Upgrading My MacBook from El Capitan to Sierra or High Sierra

[G4PPC]

I am considering updating my Macbook Mid 2009 to Sierra or High Sierra but I don't know which one I should upgrade to, I already downloaded the Sierra upgrade from apple support but for High Sierra I have to get it from the App Store. My Macbook seems to be supported for the upgrades.

MacBook 5,2 13-inch Mid 2009, 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4gb Ram, 250gb
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB

if you had a choice between Sierra and High Sierra which one would you go with or would you keep El Capitan on your Macbook?

I do plan to upgrade to 8gb of ram sooner or later especially if I upgrade to High Sierra.

Another question I have is, If I upgrade will I lose all the programs I already have installed and everything I have downloaded too? Do I need to backup everything first before Upgrading?

 

[chrfr]

I am considering updating my Macbook Mid 2009 to Sierra or High Sierra but I don't know which one I should upgrade to, I already downloaded the Sierra upgrade from apple support but for High Sierra I have to get it from the App Store. My Macbook seems to be supported for the upgrades.

The 13 inch Mid-2009 MacBook Pro only natively supports El Capitan. You’d need a tool to allow unsupported installs, like High Sierra Patcher to use a later OS.

 

[Amethyst1]

if you had a choice between Sierra and High Sierra which one would you go with or would you keep El Capitan on your Macbook?

I'd go for High Sierra over Sierra. It brings more features and compatibility with newer applications.

I do plan to upgrade to 8gb of ram sooner or later especially if I upgrade to High Sierra.

That's good. If you haven't done so already, I'd strongly suggest replacing the hard drive with an SSD. This will greatly speed up boot-up and application launch times as well as general responsiveness. In my experience, High Sierra is sluggish on a 3.5" hard drive, and will be even more so on a slower 2.5" hard drive, such as the one the MacBook uses.

Another question I have is, If I upgrade will I lose all the programs I already have installed and everything I have downloaded too?

No. Upgrading preserves all that.

Do I need to backup everything first before Upgrading?

It's always highly recommended to backup everything before attempting an OS upgrade, especially so if you'll be doing an unsupported installation using a patcher, as mentioned in the previous post.

 

[EugW]

Agreed. High Sierra. Sierra offers no advantages over High Sierra, not even performance. SSD is mandatory though, even more so than memory.

High Sierra + 4 GB + hard drive = painful
High Sierra + 8 GB + hard drive = painful

High Sierra + 4 GB + SSD = usable
High Sierra + 8 GB + SSD = very usable

Is it even possible to do an in-place upgrade from El Capitan to High Sierra on an unsupported machine? I'm not sure. Personally I would recommend a clean install anyway, but that would require you re-installing all your downloaded software. And yes, it's always best to have MULTIPLE backups before any such process. The good news about installing an SSD is that once you remove the HD, you automatically have a backup already. Just don't erase the HD before you remove it.

1. Buy 2.5" SATA SSD.
2. Make backup of your computer.
3. Backup your most important data somewhere else too.
4. Make USB bootable installer of High Sierra on flash drive, with the appropriate version that supports your unsupported 2009 MBP.
5. Remove HD. Keep it as yet another backup.
6. Install SATA SSD.
7. Use USB installer Disk Utility to format SSD.
8. Use USB installer to install High Sierra.
9. Re-install all your software and data.

 

[eyoungren]

SSD is mandatory though, even more so than memory.

High Sierra + 4 GB + hard drive = painful
High Sierra + 8 GB + hard drive = painful

High Sierra + 4 GB + SSD = usable
High Sierra + 8 GB + SSD = very usable

I disagree with this. I ran High Sierra (patched and stock) on several Macs with hard drives. It's very stable and very usable. My main reason for moving off it was dark mode (Mojave) and High Sierra just being…boring.

Is it even possible to do an in-place upgrade from El Capitan to High Sierra on an unsupported machine? I'm not sure.

Yes. I've done it once or twice. Or three or four times.

 

[eyoungren]

I am considering updating my Macbook Mid 2009 to Sierra or High Sierra but I don't know which one I should upgrade to, I already downloaded the Sierra upgrade from apple support but for High Sierra I have to get it from the App Store. My Macbook seems to be supported for the upgrades.

MacBook 5,2 13-inch Mid 2009, 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4gb Ram, 250gb
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB

if you had a choice between Sierra and High Sierra which one would you go with or would you keep El Capitan on your Macbook?

I do plan to upgrade to 8gb of ram sooner or later especially if I upgrade to High Sierra.

Another question I have is, If I upgrade will I lose all the programs I already have installed and everything I have downloaded too? Do I need to backup everything first before Upgrading?

There is a script out there for a dark mode in High Sierra. I use it on my work Mac (which is running High Sierra). It should work in Sierra as well, but I've never actually been on Sierra so I can't vouch for that.

Alternatively, there is a stock 'pre-darkmode' feature in High Sierra that you can enable via Terminal. But it's pretty broken, which is why I found the script I mention and use that.

If any of this has any bearing on your decision…

 

[Amethyst1]

I ran High Sierra (patched and stock) on several Macs with hard drives.

I have an iMac with a quad-core i5, 8 GB RAM … and a hard drive. High Sierra is sluggish on it. But I’ve been using SSDs in my systems since 2010 so maybe I’m spoiled.

As for the Dark Mode script: is it this one? If it isn’t, can you throw it my way?

 

[eyoungren]

I have a 2010 27” iMac with a quad-core i5, 8 GB RAM … and a hard drive. High Sierra is sluggish on it.

My MacPro was running High Sierra for about a year and a half with a hard drive. Same with my 2008 MBP for about a year. I didn't have any problems. My Mac Mini also did a year on High Sierra with a hard drive.

Putting SSDs in my Macs has only been something that's happened within the last 12 months. And I only developed problems when I combined Mojave with an SSD, running into a prohibitory boot symbol (but the spinning HD was fine).

I'm willing to say that I'm an exception (I usually seem to be) but I've not had issues with HS and spinning hard drives.

 

[EugW]

Yes, the experience with a desktop hard drive is better than with a laptop hard drive, but the OP is running a laptop.

IMO, a desktop hard drive (2010 iMac Core i7) with High Sierra is slow but usable, but a laptop hard drive with High Sierra is utterly painful. YMMV.

However, I too have been running SSD in most of my Macs for a decade now. I think I upgraded my 2009 MacBook Pro in 2012 to SSD because it felt slow with a HD even back then.

 

[eyoungren]

Yes, the experience with a desktop hard drive is better than with a laptop hard drive, but the OP is running a laptop.

IMO, a desktop hard drive (2010 iMac Core i7) with High Sierra is slow but usable, but a laptop hard drive with High Sierra is utterly painful. YMMV.

However, I too have been running SSD in most of my Macs for a decade now. I think I upgraded my 2009 MacBook Pro in 2012 to SSD because it felt slow with a HD even back then.

Both my MBP and my Mini had laptop hard drives before I put SSDs in. I am not doubting your experience or anyone elses. All I am saying is that I didn't experience any slowness on HS with spinning drives.

 

[Amethyst1]

@eyoungren: It's also down to personal preference and/or if you have a direct comparison. On that iMac I was talking about, the original Snow Leopard is fine with a spinning drive. Mavericks starts feeling a tiny bit sluggish but High Sierra definitely screams "Give me an SSD!" as the Mac feels noticeably slower than it "should" be. The difference to my SSD-equipped 2011 MBP is substantial (same 8 GB RAM but weaker dual-core i5).

 

[Amethyst1]

However, I too have been running SSD in most of my Macs for a decade now.

My first SSD upgrade was in 2008, replacing a genuinely-intolerably slow 1.8" 4200-rpm "iPod" hard drive in an ultraportable. The (cheap) SSD was faster but caused hiccups every few seconds so I ended up putting the hard drive back in until I got my hands on a better (more expensive) SSD... Ah, the days of SSDs being in their infancy and having quirks like these.

 

[EugW]

My first SSD upgrade was in 2008, replacing a genuinely-intolerably slow 1.8" 4200-rpm "iPod" hard drive in an ultraportable. The (cheap) SSD was faster but caused hiccups every few seconds so I ended up putting the hard drive back in until I got my hands on a better (more expensive) SSD... Ah, the days of SSDs being in their infancy and having quirks like these.

The first SSD I used in a Mac was a Kingston SSDNow V+100. The reason I chose this one was because it used the exact same Toshiba controller as in the MacBook Air, and it maintained its speed even without TRIM. (As you know, OS X at the time didn't support TRIM.) Not surprisingly, there were no bugs with it in OS X.

Kingston SSDNow V+100 Review

www.anandtech.com

 

[G4PPC]

Wow, thanks for all the Advice. I had no Idea my MacBook was not Natively Supported, and I have not done a upgrade before I always stuck with what ever came on my Mac. But I like learned the hard way today why backups are important, when my Usb Drive that had a lot of needed Mac programs and many downloaded games stored on it became unreadable on my Mac and then Windows wanted to format it. Luckily I was able to recover most my lost files with Disk Drill Media Recovery after buying it on the App Store, there just was no other way of getting my files back. I had everything stored on there recently. Disk Drill was worth the 39 dollars though and who knows I may need it again in the future.

My MacBook Air with Big Sur has a SSD so I can see what the speed difference is compared to a normal HD, but I am barely good at opening my MacBook to change the memory let alone the hard drive, I have never changed one on a Mac before. I don't even know where it is at inside of my MacBook I'd have to find a Manual and look for it in there. I probably should learn these things eventually though.

However I think I am going to stay with El Capitan for now my Macbook is not the fastest but it is very usable as is. Plus I'm not too keen on patching a MacOS myself to get it to install. Besides it may be better if I save my Money for a MacBook 2017 or 2018 Air or Pro I kind of want to try Ventura when it finally comes out.

Currently I am still paying off my Air at the moment I owe like 250 dollars on it. Sorry it took me so long to reply back but I was busy all day trying to recover my lost files. Thanks for everything and I'll be considering all of your advice before upgrading my MacBook if and when I figure out how to do it and have the money for it.

Edit: Also I didn't realize until I check the Specifications that my MacBook 5,2 originally came with Leopard. So it is a early Intel Mac, I guess.

 

[eyoungren]

Wow, thanks for all the Advice. I had no Idea my MacBook was not Natively Supported, and I have not done a upgrade before I always stuck with what ever came on my Mac. But I like learned the hard way today why backups are important, when my Usb Drive that had a lot of needed Mac programs and many downloaded games stored on it became unreadable on my Mac and then Windows wanted to format it. Luckily I was able to recover most my lost files with Disk Drill Media Recovery after buying it on the App Store, there just was no other way of getting my files back. I had everything stored on there recently. Disk Drill was worth the 39 dollars though and who knows I may need it again in the future.

I finally got serious on backups when I almost lost files I actually cared about over a decade ago. Fortunately, I was able to use the work license for DiskWarrior and Alsoft recovered my drive. I just had to send them my laptop drive and a spare drive, they rescued the files, put them on the spare drive and shipped both back to me. One of the reasons I promote DiskWarrior whenever I can.

Since then though, I've had multiple backups going off for all my machines. It's better to have lots of eggs in lots of baskets then no eggs in no baskets.

My MacBook Air with Big Sur has a SSD so I can see what the speed difference is compared to a normal HD, but I am barely good at opening my MacBook to change the memory let alone the hard drive, I have never changed one on a Mac before. I don't even know where it is at inside of my MacBook I'd have to find a Manual and look for it in there. I probably should learn these things eventually though.

iFixit is a very good resource. Step by step instructions: https://www.ifixit.com/Device/MacBook_Core_2_Duo

However I think I am going to stay with El Capitan for now my Macbook is not the fastest but it is very usable as is. Plus I'm not too keen on patching a MacOS myself to get it to install.

The patcher applications by dosdude do the work for you. Unless you're updating to anything higher than Catalina there's absolutely no need to 'patch a MacOS myself'.

Besides it may be better if I save my Money for a MacBook 2017 or 2018 Air or Pro I kind of want to try Ventura when it finally comes out.

We were just responding to the question you asked. If you want to buy a newer Mac, it's your money and no one here is going to tell you not to.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Both my MBP and my Mini had laptop hard drives before I put SSDs in. I am not doubting your experience or anyone elses. All I am saying is that I didn't experience any slowness on HS with spinning drives.

Same here. My DD for academic work and general computing tasks is a 2011 "13 i5 MBP with a 1TB HDD and the stock 4GB RAM configuration (I really should do something about that and I'll probably ask you all for advice soon) running High Sierra and instances of painfully poor performance are nearly always due to Firefox being a bloated resource hog. Whenever I do experience sluggishness, closing Firefox always cures it and then the laptop runs like the clappers.

If anyone can suggest a tweaked or lighter variant of the Firefox browser, I'd swiftly jump ship!

Of course, an SSD offers a tremendous performance boost as I've seen on my PPC and Intel Macs - especially during the boot up phase. That's undeniable but like yourself, I've not experienced an absolute performance hit with HS and spinners - and I run it on two machines with HDDs. I don't think that it's unreasonable to point out that people's experiences in this respect are varied.

 

[eyoungren]

If anyone can suggest a tweaked or lighter variant of the Firefox browser, I'd swiftly jump ship!

Not a variant of Firefox, but I use Vivaldi, which uses Chrome extensions.

I have not found a Chrome extension that does not replicate what I had in TenFourFox/Firefox.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Not a variant of Firefox, but I use Vivaldi, which uses Chrome extensions.

I have not found a Chrome extension that does not replicate what I had in TenFourFox/Firefox.

I've heard of Vivaldi, I'll give it a go. Thank you!

 

[eyoungren]

I've heard of Vivaldi, I'll give it a go. Thank you!

It's really pretty good and updated rather frequently. It's from one of the original developers of Opera.

 

[G4PPC]

I finally got serious on backups when I almost lost files I actually cared about over a decade ago. Fortunately, I was able to use the work license for DiskWarrior and Alsoft recovered my drive. I just had to send them my laptop drive and a spare drive, they rescued the files, put them on the spare drive and shipped both back to me. One of the reasons I promote DiskWarrior whenever I can.

Since then though, I've had multiple backups going off for all my machines. It's better to have lots of eggs in lots of baskets then no eggs in no baskets.



iFixit is a very good resource. Step by step instructions: https://www.ifixit.com/Device/MacBook_Core_2_Duo


The patcher applications by dosdude do the work for you. Unless you're updating to anything higher than Catalina there's absolutely no need to 'patch a MacOS myself'.



We were just responding to the question you asked. If you want to buy a newer Mac, it's your money and no one here is going to tell you not to.

Thank you, that sounds correct to me I was looking it up and replacing the Hard Drive seems fairly simple you just need the correct tools for the Job. I thought it would be more complicated like for an iBook that's the last time I consider changing a Hard Drive and they are quite hard to get at. Then I could always reinstall my HD with El Capitan if anything goes wrong. I just need to figure out how to setup the installation Media after I get a SSD but I noticed that some SSD's come with MacOS already installed.

Should I buy one of those with El Capitan already installed and then just install the Patched version of High Sierra on my Macbook as a upgrade or get a Blank SSD and do a fresh install?

The SSD is actually cheaper then the Memory, I don't get why 4gb DDR2 800mhz chips cost so much when I first got my MacBook I bought two 2gb chips for 10 dollars but 4gb chips cost 50 dollars each that's why I hadn't bought two of them for my MacBook. So for about 170 dollars for the Memory and the SSD I could buy a Macbook or Macbook Pro with 8gbs of Memory. The only reason my Air cost me so much is I got an iBook G4 with Tiger and the Classic environment installed along with it.

Right now there is a MacBook Pro 13" Mid 2010 on Bid on Ebay with 8gbs a 480gb SSD and High Sierra at a 100 dollars. Free Shipping. If I didn't have to pay for my Air still I would likely just bid on it and save myself the trouble of upgrading.

It's not that I need another MacBook but they are always so Tempting to buy with whatever you want on them already. Unless the dealer installs a later supported version of MacOS than what you payed for which was the case with my Air I payed for Catalina but it came with Big Sur.

Anyway I appreciate the sentiment and I'll probably end up going ahead with upgrading my MacBook as suggested eventually despite the exspense as owning another one with the 5 I already have doesn't seem reasonable although I still want to get a Ventura Supported Mac in the future once it is released.

Thank you.

 

[Amethyst1]

Should I buy one of those with El Capitan already installed and then just install the Patched version of High Sierra on my Macbook as a upgrade or get a Blank SSD and do a fresh install?

My advice: always perform a fresh installation yourself. I’d never trust an installation performed by someone I don’t know.

 

[eyoungren]

My advice: always perform a fresh installation yourself. I’d never trust an installation performed by someone I don’t know.

This and other…things.

I got a 17" PowerBook G4 DLSD once with Leopard on it. And the original owner's dick pics.

I don't explore anymore, I just wipe.

 

[Amethyst1]

I just need to figure out how to setup the installation Media after I get a SSD […]

dosdude1’s excellent High Sierra patcher will take care of that.

You run it in your current El Capitan install and it creates a bootable USB installer you use after installing the SSD. Piece of cake really.

 

[Amethyst1]

And the original owner's dick pics.

Look at it this way: it could have been a lot worse.

 

[eyoungren]

Look at it this way: it could have been a lot worse.

Well, I'll never know. After the first one, I closed everything out and then set a speed record in wiping a drive.