Mid 2010 MacBook Pro new hard drive instaliation

Before you move forward what drive did you install? This model only offers a SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) drive interface. So the drive you put in must be able to run at this slower speed. Review your drives spec sheet to make sure it lists SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) if it doesn’t you’ll need to get another drive that does!

Today most HDD’s and SSD’s are fixed speed drives which only work properly in SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) systems. There are a few drives which offer auto sense matching the systems SATA I/O speed as an example Samsung 860 EVO SSD there is no currently produced HDD’s which run as SATA II, some older models do but they are hard to find as an example Seagate Laptop SSHD, ST1000LM014 but the current model Seagate FireCuda, ZA1000GM10001 is a fixed speed only able to run at SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) systems.

So as you can see if the spec sheet doesn’t list SATA II don’t use it!

Prepping your New Drive

Do you have the original Grey disks (CD/DVD) that came with the system?

If you’ll don’t you need to use your current HDD to boot up your system so you can then run the Disk Utilities to prep your new drive as well as install the newest macOS your system will run . I would stick with macOS Sierra (10.12.x) as going to High Sierra introduces a new file system APFS from the older HFS+ which has created issues with older SATA based systems like yours. You’ll need this adapter StarTech 2.5" SATA to USB adapter cable.

Download the OS installer from this link How to upgrade to macOS Sierra Jump down to Step 4 and click on the Blue link labeled Download macOS Sierra

Once you have it you’ll need to unpack it run it once it should unpack and the second time you click on it it should then run. For now just exit the installer as we first need to format your new drive using Disk Utility.