Unfamilar with Mac - Upgrading my Dad's old MBP with SSD

[rakers8]

My Dad got a refurb MBP that works well enough for what he does. I want to give him my old SSD drive though. Since he got it refurb'd he doesn't have the install DVD, so what's the best way that I can either:

A. Reinstall Snow Leopard Fresh onto the new SSD.
or
B. Clone the data on his current drive and populate it onto the new one.

I've looked up a couple tutorials but the information wasn't exactly what I was looking for. Can anyone give me a TL;DR or link me in the right direction?

TIA.

 

[Eug]

Welcome to AnandTech (post Anand).

You can directly clone the drive over, Apple's Disk Utility can do it. However, Snow Leopard is quite old. What MBP is it? If it's not too old and it has sufficient memory, it might be about time to upgrade to Mavericks or Yosemite (although Yosemite with SSDs has a built-in performance issue).

 

[rakers8]

Hello! I was trying to figure out how to do it with Disk Utility and it kept giving me errors. From what I understand, Snow Leopard is as high as his operating system is allowed to go - it's one of the first MCPs. (15" Core 2 Duo 2 ghz, 2gb RAM)

 

[KeithP]

You can still get a Snow Leopard disc from Apple if you like:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC...6-snow-leopard

You can use Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper! to clone the internal drive to an external drive (your SSD). Personally, I like Super Duper!
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

Of course, you will need some sort of USB dock for the SSD if you want to go the clone route.

If you are looking for details about the machine, this video shows how to use "About This Mac" in Snow Leopard. http://youtu.be/IVo5Y1wJjaE

Also, Other World Computing has a lot of "how to" videos for drive and memory upgrades.
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/

-KeithP