How to make my MacBook Pro new again?

Not entirely clear on what you have in mind. If you are going to have both a rotary drive and a SSD internally, the best arrangement would be to have the SSD in the drive slot and use it as your boot drive. The rotary HHD can be in the optical slot and can be a backup or used for almost anything. Or is your original drive also a SSD?

The best way to set up your new SSD would be to go through the old drive first and clean out anything you are dubious about. You might want to run an Etrecheck report, which will let you have a good view of your system and allow you to see what's there and remove any adware you might have picked up. If you find a virus, it should be removed. This is a good occasion for some housekeeping. And if some of the slowness is due to the drive being too full, then that should help.

https://etrecheck.com/#about

Since the SSD is new, the best way to set it up is to install the OS on it and then use Setup Assistant to migrate from your old drive. That will give you a fresh clean version of the OS and avoid the kind of corruption that might be introduced by cloning.

Also, I don't know how big the old drive is or how full it is, but that would be something to check when you migrate. You want to be sure the new drive has at least 20% free for best operation. If you have large media files that won't fit, for example, they may need to reside on a different drive, which could be either internal or external.

The old drive can certainly be used for backup, but it would be prudent to have a second external drive for backup. If your computer were to be lost or stolen, the backup would be as well if the only one you had was on a second internal drive. It's a convenience to have an internal clone of your boot drive--maybe one that's backed up automatically on a schedule--so that if your boot drive fails you can immediately boot from the bootable clone. But it should never be your only backup.

Your Mac should be much faster after all this. Good luck!

At this point, is everything on your SSD or is some of it still on your HDD? If everything is on your SSD, and what's on the HDD is a duplicate of what's on the SSD, then you could probably go ahead and erase the HDD and start using it as you would an external drive to store your big media files. However, it would still be prudent to make a good backup of everything on an external drive before you do this in case you need to regroup and do something over. You don't want to risk losing anything.

This is also getting to be outside my area of expertise. A Google search brings up quite a bit of information:

store photos library on external disk

store itunes library on external disk

However, I have never done this myself and don't feel I can properly advise you. Best thing would be to read some of these articles first and then if it's not clear, ask on the Photos and iTunes forums:

Photos for Mac

iTunes

The software experts would be the most knowledgable about how best to set this up, and how best to keep it all backed up, as I imagine that photographers and musicians have many files and probably many libraries on external discs. They would know a lot more than I do, so best to turn to them for advice.

Good luck!

There are some known issues with the 13" mid-2012 MBP. One of these is the hard drive cable, which is prone to failing over time and which is often the culprit when it comes to extreme slowness. Replacement cables and instructions are available from PowerBook Medic and ifixit and OWC. There's also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amg5w0rlwDo

Here the guy put some tape to insulate the cable from the aluminum, and that would be a cheap and easy fix to try. (If the cable is deteriorated, it should still be replaced.)

A bad cable can corrupt the hard drive over time, which only adds to the slowness. And if this is the original hard drive, it is getting long in the tooth and could be starting to fail. So you might want to consider replacing it. OWC carries a selection of suitable drives along with installation instructions:

https://eshop.macsales.com/upgrades/macbook-pro-13-inch-mid-2012-2.5-ghz/interna l-drives

A SSD would give you a considerable boost in performance. If you scroll down to the end, you can get a kit which includes an external enclosure.

I notice you only have 4 GB of RAM, which is rather minimal for Sierra. You can max the RAM out to 16 GB.

I'm not familiar with the cleaner apps that you have, but many of these actually cause more problems than they solve. You might want to go ahead and uninstall them.

What I would recommend is a clean install. Make at least one good backup first. If you are going to go with a new drive, you can put it in the enclosure and format it with Disk Utility as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Then use Disk Utility to run First Aid o0n both your internal disk and the new external.. Then download a fresh copy of the OS from the Purchases tab of the Mac App Store. Start the installer, and when it says "Show all disks", choose the external new disk. Install the OS and then use Setup Assistant to migrate from your old disk. When done, the Mac will be booted from the external and should be running much better. Then you can take the disk out of the external enclosure and install it in the Mac, being sure to at least put some tape under the cable so it won't be able to touch the aluminum.

If you want to try this with your original disk first, you can do the same and just install a fresh copy of the OS on it. If the disk has been getting corrupted, it could have corrupted the OS. Be sure to run First Aid in Disk Utility on it first. If you get any errors that Disk Utility cannot fix after several tries, then it's definitely time for a new drive.

At some point, you should also run the Apple Hardware Test to check on why your Mac is getting hot--it could be that your fan is not working properly, and if so, it might need to be replaced. Or it might just be clogged up with dust and needs to be blown out with compressed air.

Good luck!

The only things you can really upgrade on this Mac is the RAM and the hard drive. New RAM usually comes with a lifetime warranty, so essentially the RAM will be good for the useful life of the computer. If there is a problem with a RAM stick, the seller should replace it under warranty. Very little ever actually goes wrong with the RAM, so you could consider it to be a permanent upgrade.

The newer OS's seem to do better with lots of RAM, and this machine will take 16 GB. OWC also sells RAM:

https://eshop.macsales.com/upgrades/macbook-pro-13-inch-mid-2012-2.5-ghz/memory

You can also look at crucial RAM. There seems to be a consensus that these two brands work the best. Macs have rather tight RAM specs, and some other brands do not seem to work as well.

As for hard drives, all hard drives will eventually fail, so you might need to replace it in another 3-5 years. This is the nature of hard drives, with or without a bad cable. Most drives come with a 3 year warranty, but some do come with a 5 year warranty, meaning that if it fails during the warranty period, the seller will replace it at no cost to you. I know that OWC does this. I was involved with two of these mid-2012 13" MBP's that I had set up with 16 GB of RAM and SSD's for my friend's two daughters who were in college. The cables went bad, resulting in extreme slowness and even an intermittent flashing question mark folder on one of them. I ended up replacing both cables, and OWC replaced the SSD's under warranty.

If I had it to do over, I would also add some kapton or electrical tape to the aluminum under where the cable lies on the theory that it would prevent any future scuffing of the cable against the aluminum body. It wouldn't hurt anything, and it could prevent future failures.

So if you have access to an Apple Store, it might be worth a shot at getting a free cable. If not, OWC seems to have the best price for them.

The mid-2012 13" unibody Mac is a fabulous machine and well worth fixing. It's the last of the unibody Macs, and was still sold new until last October when the new Macs came out. I've always liked it because you could buy a base model and upgrade it yourself. The newest touch bar Macs cannot be upgraded--you have to buy exactly what you want when you make the purchase.

With 16 GB of RAM and a SSD, I think your Mac would run like it was new if not even better.

However, before doing anything else I would run the extended version of the Apple Hardware Test (boot up holding down "D") to make sure there are no other problems. The heat you mentioned could be caused by software corruption, but you want to be sure your fan is working properly and that there are no other hardware issues.

Good luck!

Just saw this after posting my answer to your last question. I would definitely go with 16 GB of RAM, and you can trade in your old RAM for a discount on the new RAM.

And here's a link to the hard drive cable if you need it:

https://eshop.macsales.com/search/hard%20drive%20cable

As for the data doubler kit, that would be for replacing the optical drive so that you could have two internal drives, which is certainly an option if that is what you want to do. That would allow you to have a smaller boot drive and keep data on a larger internal drive. But then you will want to have two drives, one for the optical drive slot and one for the regular drive slot.

I was actually thinking more of the kit where you get an OWC express enclosure and little tool set. That would give you the ability to put the new SSD in the external enclosure, install the OS on it, and then migrate to it and be able to check it out with a USB connection, which eliminates any slowness that might be caused by the internal drive or cable. If you have questions, OWC has stellar customer support and can be a big help in picking out exactly what you would need. Somewhere on their site they also show a shootout between a rotary drive and an SSD, which illustrates just how fast the SSD is.

Good luck, and happy hunting!

I have the same MBP 13 mid-2012 upgraded with 16gb. of ram and 500gb. SSD.

Running Sierra / Windows-10 in boot camp.

Performs great, No problems. I use it as an everyday notebook and it is very reliable and stable.

Have never had any problems since upgrades.

Only cost me about $175 for the upgrades.

I recommend you give your MBP a 2017 hardware refresh with 16gb. of ram and 500gb SSD.

Here is a parts list that I used.

1) Memory ( Crucial 16gb. ).

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-DDR3L-1600-SODIMM-Memory-CT2K8G3S160BM/dp/B008LTB JFW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1490298688&sr…

2) SSD ( Crucial MX300 )

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX300-525GB-Internal-Solid/dp/B01IAGSD68/ref=sr_1 _1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1490298727&sr=1-1&ke…

3) Battery

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/BAP13MBU65V/

4) Toolkit

https://www.amazon.com/Screwdriver-VCOO-Precision-Extension-Maintenance/dp/B01AL 7600A/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1490298879&…

Good deal! Glad to hear you now have an insanely fast Mac!

It's always good to have more than one copy of your data. If your only copy of some things is on your old internal drive, then you don't want to erase it until you've made a good copy of the data on it somewhere else.

One strategy might be to plan to keep your entire photo library and iTunes library on the second drive and let it contain both old and new photos and music. Ditto with other large video files and music files. Then you can make an external backup of these files periodically onto your external drive. I don't know how much stuff you have, but definitely plan on an external drive that has plenty of room.

Since your SSD is relatively new, and newer than your old drive, it probably doesn't make sense to copy your SSD onto the old drive. It would occupy about the same amount of space and leave less room for large data files. (And if it's an exact clone, it could overwrite any files that are only on the old drive.) A better strategy for the immediate future would be to not delete anything from the old drive until you can make a backup and spend time getting things set up the way you want them. Once you do get your external backup drive, you can make a good backup of all your important files. Then, once you know you have a copy of everything, if you want to erase your old internal drive you can and have it just be for data files. You might even want to look into setting up a Fusion drive with your two drives, but I'm not familiar with how to do that so I can't really be of much help with it. I believe that results have been mixed so you need to proceed with caution and get guidance from somebody who really knows how to do it.

As for Bluetooth, you can replace the module if you want to:

https://www.ifixit.com/Device/MacBook_Pro_13%22_Unibody_Mid_2012

Maybe start with reseating the cable in case that's all that's wrong.

Alternatively, you could just user a USB Bluetooth adaptor:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/IOGEAR/GBU321/

Happy computing!