Hard drive in New 2012 Macbook Pro

Hi,

I just received a new 13" macbook pro and I want to put my hard drive from my old macbook pro into the new macbook pro. I successfully installed it, but when I boot the hard drive, it stays on the apple logo for a prolong period of time. Ive waited maybe 10 minutes the longest but it should boot right up. There is no spinning wheel under the logo. The hard drive is filled with my files including Snow Leopard. The reason I dont want to use migration assistant is because I would be downgrading the hard drive size. Old hard drive=750gb New harddrive=500gb. What can I do to get this old 750gb hard drive to boot or what am I doing wrong? any suggestions?

You can not use your old hard drive in the new MBP because your new machine can only run Lion. Remove the old hard drive and put it back in the old machine and make a Time Machine backup of it to an external hard drive.

Replace the original hard drive back into your new machine. When you turn on your new machine it should ask you if you wish to restore from another Mac. Respond yes, attach the external hard drive with the Time Machine backup from your old hard drive and your data will be restored without disturbing Lion.

Thanks Chscag. I wonder why does it need Lion on the actual hard drive? Maybe because its the newest macbook pro? Also, could I upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion on the old hard drive and try again?

That's correct, the new MBP (actually since 2011) will only run Lion. I wouldn't attempt to upgrade your old hard drive to Lion from Snow Leopard as that may turn out to be more work and you might wish to keep it as Snow Leopard.

Try what I suggested. The migration feature of Time Machine is sound and will move all your apps and data to the new machine. Of course any PPC coded apps that you have running in Snow Leopard will not run in Lion, so be prepared for that. If you can't use Time Machine for some reason, you can use the Migration Assistant.

Thanks! The only reason I am preventing your suggestion is because I dont want to downgrade in hard drive size. I am already at 485GB out 750GB so there is no use for me to move everything to the new macbook pro with the 500GB hard drive because then I would need to upgrade again. I may just have to upgrade to Lion with the old hard drive. I also heard I can upgrade to Mountain Lion for free once it comes out so I just may wait for the Mountain Lion osx to come out and then upgrade. But thanks so much for your responses and time. I will definitely keep them in mind if I get stuck. Have a good night!

By the way, what kinds of apps are PPC coded apps and what does that mean? I cant find much of google about that term?