Want to replace stock HDD with a 256GB SSD, have questions.

Unless you purchase your SSD from OWC your drive will have to be partitioned first. The OWC SSDs I've bought have already been partitioned and formatted for the Mac. Either way, unless you have another boot drive, you'll have to boot your computer with Internet recovery since you won't have a recovery partition until you've install the operating system. Here's how I've swapped out my hard drives for SSDs

1. place the SSD in an enclosure
   1. I've always had an enclosure or bought one when I got the SSD so I could make the old internal drive into an external drive.
   2. I typically use this new external drive as a clone backup for my computer
2. run Disk Utility to partition the drive
   1. The trick is to delete the current single partition
   2. Then click on the + symbol to make a new partition (GUID)
   3. Format the drive
3. Download and install OS X

   This will create the recovery partition

4. Swap out the SSD for the old HHD and reboot
5. While the computer boots put the old HHD in the external enclosure and plug it into the computer
6. Go thru the new owner setup and when asked if you want to setup the new computer say yes and choose the external as the source

   You could also use the TimeMachine backup as your source but I find this is a bit slower than using the external drive

Depending on what software you have you may need to enter some serial numbers.

Oops - I meant to add that you could go ahead and swap the SSD and HHD and then do the partitioning and TimeMachine restore but I've found that if the SSD is defective you'll find out when you try to partition it, format it, or install the OS. I'd rather only take the computer apart once, not twice so I like to find out if my SSD is good before I take the computer apart.

Well dwb explained it very well. I use something like this:

http://www.walmart.com/ip/40900062?wmlspartner=wlpa&adid=22222222227028516939&wl 0=&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=61188529929&wl4=&wl5=pla&wl6=96584356809&veh=sem

When I've done this I boot from the original drive and use Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper to make an exact clone of that drive to the SSD.

That way I use Disk Utility to format the SSD.

BTW I did have an SSD from OWC that I had a problem formatting. OWC was ready instantly to take it back but I reformatted it and it's been working fine for the client. First time in 9 years.

After restarting your computer immediately press and hold Command Option R for a few seconds. This will cause the computer to boot in Internet Recovery. To ensure that your computer can do this, try it now before you purchase the SSD and install it. Since I don’t have the fastest broadband connection I prefer to download the OS at my leisure and keep a copy of it for later use which is another reason I like using an external drive. In fact I typically use a dock but I didn’t recommend it initially because most people probably don’t need one, though they are convenient for nerdy folk and tech workers. (I qualify on both accounts)