Then, I was able to restore from my Time Machine backup on the external drive to the new internal SSD. Apple’s recovery program launched and I used Disk Utility to format the new internal SSD to Mac OS X Journaled. If you are performing the same upgrade and don’t have a torx screwdriver in your kit to remove the side screws from the internal MacBook HD, check out this little kit for $6 from OWC.Īfter reassembling everything, I connected my external drive with the Time Machine backup and booted up. When the new drive arrived from B&H, I popped open the MacBook and made the switch in 10 minutes or so.

I then performed a current backup of my system drive using Time Machine. Of course, even after the purge, performance of the spinning internal drive was still crappy. This program is worth a few minutes of your time regardless if you are switching hard drives or not. I ended up with over 300GB free space when I finished deleting all the extraneous Lightroom backups, Premiere preview files and other non-essential crap. I had roughly 20GB of free space when I started the purge. I used a very handy (and free) program called Free Disk Space, which you can find here in the App Store. In preparation for the upgrade, I cleaned up the internal drive by deleting a ton of files that had bloated the storage usage over the past three years.

And while the Thunderbolt connectivity has been great, the internal 5400RPM hard drive has gotten slower and slower over the years.Īfter hearing plenty of reports on the benefits of upgrading to an internal SSD drive in these MacBook models, I finally bit the (surprising affordable) bullet and picked up a Crucial 512GB SSD for a little over $200. It’s a 2011 model, which I believe is the first model with Thunderbolt.

Upgrade macbook pro hard drive 2014