Mac OS X onto the new SSD? Thanks for your help.
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
What OS are you running? Mid 2010 has had firmware updates to support Apple's internet recovery mode. (Booting holding cmd+option+r) where you can use Disk Utility to reformat the drive, and run and installation of OS X. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4904
I am running 10.8.3 (most up-to-date). If I completely remove my hard drive and instal my SSD, will i still be able to use download the OS without a CD?
Before removing it, use http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433 to create a bootable flash drive. Then you can remove it, boot to the flash drive, and install OS X onto the empty SSD.
Thanks for the tip! So if I want to FULLY factory restore my system and don't care about anything except for the OS. How would I do that?
You can boot to that flash drive, and use "Disk Utility" to erase the Current drive, if you have everything you needed backed up. Then swap the drives.
Thanks for your help! But how would I download everything from my external hard drive? Do I just plug it into the USB and the Mac ill automatically detect it?
Did you back it up Via Time Machine?
No I didn't back it up, but I don't need any of the files. I just want to fully factory restore the computer and will re-download all the programs and files I need.
Ah, yeah, to factory restore, you boot to the flash drive as mentioned above, and use "Disk Utility" to erase the Macintosh HD, then choose "resinsall OS X" to install a blank OS on the drive. Will be like a fesh Mac out of the box at that point. Does that answer your question?
Kind of, but let me rephrse the question. If I remove the hard drive without deleting anything, then instal a SSD, will I be able to instal Mac OS X just like that, or are there extra steps that I have to take? In other words, iif I remove the hard drive, do I also remove the means to instal OS X?
No, because the flash drive is a recovery system. Which is basically the 'Installer' for OS X, and so after you put in the New SSD, you boot to the flash drive (Boot holding down "option" and select the flash drive) and choose "Reinstall OS X" which will download (from Apple servers) and install OS X onto the drive you select. (You may need to use Disk Utility to format the drive to Mac OS Extended {Journaled} first)
Thanks for the post! Now that definitely answered my question. But can you explain what you mean by formatting the drive to Mac OS Extended?
When you boot to the flash drive, and use "Disk Utility" you will "erase it" and select a format in doing so. Some drives are formatted for windows (NTFS Format) but you want it to erase it and select "Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the format, so it will be the proper format to Reinstall the OS X on.
How do I install Mac OS X on SSD?
