Getting a hand-me-down MacBook Pro

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Ahh. Well it took a couple of reboots before things started getting quicker during the start up. This thing is super fast now! WOO! I installed an SSD in my old single core PATA Inspiron and it was nice but just not cutting it. Just want to say thanks to my Uncle and all who helped me out with this journey You guys are great!

Thanks!

 

[manly]

Installed and it's working fine so far! Excited!

Thanks alot people

So I basically just cloned the original drive to the SSD and then swapped them out. No need for telling the Mac which drive will be the main drive now - i think... :hmm:

EDIT: seems to take a little while for the machine to enter the boot up screen where the apple pops up and the loading bar appears.. why is that?

That's because it was still looking for the old HDD as the "Startup Disk." Check in System Preferences that the new SSD is now selected as the Startup Disk. This only needs to be done once.

Now if there was heavy disk activity the first time after you logged in, that may have been Spotlight re-indexing.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

That's because it was still looking for the old HDD as the "Startup Disk." Check in System Preferences that the new SSD is now selected as the Startup Disk. This only needs to be done once.

Now if there was heavy disk activity the first time after you logged in, that may have been Spotlight re-indexing.

Ok, great. It seems to have settled in and boots up in under ? maybe 15-20 seconds from the time the power button is compressed. Seems really fast to me. I wonder how those PCIe SSD drives are in comparison.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Ok, so I took out the old 500GB HDD and reformatted in to NTFS. I then replugged it into the MBP to retrieve about 7GB of pics and I cannot transfer them to the HDD. I try n drag n drop them into the folder and they just snap back to where they came from.. what's goin on?

 

[Eug]

OS X has read-only support for NTFS. If you want cross compatibility with Windows and don't want to deal with the limitations of FAT32, then use exFAT. OS X has read/write compatibility with exFAT. (I believe Apple licenced it.)

There are 3rd party drivers that allow NTFS write compatibility for OS X, but generally you have to pay for them, and they're not licenced from MS. They're reverse engineered. They seem to work fine, but just FYI.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

OS X has read-only support for NTFS. If you want cross compatibility with Windows and don't want to deal with the limitations of FAT32, then use exFAT. OS X has read/write compatibility with exFAT. (I believe Apple licenced it.)

There are 3rd party drivers that allow NTFS write compatibility for OS X, but generally you have to pay for them, and they're not licenced from MS. They're reverse engineered. They seem to work fine, but just FYI.

Thank you.

Are there any issues with exFAT?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Thank you.

Are there any issues with exFAT?

Nothing showstopping that I've heard of / read about. (No stability or reliability issues.)

It was intended for USB drives and does some magic to make them work better, and it's rare that something in computers is best at everything. So I wouldn't use it for primary fixed storage drives (a HD that's always attached to a single computer) just on the assumption that there was a compromise somewhere.

But for disks that get swapped between Mac OS X / Windows computers it's your best bet.

And if somebody posted a link that conclusively proved that exFAT was better at everything than either NTFS or HFS+, I'd be okay with that.

 

[Eug]

Yeah, exFAT isn't meant for boot drives AFAIK.

Also, exFAT has limited support on 3rd party devices like Android video playback boxes, as in many don't support it at all. Similarly, if you plug an exFAT drive directly into a NAS, it may not be readable. (Works fine over the network though, when connected into a machine that is exFAT capable.) Linux can't officially support exFAT because of licensing issues, but there are solutions for it available.

exFAT also isn't supported on older Windows machines (ie. XP) unless you install a driver. The good news is the driver is free and is straight from Microsoft.

exFAT isn't supported before OS X 10.6. However, anything still running 10.5 or older is likely ancient. Stuff stuck on 10.5 or older are PowerPC.

 

[manly]

Ok, great. It seems to have settled in and boots up in under ? maybe 15-20 seconds from the time the power button is compressed. Seems really fast to me. I wonder how those PCIe SSD drives are in comparison.

15-20 seconds actually sounds a bit slow, if you mean to just get to the login screen.

My doorstop Mac with SSD on SATA I bus goes from power on to login screen in roughly 10 seconds, which isn't that fast.

Double check the Startup Disk configuration to ensure the SSD is selected as the default boot drive. (Even though it sounds like you did resolve this, it's worth checking.) That was almost certainly why it took some time to just get to the OS X loading bar.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

K.. I'm basically going to use the old 500gb HDD in it as a drive to transfer files between machines.. e.g. i had my mother's pictures from her old iPhone on the MBP that need to go back to her windows 7 machine. I've formatted both an 8gb thumb drive, and the old 500gb HDD from the MBP to exFAT. I'm hoping this time it will transfer the pictures correctly. I'll report back on that one.

@manly - yeah, I'm timing it. I simultaneously press the On button and the stopwatch button and i'm getting around 18 seconds. There is only one drive in it and it the boot utility the Samsung SSD is the only option.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

wtf, i formatted this 500gb drive in windows as exFAT, i plugged it into the MBP, copied over the files, plugged it back into the first windows machine and it's not recognized... wtf gives!


EDIT: well i did a reboot and it's recognized.. sorry, i've had so much trouble trying to simply copy over her pictures back to her...

 

[Eug]

K.. I'm basically going to use the old 500gb HDD in it as a drive to transfer files between machines.. e.g. i had my mother's pictures from her old iPhone on the MBP that need to go back to her windows 7 machine. I've formatted both an 8gb thumb drive, and the old 500gb HDD from the MBP to exFAT. I'm hoping this time it will transfer the pictures correctly. I'll report back on that one.

@manly - yeah, I'm timing it. I simultaneously press the On button and the stopwatch button and i'm getting around 18 seconds. There is only one drive in it and it the boot utility the Samsung SSD is the only option.

18 seconds isn't that long, but did you select the Samsung SSD? Even if it's the only option, if you don't select it, it will search for other drives at startup.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

still not getting email notifications to this thread so i apologize if don't get back relatively soon.


I'll check and make sure. I thought it was the last time I looked. *checked and it's selected*


Once I press the power button about a second later the screen appears white. Then a second later startup sequence appears. A little progress bar starts and moves quickly about an inch of the total progress bar. Then the screen goes white again briefly for a second. Then the startup screen appears again with the progress bar. And quickly it will finish and then the log in screen appears.


It has gotten faster since the first time I booted it.

 

[Childs]

18 seconds on a cold boot to the login screen is fast. My MBP8,2 with a 840 Pro 256GB takes 20 secs. A restart is faster. Maybe my MacPro6,1 at work is faster, but my MBP is fast enough that I never thought anything was wrong with it. Its not like booting from a 2.5" mechanical drive.

 

[gochi123]

Hello all. My Uncle is upgrading to a new MacBook Pro this year and has offered me his current Macbook Pro. I don't think he knows how to wipe it out, nor do I. What do I want to do or need with this MacBook Pro when I get it?

reboot and hold comand+r its all you need to do.

 

[iluvdeal]

I should have timed it but didn't think to as I didn't think Yosemite would be different, but my MBP w/ SSD booted up much faster with 10.6 compared to 10.10. Shutdown was faster too.