Can I use an external harddrive to replace to internal drive of my MacBook Pro?
The HDD in my 2009 MacBook Pro seems to be dying at the moment. I'm trying to get all my data off but the computer just keeps crashing..
I've tried just about everything: drag/drop (this works, but some things seem to be corrupted sometimes and it won't copy everything, also crashes and freezes over and over again). I've tried the same thing in Safe Mode which doesn't seem to change much.. I then bought a new external hard drive to backup everything as a disk image through the disk utility in the recovery partition, but that kept failing as well, whether encrypted or not.
I am painstakingly dragging/dropping everything to an external device at the moment which takes hours at a time to copy what I can from my folders between freezing and crashing. I'm now wondering if it would be possible to use an old external hard drive to replace the one in my machine? I'm no pro on these things, but I know enough to be able to do it myself.
If it's possible how would I go about installing OSX to the drive? I have an old 2007 MacBook (which is just as useless) and I also have a PC, perhaps it could be installed from one of these? I also have an old boot disc (Leopard I think) - is it possible to install the OS onto a blank hard drive by booting from disc?
Any help on the matter would be appreciated. Obviously buying a new hard drive (or arguably a new machine) is the best way to go about it, but I figure I may as well use this spare drive if I can.
Sorry if this is long-winded, just trying to answer any questions on what I've tried so far.. More info / specs available if needed.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Adam.
MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10), null