Reusing Drives

[Peter Russell]

My wife and I have a 2006 vintage MacBook and MacBook Pro. My MBP fell victim to glass of red wine spilled into it's innards and her MB is dying. The hard drives in both machines are good and I would like to pick up a used MBP ( 2010 0r 2011s are in my price range ) and install these drives in it as there is lots of requirement to still utilize them.

I understand that I can buy an adapter that will let me fit one of the drives into the optical drive bay once it is removed.

Does anyone have any input into any possible pitfalls that might be involved with this idea. Is it doable with any type of MBP from the model years I mention or should I be avoiding anything in particular?

I've acquired a used Mac Mini that is now my everyday machine and so my wife primarily would be using the new MBP a shed principal machine and I would access my old drive that's on it occasionally.

Thanks in advance for any help with this ~ Peter

 

[honestone]

If the hard drives for each "vintage" machine are the original ones, I'd be concerned, given their age (10 years is quite a long time for a HDD). I'm not saying there is anything wrong with them, but I'd be leery about trusting such an old drive.

What you could do is either of the following:

1. If either (or preferably both) of your 2006 Macs have a Firewire 800 port, and if the 2010 or 2011 MBP you plan on purchasing has one also), you can boot your old machines in "Target Disk Mode". You can then transfer the needed "stuff" from whichever old hard drive to the newer one.

2'. You can remove whichever (or both) internal drives from your 2006 machines, install each of them in an external case, connect them to your newer Mac, and once again do a transfer.

One thing you must consider is the OS you are currently using, and the OS that will be on the newer Mac. Not sure if you can go back to the older OS (which would match what is on your 2006 machines now). If you need to "adapt" to a newer OS, you will need to insure than all your apps are compatible with the newer OS.

Sounds like a challenging project!

 

[Peter Russell]

Thanks honestone for the time and thought put into your reply.
1. Both old Macs have Firewire ports but my MBP is not functioning at all and I do have it's hard drive in an external case which I am accessing from my new Mac Mini. I had problems transferring an invoicing program from this old drive ( OS 10.6.8) to the Mini ( OS 10.11.4) and so thought that I would just like to leave everything from the old drive on a separate machine and revert to using that for invoices etc on the odd occasion that I needed it. I could access this external old drive and my wife's MB in Target mode to transfer to the new drive but then I have to deal with the compatibility with the OS that is on the new machine and the material on the old drives.

I was thinking that, with the two old drives installed in the newer machine, we could just switch to whichever drive we wanted on startup and use it under it's old OS. Neither would be heavy usage and there would be backups of both in case of a drive failure.

 

[honestone]

Can you boot your Mac Mini from that external drive now?

I do not know how dooable your idea of installing the drives, and subsequently booting your machine from either of those, would work, especially in light of the different versions of the OS. I'm "tempted" to say it can be done, but I have never done it. Maybe someone else more knowledgeable than I will "chime in".

 

[Peter Russell]

Can you boot your Mac Mini from that external drive now?

I do not know how dooable your idea of installing the drives, and subsequently booting your machine from either of those, would work, especially in light of the different versions of the OS. I'm "tempted" to say it can be done, but I have never done it. Maybe someone else more knowledgeable than I will "chime in".

Hadn't thought of trying to boot the Mini from the old drive, I'll give it a shot. What is it ... press C ( or Option ) whilst powering up and then select which drive to boot from ?

Wouldn't this work also with my original idea? Just select which of the two old drives ( on the new MBP ) to boot from and go from there ?

Maybe the two drives is complicating it. If I just replaced the drive in the new MBP with the old drive from my wife's MB ( to avoid conflicts when importing to a newer OS ) shouldn't that work ?

 

[honestone]

When you boot up your Mac, hold down the Option key. It will give you a list of start up drives. If your external drive appears on that list, select it, and click restart. If it's not on the list, that means the drive is not bootable.