I'm putting a larger ssd on my MBP and was wondering if I could pop the old ssd into my Mac mini? Do I need to do anything special before the move or after I install it?
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Putting a ssd from MBP into a mini?
- Thread starter YsoSerious
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Nope. I pulled an SSD out of my wife's Early 2011 Macbook Pro and dumped it into my 2006 Mac Pro (which have dramatically different hard ware obviously) and didn't have to do a thing.... Worked on first boot up. Macs aren't like PC's. In a PC, if you try to pull a hard drive from one machine and put it in anther it most likely won't work due to driver issues with mass storage controllers (unless they have virtually the same hardware). This is not an issue with Macs. This is the same reason why you can install OSX onto another computer from a completely different computer using Target Disk Mode (I installed Lion onto my 2006 Mac Mini from again my wife's 2011 Macbook Pro).
Agreed, though I tend to do fresh installs and just copy over the user whenever I swap a drive. Old habits and all that, but it's totally not necessary.
This should just work. I've swapped numerous hard drives/cloned drives between macs over the years and they've always just worked. Hell, i'm still running the original install of my white imac from 2006 (although its been upgraded to new OS's over the years) It's worked on various imacs and MBPs.
The only thing that comes to mind that could cause an issue is this: Your Mini, like all Macs needs a certain version of OSX to work. e.g. a New Mini would most likely need 10.7.whatever or above. If your MBP is running anything older than the version needed it's not going to work. You would need to upgrade your OS a compatible version, although if you've kept up to date this shouldn't be an issue at all. Hope that helps!
The only thing that comes to mind that could cause an issue is this: Your Mini, like all Macs needs a certain version of OSX to work. e.g. a New Mini would most likely need 10.7.whatever or above. If your MBP is running anything older than the version needed it's not going to work. You would need to upgrade your OS a compatible version, although if you've kept up to date this shouldn't be an issue at all. Hope that helps!
You can also swap drives with Windows 7 Boot Camp across the 2011 Mac line-up with very little issues. The video drivers between Intel HD 3000 or ATI would be the only change.