1. Purchase an external enclosure to hold the drive that you are about to remove from the MBP. USB or Firewire, it makes no difference.
OR
2. A USB SATA dock which will allow you to plug your old drive into it, they usually accept full size drives and the smaller laptop type, but not at the same time.
With either solution, remove the old drive, install the new one, initialize, install OS X, do the updates and then connect your solution of choice to the MBP.
The drive will mount on the desktop and allow you to transfer what you need to the new drive.
P
I have a 13" early 2011 MBP and I want to upgrade the hard drive. Only problem is that I don't know what to use to get the old data onto the new drive. I know there are some products out there but i'm not sure which are best.
Thanks for any advice you can offer!
BTW I want to install a Western Digital 500gb Scorpio Black 7200rpm HDD.

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