Booting Macbook Pro from other source

[Saiyan]

I have an early 2011 Macbook Pro that is significantly not efficient. The battery is non existant so it always has to be plugged in and also I believe the hard drive is beginning to fail on it because the screen stutters a lot and I can do simple we tasks such as imputting text but when it comes to me going to videos on youtube or anything like that it goes into super lag mode and won't do anything untill I close the page.

What I'm looking for is a cheap fix for my Macbook so I can at least have something to use for the moment. Should I buy a cheap SSD or HDD or can something like a USB or CD be used.

Or if you think my troubleshooting is wrong what are your opinions? I have 67gb left of free storage on the stock HDD so it's not cluttered.

[mikat]

that sounds like a laptop that is just at the end of its life cycle...

[Hans Christian | Teri]

You can use a Linux Live USB distribution, but you wont be able to save data when running a system like this, everything will have to be online.

[Saiyan]

That's fine with me do you have any personal tips on how to do this for Mac or a link possibly.

[pwn_intended]

That's fine with me do you have any personal tips on how to do this for Mac or a link possibly.

You can install Mac OS X onto an external drive (USB key or hard drive) very easily, using the built in recovery tool (hold down CMD+R while turning on the mac).

Sounds like the best case for you though might be to just replace the hard drive in the MacBook if you are trying to get another couple years out of it, and have reason to believe that the internal disk is going.

Another thing you may want to try is doind just a clean re-install of the OS. To do this, first BACK UP EVERYTHING that you want to keep onto an external drive, and then boot into recovery mode, choose disk utility and ERASE the Macintosh HD. Then back out of disk utility and continue the installer.

Just as an aside, what version of OS X are you running?

 

 

EDIT. I would go with the re-formatting of your current hard drive first, then go with replacing it if you still think its the drive causing problems.