Old MacBook Pro SSD upgrade... HELP

[Team_RGB]

its the A1297 -- it's a beast. Coworker's system wouldn't boot from the hard drive--super sllooooow, only to not ever actually boot. Threw an SSD in, now I'm getting the blinking question mark folder, obviously, but none of the infamous key combos are getting me into the disk utility? What now? Currently trying to option boot with the old HD in via USB, but its super slow, and im not super hopeful. Help me LTT community you're my only hope. I'm pretty sure this guy can beat me up, jk

[LukeSavenije]

5 minutes ago, Team_RGB said:

its the A1297 -- it's a beast. Coworker's system wouldn't boot from the hard drive--super sllooooow, only to not ever actually boot. Threw an SSD in, now I'm getting the blinking question mark folder, obviously, but none of the infamous key combos are getting me into the disk utility? What now? Currently trying to option boot with the old HD in via USB, but its super slow, and im not super hopeful. Help me LTT community you're my only hope. I'm pretty sure this guy can beat me up, jk

what ssd? also, have you cloned it?

[Team_RGB]

1 minute ago, LukeSavenije said:

what ssd? also, have you cloned it?

Samsung 860 EVO... having a problem pulling anything off the old HD, so no on the cloning.

[LukeSavenije]

Just now, Team_RGB said:

Samsung 860 EVO... having a problem pulling anything off the old HD, so no on the cloning.

doesn't the samsung cloning software work?

[NelizMastr]

8 minutes ago, Team_RGB said:

its the A1297 -- it's a beast. Coworker's system wouldn't boot from the hard drive--super sllooooow, only to not ever actually boot. Threw an SSD in, now I'm getting the blinking question mark folder, obviously, but none of the infamous key combos are getting me into the disk utility? What now? Currently trying to option boot with the old HD in via USB, but its super slow, and im not super hopeful. Help me LTT community you're my only hope. I'm pretty sure this guy can beat me up, jk

There is no utility to boot to. A blank disk is unusable, and internet recovery doesn't work on pre-2011 models without an OS already installed. You'll need to use another Mac to download a supported version of OS X/macOS and put that on a flash drive to boot from. Or get a DVD.

 

A1297 is very general by the way. It can be as old as early 2009 and as new as late 2011.

[Team_RGB]

3 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

There is no utility to boot to. A blank disk is unusable, and internet recovery doesn't work on pre-2011 models without an OS already installed. You'll need to use another Mac to download a supported version of OS X/macOS and put that on a flash drive to boot from. Or get a DVD.

 

A1297 is very general by the way. It can be as old as early 2009 and as new as late 2011.

This sounds right, gonna try to command-r boot with the old HD and see what happens from there Thx!