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I’m familiar that there are many tutorials on how to actually swap out the hard drives. I’m asking for someone to help me clone my old hard drive first and how, as well as if or not i need to enable TRIM (since my Mac didn’t come with an SSD from Apple). I have a 2.3GHz Intel Core i7, upgraded 16GB 1600 MHz DDR3 of RAM, Model # A1286. Also after I clone it and swap it with the old one, is there anything special i need to do in order for my Mac to start and run as it does with its current hard drive. Please post as I’m sure others will ask the same question. I have not found any specific instructions for my Mac. Last one I looked it said to enable TRIM for third party SSD, But on Apple’s forums i saw that MacBooks that did not come with an SSD don’t quite have that feature/not necessary. I am not quite sure so please help.

Yes it can be confusing! The time points of what you are reading is why this is somewhat mixed up. So lets start from the start you don’t really want to ‘Clone’ you what to ‘Migrate’ your old HD to you new SSD. To do this you’ll need a SATA case or adapter to hold your new drive. Ideally, I would get a Thunderbolt or FireWire drive case that way you can reuse your old drive as a backup drive. These are also the fastest interfaces your system has. Otherwise you can get a USB case or adapter while slower are easier to find. Here’s one: Startech 2.5" SATA to USB adapter. Using Disk Utility you’ll need to format the drive for GUID and Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Once thats done run the OS installer I would stick with the Sierra release of MacOS for now and setup a new user account. At the end of the install process you will be asked if you have any apps & data to transfer from another drive this is where you’ll Migrate your user accounts, apps & data over. while this is a longer process it creates the recovery partition, sheds your old logs and other no longer used config files. Don’t forget to install any OS updates. OK, the system is setup and running and you want to tune it up a bit more this is where TRIM services comes in. TRIM was added as an upgrade in Yosemite for use by 3rd party drives. In the case of Samsung EVO drives it can be used without any fears (all of your MacBook Pro’s that have Samsung drives have it enabled 200+ systems). You’ll need to run a terminal session to enable it, here’s a good writeup on it: How to Enable TRIM for Third-Party SSDs on Mac OS X