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I am thinking about replacing the HDD in my 2011 early MacBook Pro with a 500 GB SSD. When I am looking at purchasing the SSD it is noted “This drive requires a SATA III controller”. What does this mean? Do I need to also buy a SATA III controller or does the laptop already have one? Any help would be awesome! Thank you.
“This drive requires a SATA III controller” is telling you the drive is a fixed speed SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) drive. It will only work properly in a system which has a SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) interface. Your laptop has the needed interface! As you can see here: 13” MacBook Pro (Early 2011) Specs15” MacBook Pro (Early 2011) Specs Jump to the section Storage Dimensions sections on either you’ll see the requirements. So the system can support your drive as is! But! We do have one issue! The original drive Apple put in was a SATA II (3.0 Gb/s). The reason we worry about this is the HD SATA cable in your system now likely can’t support the higher data rate your new drive is able to pump out. You’ll need to replace the cable. Here’s a bit more Your Hard Drive Cable Is A Ticking Time Bomb Here’s the needed cable for a 13” model: MacBook Pro 13" Unibody (Early 2011-Late 2011) Hard Drive Cable and here’s the guide in putting it in MacBook Pro 13" Unibody Early 2011 Hard Drive Cable Replacement And here’s the needed cable of a 15” model: MacBook Pro 15" Unibody (Mid 2009-Late 2011) Hard Drive Cable and here’s the guide in putting it in MacBook Pro 15" Unibody Early 2011 Hard Drive/IR Sensor Cable Replacement And yes the part I’ve listed is the 2012 version which is the better part. So the next issue is formatting and installing a fresh copy of macOS. If your drive is still good you can use this adapter StarTech SATA to USB Cable or use a USB thumb drive which is formatted with GUID journaled file system and use this OS installer here How to upgrade to macOS Sierra Jump down to Set 4 and click on the Blue URL labeled: Download macOS Sierra. You’ll need to unpack it and then placing it on your USB drive convert it to a bootable installer following this guide: How to create a bootable macOS Sierra installer drive. The reason we need to use this OS installer is the certificate in your older one has expired and Sierra is a better OS for your system, High Sierra has issues running on SATA based systems! If you’ve got an old macOS install image, it will probably stop working today I know this is a very long answer, its just once you start the process you need to follow it though to the end! Its not as bad as it sounds! Good Luck!
