New Solid State Drive Mac book Pro late 2011

Not sure exactly what they did given your description. Someone mentioned Time Machine. If that’s it, you should be able to use Internet Recovery to recover from a Time Machine backup.

About macOS Recovery - Apple Support

If it was a bootable clone, you could do a bunch of things, although the easiest would be to re-clone to your new SSD using Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper. If they just copied it over via a drag a drop it’s going to be a lot tougher.

A bootable clone can boot when connected, the option key is down at startup, and you select the external volume.

nauticalannie wrote:

My internal Ssd went corrupt, with no back up done to the time machine for 2 years (Lesson learnt). I did not want to lose my data hence what the tech guy did. I’ve now found out he has given me OS X in order to retrieve the data off of my SSD. I had Sierra operating system, and was down loading the High Sierra which caused all the issue. I need to know how I will transfer the operating system OS X from the external HD on to the new SSD once I have had it installed. Then I can download the latest software then transfer all my photo/music libraries and documents back on to the laptop.

I had something similar happen, and my 3 week old bootable clone saved my bacon. Like you I wasn’t ready to just wipe the drive since I had stuff on it that wasn’t on my last backup.

Since you're undertaking something that's at least a little bit technical, just maybe a few questions to see if you've got everything you need or have at least had experience with some things that might help with the process.

• Do you have the tools? You'll need a #00 Phillips and T6 Torx screwdriver to replace the drive. I don't consider removal and installation difficult, but I know my wife or my parents would. My personal favorite instruction guides for this are on the iFixit website.
• Do you have the new SSD yet? I'd note that if you really wanted to you can install a hard drive instead of an SSD.
• Have you ever booted from an external volume before? You'd do that with an external drive attached
• Do you have an external USB or FireWire to SATA enclosure? If you have or get one, it might allow you to just reinstall the OS first so you can use your MBP, and then worry about recovering your data later.

It‘s kind of hard to understand what they exactly did, because it doesn't sound like they really explained it in a way that you understood. I’m sure that someone who could handle your setup or at least talk about it over the phone could figure it out and walk you through it. Did they clone a MacOS installer to that external hard drive? Try holding option with the drive plugged in at startup and see what it indicates. You’re still going to have a hard time doing a drag and drop without a working operating system.

My advice would be this:

• Just get the new drive and install it. iFixit guides are my preference for instructions.
• Bring up Internet Recovery. Hold option-command-R all at once while your machine starts up. It requires an internet connection, which can be ethernet or WiFi. If there's no automatic connection it will prompt you to select a WiFi SSID. You may or may not need to provide a password if accessing encrypted WiFi (I think it might be saved to the SMC). You'll see an outline of a globe and an estimated time for Internet Recovery to load (in minutes).
• From the Internet Recovery menu select Disk Utility. Then format (Erase) your new drive. Select the HFS+ (Journaled) option. Quit Disk Utility once that's done.
• Install the base OS that came with your computer from Internet Recovery.
• Shut it down and boot. It will be like you've got a brand new Mac out of the box.

I think your base operating system is Snow Leopard. Just make sure it updates to 10.6.8 where you can access the Mac App Store. From there you should be able to directly update to Sierra or maybe even High Sierra.

If you're paranoid, make a bootable clone. I like Carbon Copy Cloner, but Super Duper has better terms if you don't want to pay. Carbon Copy Cloner will give you a 30 free trial with access to all features, and maybe one 24 window to extend the trial.

https://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

Mac Backup Software | Carbon Copy Cloner | Bombich Software

Random drive failures just happen sometimes, so it helps to be prepared. I prefer a bootable clone over Time Machine because it's far easier tp recover than any other way.

Once you have everything running you can get an external enclosure (2.5" USB to SATA is the most common) like this one to try to recover data off of your SSD. This is just an example, as it's currently out of stock.

Amazon.com: AmazonBasics 2.5-inches SATA Hard Drive Enclosure - USB 3.0: Computers & Accessories

You may or may not be able to recover data from a corrupted volume. I've got one and it's really flaky. But I understand the desire to at least try. Sometimes it may require a special program that can deal with the drive corruption. You may even think about paying for a data recovery specialist.

Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

nauticalannie wrote:

Your first paragraph is correct, that’s what happened.

I was told the ssd had had failed and would stop working altogether and as my computer is now classed as vintage they don’t repair them. Hence me buying and installing an ssd card myself.

I think he said once I have installed my new ssd card I just reverse the process. So instead of dragging and dropping my files from the internal to external I do the opposite. My only worry was if I just dragged and dropped the operating system from the smaller partition of the external to the new internal Or if it wasn’t that simple?

I'm still not sure what is meant by "operating system". I'm sure if I was there in person I could probably figure it out, but it's difficult to understand what they did, or what they expect you to do without looking. I still don't know if you have an installer or a working version of OSX.

It's just a matter of semantics, but your machine doesn't have an "SSD card" per se. It's a drive meant to fit in the form-factor of a 2.5" SATA hard drive. Here's how you would remove and install a new drive. Don't worry that it says "hard drive" as it's the same process.

MacBook Pro 13" Unibody Late 2011 Hard Drive Replacement - iFixit

I'm about ready to bow out of trying to figure out exactly what they gave you.

At this point I would recommend the following since I can't figure out what they gave you. A late 2011 MBP has Internet Recovery. It might be easier to start from scratch.

1. Buy a new drive. It doesn't have to be an SSD. What you need is a 2.5" SATA drive. Install it with the instructions from iFixit. You'll need a #00 Phillips screwdriver and a T6 Torx screwdriver.
2. Once installed, run Internet Recovery by holding option-command-R at power-up. Connect to the internet, watch the globe spin, and
3. From the menu, select Disk Utility.
4. Format (erase) the new internal drive. Select Erase, Give it a name, choose HFS+ (Journaled) and choose one partition.
5. Once it's done, quit and select "Reinstall Mac OS X". Grab some popcorn since it's going to take a while.

Then you'll have a new operating system - I think Lion. From Lion you should have access to the Mac App Store where you should be able to update to High Sierra. I'd worry about your data later. Right now I'm sure you'd rather have a working computer first.

Definitely run Time Machine. Since you mentioned it, do you still have that Time Machine backup, even if it is two years old? You can alternately restore that back in place of step 5 above.

OK. I'd normally recommend getting a working operating up before trying to access your data, but if you just want to copy over the contents of the SSD to the external drive, then you have the tools to do it. These would be the instructions, and some are similar to what I recommended for a clean install from "Internet Recovery".

1. Run Internet Recovery by holding option-command-R at power-up. Connect to the internet, watch the globe spin, and it should come up in a couple of minutes if you have a fast internet connection.
2. Make sure that your external hard drive is connected and working.
3. From the menu, select Disk Utility.
4. Check to see the format of the external drive partition that an Apple Store employee set up. You might need to go to the top where it says "View" and select "Show All Devices". If it doesn't say some form of HFS+, then you'll probably want to reformat. Most would pick HFS+ (Journaled).
5. Click on "Restore" with your external drive partition selected on the left. From then it will have a drop-down menu with available sources. Select your internal drive's boot partition. The name should be the name of the drive you normally would see on your desktop (Macintosh HD is usually the default but you might have renamed it). Then it would completely copy whatever it can from your internal SSD to the external hard drive partition.
6. It may not work though depending on how bad the damage to your SSD is. If it's corrupted, there can be varying degrees for what you might be able to pull from it. I've got a corrupted drive, and I won't reformat it because there's a tiny bit of data I'm hoping to get back in the future.

This isn't really the way I would recommend proceeding though. I think it would be easier to just get a working computer up and running, then try to recover your data using an external enclosure.

If it is a TimeMachine backup, you can just restore everything to the new SSD.

If it is only the user data and not the OS you have to install the OS first but you have to know which OS you had. Let the *** Apple store guy do it.

<Edited by Host>

I believe I understand what you have.

Your original SSD is still in your machine and the person who set up this external drive didn’t actually do any copying/cloning of your SSD. The external drive sounds like it was set up with two “partitions” including a smaller one to hold the operating system, and a larger one to retrieve the data from your corrupted SSD.

Your SSD might be repairable, although whoever looked at it should have told you if that was possible. In that case you could just wipe it in Disk Utility and reinstall MacOS after copying over all the data.

nauticalannie wrote:

I think where we maybe getting confused is when I talk about operating system I mean Lion/Sierra/High Sierra. I had Sierra on my Mac and was upgrading to High Sierra when all this issue started. I did Apple chat but they didn’t solve the issue and booked me in to the Genius Bar at an Apple store which is where I learnt that my hard drive was starting to fail and thats why I lost Sierra and High Sierra I was installing. As it hadn’t failed completely and I had not backed up my mac to Time Machine for 2 years and not subscribed to Match I was therefore going to lose precious photos and documents I had put on the Mac in the last 2 years. That’s why the tech guy set me up to be able to retrieve this data on to an external HD before I replaced my internal one with a new one.

Im not tech minded so I want to retrieve my data before having a working computer. Then I’ll try and get the computer going.

I have an iPad an iPhone to play with in the meantime lol!

Sorry about all this confusion. Sometimes it's difficult to "judge the room" for how much technical understanding someone with a problem has. If you look around, there are some extremely basic questions, and some that require specific esoteric knowledge for the questioned to understand. I take it that you're not necessarily a "computer person"?

Have you ever taken off the lower cover of your MacBook Pro? I consider it relatively easy, but it requires reasonable skills with a screwdriver. When I said you might consider getting a hard drive instead - just ignore that. I just got my first SSD and there is no way I'm ever going back to a hard drive. If you're used to the performance of an SSD, then absolutely replace it with an SSD.

Also - where are you located? Just the country is enough. That way we might be at least able to narrow down suggestions for a new SSD. Compared to when your new MBP was new, SSDs are much better values these days.

nauticalannie wrote:

Does this make more sense? I live on an island and the nearest Apple store is on the mainland. So I was trying to avoid the expense and time of another trip back there.

Oh. For some reason I'm thinking Tasmania, but that's only because my imagination runs wild sometimes.