Macbook Pro Help

[kipperfan]

So, I have had a bad run of luck with Macbook Pro's recently. First I had one in Asia earlier this year and spilled water on the keyboard, frying it. Luckily I had a tech wizard friend who determined my HD with all my pics and music was safe, so I took it out and upon getting back to Canada bought a new Macbook Pro and an external hard drive enclosure and transferred all the data to the HD on the new computer. Now I'm in Australia and some fine gentleman stole my new Macbook from a house party!

Luckily I have the original HD and enclosure with me so I haven't lost my music and pics (most of them anyway) and have now purchased yet another Macbook Pro used. This computer only has a 250 GB hard drive and my original drive is 500GB with 400+GB used. With this in mind I want to pull the 250GB HD and replace it with my 500GB drive.

Wondering what steps are needed to do this? I don't mean the physical steps of replacing it but with regards to backing up data and what not. The computer HD was wiped by the old owner before selling to me, so really nothing on there I want to keep. Can I simple pull the drive out and replace it with my 500GB one? Is there any need to do any sort of backup of the current drive? I have searched extensively on google but can't find anyone commenting on this specific scenario and am ensure of how to approach it. Any help will be appreciated.

[Flabbibulin]

You may want to cross reference the current specs on the 2 HDs that came with the 2 MacBook pros. You can do this by checking a website like everymac.com, or simply taking off the bottom case on the MBP you just purchased. The maximum interface speed may vary. Not really an issue with physical compatibility- you may just be putting in an inferior HD.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/appl...drive-ssd.html

The one software issue you may encounter is if the external HD has an older OS X build than the current internal one that shipped with the laptop. Installing an HD with an older build should still work, but some functions on the laptop may be glitchy. My recommendation is that you install the external HD and then update the OS to 10.9.4. This should take care of any problems.

Although it involves spending a little bit more, another option is to puchase a dual drive kit and have both HDs on the laptop- simply replaces your optical drive slot.

The better option though would be to change over to an SSD- they are considerably cheaper than they used to be, but are far more reliable than a SATA. SATA failure rates can be quite high, and it is possible your HD that was involved in the liquid spill may have some bad blocks waiting to cause a problem. You should be able to track down a 2.5" 500-1TB SSD for $150 or less- depends on brand