Replace old MacBook HDD with one from a new refurbished MacBook?

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Currently using a late 2006 13" MacBook 2,1 Intel Core Duo 2GHz 80GB 5400-rpm SATA 667MHz 4GB DDR2 SDRAM OS X 10.4.11 and having some chronic problems when recording in GarageBand 3.0.4 which seem to indicate that the hard disk needs replacing.

I am considering buying a refurbished late 2009 13" MB (Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26GHz 250GB 5400-rpm SATA 2GB DDR3 SDRAM) from Apple UK to use purely as a fast & reliable GarageBand workcentre, with my old MB for everything else (internet, DVD etc.)

My plan is, as soon as the new MB arrives I would upgrade its HDD to a Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB 2.5'' 7200RPM SATA drive, then put the new MB's original HDD into my old 2006 MB. [Also will upgrade the new MB to 8GB RAM.]

I was wondering:

a) Is the above a sensible plan?

b) Is it a fairly straightforward process-- anything in particular I need to be wary of before I go ahead with swapping the various drives?

It would be great to get an expert's viewpoint as I haven't done this kind of thing before.
 

cwa107


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14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
Perfectly sensible, but don't expect to simply pop the drive in and have it work. The newer MacBook will inevitably use different drivers. So, you'll want to clone the new MacBook's hard drive to its replacement hard drive. Then, you'll pull that drive out, install it in the old MacBook and do an Erase & Install on the operating system, using the system discs that originally shipped with that machine (the newer system discs won't work with the old machine).

Hopefully that all makes sense.
 
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13inch 2.3 i5 MBP 64gb SSD 320gb HD 8gb 1333
I think you can probably actually just expect to pop it in and work. If you are going backwards it usually works.
 
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That makes perfect sense cwa107, thanks.

After I've put the new drive into the old MacBook and done Erase & Install using the original system discs, I assume I could still upgrade to a newer OS X at a later date if I wanted to without any problems... ?
 

cwa107


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That makes perfect sense cwa107, thanks.

After I've put the new drive into the old MacBook and done Erase & Install using the original system discs, I assume I could still upgrade to a newer OS X at a later date if I wanted to without any problems... ?

Absolutely. But at this stage in the game, I think I would wait for Lion, which is due this summer.
 

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