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I have the macbook ( purchased from ebay) and tools. I have purchased a Crucial 500Gb SSD. I wiped current HDD and reinstalled Catalina…..Firstly in preparation I tried to set up a USB installer but have failed. I have tried various methods and I am unable to find the installer in applications. As this will be starting afresh with no data that needs backing up am I overcomplicating things. yesterday I had some v helpful responses regarding how to use the HDD in tandem with the SSD. I was told that it would be better to leave the HDD where it is and install the SSD in the optical drive. Any thoughts and if so how do I manage the 2 drives
Not sure how you failed in setting up the USB installer. But there might be an easier way for you at this point. Just pull the HDD out and place the SSD in the HD bay. Restart your system and using Internet recovery install macOS again this time on your SSD. Move the SSD into the optical bay, reinstall your HDD in the HD bay and using the Option (⌥) key select your SSD as the boot drive, then go into your system preferences to alter the Startup Disk setting to the SSD. That will make sure you are booting from the SSD. Now you can reformat your HDD so its fully available as a data drive or leave the system files on it. Reference: Mac startup key combinations
