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I'm currently running 10.6.6 and my MBP has a nice and speedy SSD in it.

My plan is to replace my current laptop with one of the new ones just announced today.

Is it possible to simply take the SSD out of my current laptop and plop it into the new one having to do nothing other than that? I know the new MBPs have different graphics cards, the new thunderbolt port, etc... Does any of that hold me back from my swap idea?

UPDATE:

Based on some of the comments below my thinking is now:

  1. SuperDuper! backup of my existing system to external HD (I still have a firewire disk I can use for this since I don't think TDM works over USB)
  2. Boot to that backup via target disk mode
  3. Update to the latest OS X 10.6.6 on the firewire disk using the combo update
  4. Boot the new laptop to the same disk via TDM and test
  5. If all goes well, run the combo update on the SSD in the old MBP
  6. Swap

Good idea? Too much?

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3 Answers 3

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On the contrary.

Even if your system is fully updated, force apply the latest combo update before plopping the SSD in the new MBP. All drivers for the new hardware are in there.

I did this some time ago with a 500Gb 7200 rpm Seagate drive, with 10.6.0, moved from a mini model A1176 to a then new mini model A1283. The first boot in the new system was rather slow, then the system rebooted by itself, before reaching the login page. After that all was normal.

Just to be on the safe side, you may want to have a backup of vital data.

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If you are moving to a MBP with a different chipset than what you currently have, and since it's a new revision it will be all new hardware, then you can do the SSD transfer but you will get a lot of issues with driver and system compatibility.

The best thing would be to do a Time Machine backup of you current system, install the SSD, fresh install of OSX, and during the user registration restore your data from a Time Machine backup.

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  • Thanks for the idea, I'm just not a big fan of time machine
    – Jason
    Feb 27, 2011 at 1:56
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All the new devices would be the only problem you might face. I would think that as long as both machines have the same version of OS X there won't be a problem. As a test you could start your old machine in target mode and use it as the boot disk in the new computer. Assuming it boots and there isn't a kernel panic the new hardware (thunderbolt, GPU, etc) should just add themselves to the system.

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