Setting up OSX after installing a new SSD and moving HDD to optical bay

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Setting up OSX after installing a new SSD and moving HDD to optical bay

Hey all,

I know there are a tonne of other posts similar to this one in here, but I couldn't find the specific answers I was looking for.

Soon I'm going to remove my optical bay and put my current HDD in it's place, and install a brand new SSD where the original HDD once was. I'm comfortable with the hardware installation but am wary about what to expect on first power up afterwards.

I would like to ideally run OSX Mavericks and all of my apps (everything from Notepad to Premiere Pro) from the SSD, and leave all of my data on the HDD. I have an early 2011 13" Macbook Pro, model number A1278.

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- When I first turn the computer on after the hardware switcheroo, what can I expect to see? How do I re-install OSX Mavericks onto the new drive? Am I right in thinking that Mavericks is merely an upgrade rather than a whole new OSX and that I will need to install Lion and then upgrade to Mavericks rather than just reboot immediately to Mavericks?

- How can I then remove Mavericks from the original HDD?

- Exactly which files do I need to move to completely relocate the apps to the new drive? Is it as simple as moving the entire applications folder over, or are there hidden files dotted all over the place that I need to consider also?

Thanks in advance,

Adam

MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Mar 5, 2014 11:41 PM

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Answer 1

Melophage

Level 5

7,213 points

Mar 6, 2014 7:00 PM in response to adamyvr

Adam,

if your current HDD is a SATA III (6.0 Gb/s maximum throughput) drive, then you might find that you’ll have problems with it in the Optibay position. If this is the case, you’d probably be better off putting your SATA III drive into an external enclosure, and purchasing a SATA II (3.0 Gb/s maximum) drive to install in the Optibay.

If you have a SATA-to-USB or SATA-to-FireWire adapter, you can connect your SSD externally and format it with Disk Utility. After that, you could use a cloning utility to copy the contents of your internal HDD to your SSD (presuming that the SSD is at least as large as the amount of space currently used on your internal HDD), and then boot from the external SSD using Startup Manager to make sure that everything works well on it; that will save you from having to make sure that all of the scattered hidden files have been migrated. Once you’ve confirmed that your apps run well from the SSD, you can then install the SSD and move the HDD to wherever it’s going. An advantage of keeping Mavericks on your HDD is that you can boot from it if needed, e.g. should your SSD develop a problem.

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