How to repower your MacBook Pro (I): install an SSD

How about Applelizados followers. With this article we begin a series of tutorials to take advantage of our Mac, iPad and iPhones that are damaged or that have become a little obsolete and outdated.

New or repowered MacBook with an SSD

Whenever we think about the need to change our Mac, we are asked whether or not we should buy a new one. As normal is that we are not a Tim Cook, Bill Gates or Amancio Ortega who earn millions of euros, the biggest disadvantage when deciding whether to acquire a new one or not is the money that we are going to spend, even more so when we speak of Apple products. One way to save money and have gadgets updated and / or repaired is by replacing components.

Through this series of tutorials we will explain step by step how we can update our "gadgets", starting with the Mac Book Pro. We will start with the replacing an HDD drive with an SSD.

SSD drives are solid storage disks, so the speed when our computer accesses saved data far exceeds what HDDs can offer us. As in the case of HDDs, SSDs can be found of different brands, capacities and prices.

For this tutorial we will use a 850GB capacity Samsung SSD 250 EVO drive. This unit offers us a very good performance and we can find it at a relatively affordable price (between € 75 - € 120 depending on the store). Specifically, this SSD is purchased from Amazon for € 85 with free shipping. Right now we can get it for less than € 80 on sale

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Let's do it

For this tutorial we will use a MacBook Pro 13 ″ (Mid 2012). The first thing we will do is remove the back cover of our MacBook. To do this, we place it upside down and with a small cross screwdriver we remove each of the screws that hold it, trying to reserve them following the order as we extract them.

After removing them, we carefully separate the lid. With the lower part exposed, we will appreciate the distribution of our laptop, in which at a glance we can see the battery, the HDD, the SuperDrive, the RAM, etc. We will concentrate on the HDD for now.

As we can see, the HDD has a tab to be able to extract it more easily, but first we must extract a kind of plastic grip that is fixed at the inner end.

Using the same screwdriver that we used at the beginning, we unscrew the 2 screws that fix it, and remove the grip. Now we can remove the HDD with ease, but always being very careful not to force it so as not to damage the flex that connects it to the motherboard.

We disconnect it by doing a little force, and making zigzag movements to make it easier. We remove the HDD and proceed to install our new SSD, taking care when inserting the connector, and not to bend the Flex. Being very delicate, I place great emphasis on not forcing the Flex, you always have to try to keep its shape.

MacBookPro2

Then we just have to place it carefully in place by pushing a little. You will notice that it is not as loose as the HDD, this is because it is a millimeter wider, so we can do without placing the side screws that the HDD has that are used as a grip.

Finally, we only have to place the plastic grip again, and that's it! We already have our new SSD installed. If we only wanted to replace the HDD, we will only have to replace the back cover.

It only remains to remind you that you can follow these steps to change your standard HDD for both an SSD and another HDD of greater capacity or power.

In our next tutorial we will proceed to replace our RAM with a larger one, from 4GB to 16GB.


4 comments, leave yours

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  1.   jimmyimac said

    I would like to do it but not lose 250 gb of memory no matter how fast it goes, there is a 500 gb ssd that can be put or is it already going a lot in price?, Also I think it can also be put by removing the dvd player, do not?

    1.     ... ROB ...  said

      Indeed Jimmy, the difference between the 250GB SSD and the 500GB are about + -100 €, although with the current discounts you can surely get it cheaper. Precisely to avoid higher expenses, in Tutorial 3 we will explain how to replace the DVD drive to place an additional HDD. We will use the Original that we extracted in this 500GB tutorial, so we reuse it. Greetings.

    2.    Alex said

      I have that macbook pro from 2012 and I put 16G of ram and an 850G intel brand ssd, I revived my Macbook, it flies, I am very happy and it does not ask for anything from the new ones.

  2.   Oliver Calvo Garcia said

    Fantastic tutorial, but it would be more complete if you contemplated how to clone the content of the disks, since the new SSD is virgin.