I want to change the SSD on my old 2009 MacBook Pro to a different hard drive, but it doesn’t work and boots to a folder with a question mark. It seems that my Mac won’t recognize this drive, but if I connect the hard drive from my old Windows laptop, I can see it get detected with the name Windows. I can’t use Command-R and other hotkeys. I’ve also tried different solutions for 2 days to no avail. How to fix this?
To change the SSD, you can also connect the new drive to a functional Mac and install the desired OS X version on it. Then place the drive into your MacBook Pro and boot from it.
You can also create a bootable USB installer with iBoysoft DiskGeeker for Mac and then boot from this installation media to install the operating system on the new drive.