03-27-2012, 09:55 PM

Hello! I just purchased a 2010 MacBook Pro off of eBay, this will be my third Mac. Currently, though, my current laptop is a Dell Studio XPS 1640, which has been great (especially for a PC), but I've wanted a MacBook of some sort for a while now and I came across a deal that was impossible to pass up. The MBP comes with a 250GB 5400RPM HDD, and I'd like to swap hard drives between my computers before I sell my Dell. The Dell has a 7200RPM 500GB HDD, and they're both 2.5" SATA HDDs. What I'm wondering is if I can swap the hard drives without formatting the 500GB and plop it into the Mac, partition it, and install Mac OS on it. I assume there should be no problems with this first part, but what I'd really like to know is if it would be possible for me to then boot my existing Windows partition from my Mac. I understand that Windows may not want to boot due to driver issues, etc. but how would I go about rectifying these issues? Any help would be awesome. Thanks in advance!

03-27-2012, 09:59 PM

No, you'll have to set up OS X on the drive first, then install bootcamp before you can do the windows partition. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to do it the way you want.

03-27-2012, 10:14 PM

Originally Posted by Stretch

No, you'll have to set up OS X on the drive first, then install bootcamp before you can do the windows partition. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to do it the way you want.

Ok, well I don't see why I can't partition the drive and then install Mac OS on the new partition, but what I'm not sure about is how to go about getting the Windows partition to boot. Any reason you don't believe it'll work?

03-27-2012, 10:23 PM

I'm not positive as I don't use bootcamp, but I don't think bootcamp will notice the current partition of Windows. When you set up bootcamp it creates a new partition and allows the computer to boot from both. I have tried setting up bootcamp before with more than one partition and it doesn't work.