MP 1,1-5,1 How to upgrade both boot disk and OS in optical drive bay

[Drolma-la]

At the moment, my MacPro5,1 (mid 2012) 6-core boots from a 250GB Mercury Extreme SSD in an optical drive bay and runs Sierra. I would like to upgrade the SSD (to a 1TB Samsung 860 EVO) and also upgrade from Sierra to High Sierra.



What I’m wondering is in what order should I proceed? If need be, I think I can mount the 860 EVO using a USB bare disk dock (toaster) and maybe clone the existing boot drive to it. Would it be better first to upgrade the existing boot disk?



Any advice would be most gratefully appreciated.

 

[Juicy Box]

Upgrading before or after is a personal choice, as I don't see too many pros or cons doing it one way or the other.


I guess you can upgrade the OS after the SSD swap, and keep the old SSD with the old OS for trouble shooting purposes.

What are your concerns?

 

[Drolma-la]

Thanks for your reply. My concerns are hitherto unimagined consequences of doing it one way or another.

 

[MacUser2525]

At the moment, my MacPro5,1 (mid 2012) 6-core boots from a 250GB Mercury Extreme SSD in an optical drive bay and runs Sierra. I would like to upgrade the SSD (to a 1TB Samsung 860 EVO) and also upgrade from Sierra to High Sierra.



What I’m wondering is in what order should I proceed? If need be, I think I can mount the 860 EVO using a USB bare disk dock (toaster) and maybe clone the existing boot drive to it. Would it be better first to upgrade the existing boot disk?



Any advice would be most gratefully appreciated.

Take new SSD connect to the dvd drive connection while your original drive is still connected. Boot with the old, partition, format then clone to new shutdown connect the dvd back up and boot from new drive and upgrade the OS.

 

[orph]

you can
unplug the DVD drive and plug in the new SSD
boot from old SSD
from old SSD install OSX on to new drive
boot on to new drive
import user data from old drive (has an option on first boot or use migration assistant)

job done, you can now pull old drive and plug DVD drive back on or whatever you need to do.

do check all is ok before you do anything to the old drive.

 

[Juicy Box]

There are probably hundreds of possible ways to accomplish what you are trying to do, none of them will mess anything up.

Just clone the drive anyway that you choose, and enjoy.