Macbook refresh; best practices needed.

January 20, 2016 3:40 PM

I've got an older Macbook Pro I'm trying to refresh. Its been a while, and I'm looking for some guidance for software updates.

I have a MacBook Pro 13" Unibody Mid 2012 (with 2.5GHz processor, 4 GB RAM, and a 500 GB conventional hard drive) , I'm planning on refreshing a new SSD HD and maxing out the RAM. iFixit guides are more than ample to get me through the hardware side. I'm just woefully behind on OSX updates (which is my main reason for upgrading the hardware).

I'm currently running OSX 10.8.5. In absence of upgrade discs; how do I go about upgrading the OS? Should I go for most recent OSX? Should I meet halfway? I've been burned before by upgrading my OS too "new" and it tanks my machine and I regret my decision and curse the machine until I break down and buy a new one. I'm trying to avoid this at all costs. I'm hoping that the combination of SSD upgrade, and maxing out the RAM will allow for things to move smoothly? Should I do mavericks? Should I go with something older?

In either case, How do I do a fresh install on a blank HD? I'm not totally illiterate, but I also don't do this frequently, so step-by-step instructions would be invaluable to me.

FWIW, I have my files backed up on amazon glacier (every 6 mos I usually dump everything up there), some vital stuff backed up on dropbox, and two home hard drives backed up in rotation using time machine. I'm also pretty comfortable manually bringing over everything if that's advisable.

posted by furnace.heart to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

Best answer: Easiest way to do this by far is to clone your HDD to the SSD with Carbon Copy Cloner and then run your updates. Or run your updates first and then clone the drive; it doesn't really matter- CCC is ridiculously simple to use, and you can get the entire job done using the free trial.
posted by fifthrider at 3:44 PM on January 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: http://osxdaily.com/2015/09/30/create-os-x-el-capitan-boot-install-drive/
posted by humboldt32 at 3:46 PM on January 20, 2016

Best answer: Oh, and as to your question about OS version - I'm running 10.10 on my system (maxed-out 17" MBP late 2010) right now. 10.9 was a lemon; 10.10 is marginally better for me than 10.8. I'm not using 10.11 for philosophical reasons. ("Rootless" gives me the creeps.)
posted by fifthrider at 3:46 PM on January 20, 2016

Best answer: OS upgrades are done through the App Store app. Clone the old drive to the new drive. You can use CCC as previously mentioned, or SuperDuper. Then do the upgrade.

I recommend doing the upgrade last, so that you can fall back to the conventional hard drive and a working OS, if something goes wrong.

If you're putting in your own SSD, upgrading to 10.10 or 10.11 is worthwhile, because you can enable TRIM via the operating system.

El Capitan (10.11) is now on a third minor revision (10.11.3). By the third revision, Apple has worked out most of the kinks in the OS. I would choose El Capitan over Mavericks.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 3:48 PM on January 20, 2016

Best answer: FWIW, I'm running El Capitan on a 2012 MacBook Pro that I upgraded to 8 GB of RAM (still have conventional hard drive), and I have no problems with it. I didn't do clean installs or anything, just let the App Store download and install the update, and it was a smooth if somewhat lengthy process. It runs exactly like it did before, if not a little better. I think one of the OS updates you skipped has some significant battery life improvements, can't remember which one right now though, so the upgrade might be worth it for that alone.
posted by yasaman at 4:42 PM on January 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I recently switched out the HDD for an SSD on my late 2011 MBP with 2.8GHz processor + 8GB ram and used this step by step guide to do the deed.

I'd already downloaded El Capitan through the App store previous to committing to the swap so your question of when to update didn't come up in my calculus. But I bet I could have just installed it after swapping over from HDD to SSD as well. Oh and the update didn't brick my machine at any point.
posted by maykasahara at 5:24 PM on January 20, 2016

Best answer: I'm running El Capitan on a 2010 MBP. It works just fine!
posted by bink at 5:34 PM on January 20, 2016

Best answer: Since you already are using Time Machine, I strongly recommend replacing the HDD, and then restoring from your TM backups (rather than using a third party tool like CCC).
posted by snap, crackle and pop at 5:51 PM on January 20, 2016

Best answer: That's funny, I just did EXACTLY this on mine a few weeks ago. I put El Capitain on a thumb drive, backed everything up, pulled out the old drive, put in the new, and installed. My time machine backups came back over a little funny though. Photos has a bunch of pictures that are just white empty blocks now. MS Office is missing a key, and a few other things got a little messed up, but with the new drive and added RAM the thing is WAY faster.
posted by Blake at 6:10 PM on January 20, 2016

Be careful in how you retrieve any files from Amazon Glacier, unless you want a surprise bill.
posted by dcjd at 4:44 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

I am typing this response on the exact same machine you have, running El Capitan (10.11.3 as of the point update this AM). When I started using it, I (literally, physically) took the 1 terabyte hard drive out of my older 2007 MBP and put it in this machine, then booted it up. No issues.

If you want to go clean, you can install OS X from any disk you have laying around (or better, boot to recovery partition by holding down cmd-R at boot, if your current OS supports it), then do an upgrade to your preferred OS version from there using the App Store.

(I do miss the 15" screen from the older Mac, but hey, this one is faster, the old one occasionally has a flaky display issue, and now my kid uses the older machine to play Minecraft, so it is a win for all.)
posted by caution live frogs at 1:13 PM on January 21, 2016

Before you update the OS, look at your peripherals and do a quick Google to see if El Capitan won't work with anything mission-critical in your setup. For example, some older M-Audio interfaces aren't going to be supported from this version. Better safe than sorry if you rely on some older hardware or software!
posted by Cantdosleepy at 5:31 AM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: I just wanted to report back for any other mefites facing a similar upgrade; it was super easy! Here's the track I ended up taking (even though, most of the answers were really close to each other)

-Purchased a SSD, RAM, and an external HD enclosure.
-Downloaded El Capitain, but did not install it.
-Backed up everything to the moon and back (duplicate backups on 2 external drives + online backup)
-Plugged the SSD into the enclosure and ran Carbon Copy Cloner on it
-Popped the old HD and the ram out, new buddies into the machine.
-It fired right up as if nothing had ever changed (but sweet jesus so much faster...)
-After a through look at if everything important migrated properly, I ran the update for El Capitan. I assumed that if anything went wrong, I could revert back to the old HD to get things sorted. Update fired off without a hitch, and everythings running super smoothly.

Oh, and when all was said and done, I installed the old HD in the enclosure. Thanks everyone!
posted by furnace.heart at 7:22 PM on February 28, 2016