SOLVED: VIDEO: How To Replace a Spinning Disk with an SSD on a Mac

If you have a Apple Mac and it is running slowly there are many things you can do, but you will find few things that improve performance like replacing the spinning disk with a solid state disk.

There are ways to clone the existing disk but in this video I wanted to show you how to start fresh:

1. Backup your data
2. Disassemble your Mac (in this case a MacBook Pro from 2012)
3. Remove the old spinning disk
4. Install an SSD
5. Install a fresh copy of the latest OSX
6. Install your software and copy back your old data from your backups

The only difficult part of this process is finding a copy of OSX to install.  There are several places you can source OSX:

1. Your Mac might have come with an OSX DVD
2. You might be able to get a DVD from your friendly neighborhood Apple reseller (don’t bother asking the Apple Store staff for it.  Because they would not make any money at it, they will not help you.)
3. You could download OSX through a bit-torrent like this one.  Note that we don’t recommend this as the build could be hacked.  It is also likely breaching Apple’s Terms of Use policy to torrent a copy of OSX but I think that it does not break any ethical guidelines as you are installing it on a Mac.
4. You can create your own OSX disk before you remove the current spinning disk as explained HERE.

However, we wanted to show you the cleanest way to start again with your improved Mac and Apple has a great way to download and install OSX through the internet directly onto a brand new disk.  That process is called INTERNET RECOVERY MODE and it works great:

Watch this video to see how to disassemble a MacBook Pro, clean the CPU fan, upgrade the memory, change the battery or change the hard drive. It explains the process of how to swap out the standard spinning disk, replace it with an SSD and install a fresh copy of OSX directly from the internet using INTERNET RECOVERY MODE.