Infusing last lease of life - mid-2010 MBP

I got my first MBP in the summer of 2010. It was a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and pretty decent with stock configuration. Was really excited about it and it has been a faithful companion all these years. However with all gadgets, this one grew old. A few upgrades like the HDD, more RAM kept it chugging. It was kind of okay for most of my work - browsing, development, few experiments.

It wasn't until 2017, I faced the real world scenario of things going into oblivion. I was able to upgrade to 16 GB RAM which maxed it out, albeit at lower speeds. Pack a 7200 rpm hybrid drive and I squeezed some more out of it.

My last term at grad school, I was completely frustrated - primarily due to the lack of being able to run certain VMs. Glad I got a 2012 Mac Mini which I used mostly to complete my InfoSec and ML projects. This being my primary workhorse for all kinds of things, needed another upgrade. The primary objective - keep it running till I figure a replacement.

Now I hate Apple for not making the MBPs user upgradeable, what's the point - I can understand the MacBook Air. But a Pro?? Anyways after a couple months of watching deals for a 2 TB SSD, which seemed too expensive at that point - I settled for a 1 TB WD Blue SSD. And the reason is - offload all non-essential stuff to an external 4 TB drive. Pretty much should handle the data factor, while the SSD should speed things a bit. Never had a major problem with the MBP, I know the VMs that didn't work earlier would still not work. Just the last bit of life for some more experiments on Go, Python & my AWS certifications.

Now the draconian part was to setup a new installation, and move the old data between the SSD and the external drive. The setup was quick and took about 30 mins - I connected the SSD through an external SATA interface and using the macOS recovery partition installed a fresh copy of macOS High Sierra. Swapping the disk was pretty simple, my iFixit toolkit made it seamless.

Then moving my iTunes and iMovie libraries off to the external disk. A few searches here and there, helped achieve this. Now that most configuration was done - I was left with setting up the peripherals like the printer/scanner.

There's the roadblock. Although my HP 2135 simply wouldn't print after setting up the required software. The printing failed citing - Filter failure. Most discussion forums suggested reinstalling the drivers and software or removing the printer and adding it manually. However none of these worked for me. Somehow I was leaning if the printer was broken - have faced a situation in the past where a HP printer printhead smashed into the head park and rendered the printer unusable. I could replace it then, as it was under warranty.

I had to get something printed right away. I had the old macOS installation on disk and booted off it through the external SATA enclosure. And the printing worked off it. So something was amiss. When I got time later during the day, I compared the folders on disk - /Library/Printers/hp. I was missing the filter folder on my new installation. Made a set of files from this folder and the PPDs folder and once I placed the files on the new installation of macOS, it worked like a charm. Seems some updates were released by HP and it must assume a certain set of files are already available. Needless to say - my MBP only supports till High Sierra. Well at the end of the day - I have these files to help in case I need to have another install someday.

Few links:
iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit: http://bit.ly/2X0GIys
1 TB WD Blue SSD: http://amzn.to/3n9vlic
Orico USB 3.0 HDD enclosure: https://amzn.to/3o95DMh
Move iTunes library to external disk: http://bit.ly/2KV0dGf
4 TB WD My Passport external drive: https://amzn.to/2X2RqV5

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