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Hello, our old MacBook has been laying around since we were told the hard drive was corrupt. We don’t need any old data from it so is it worth replacing the hard drive and using it as a lap top again or is it beyond update capabilities regardless?
Is this a good question?
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This is a bit of a toss up. It depends on what you plan to use your system for. It’s still a great system for writing, task management, simple drawing as well as web surfing. It’s limited with game play, picture & video editing.
As far as what drive to use you do need to be careful here! Your system uses an older SATA interface SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) You need to make sure the drive you get is able to run at this slower I/O speed. Most drives today only work within SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) systems. Samsung 860 EVO SSD is one of the few 2.5” drives that is about to run in your system. Review the spec sheet I’ve linked to here, note the Interface line where your systems I/O speed is listed. What ever drive you get needs to clearly state it otherwise you run the risk lots of drive errors. Ideally I would stick with a 500 GB or 1 TB SSD.
I would upgrade the system RAM to at least 8 GB and install MacOS Sierra as the highest version.
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3 Comments
Here's the two systems in this series A1342
So depending on which your system can either support a max of 8 GB or 16 GB which is quite good for either.
Both are able to support macOS High Sierra (10.13.x) But to be honest you likely should stay with macOS Sierra (10.12.x) as the highest.
by Dan
I would replace the HDD by a SSD and use it. You can install chromeOS (using cloudready OS). Very nice for just browsing/youtube
by Veronique
@dove2019 - I don't think you need to go that far running chromeOS on this series MacBook. Besides many people prefer macOS.
I do agree going to a SSD is a smart direction!
by Dan