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A couple of days ago, my Apple Macbook Pro's hard disk started acting up on me. Now, over the years, I've had several hard drives crash – so I was not going to take any chances. I went to a local computer store and bought a new 128GB SSD HD which I've had my eye on for a month or so.

Replacing the hard disk on one of the new Macbook Pro machines was pretty easy. First, you have to unscrew the ten screws on the bottom of the clamshell and then crack the computer open. Second, unscrew the two screws holding the hard drive into the case. Third, unscrew the pins from the hard disk drive itself using a Torx#6. Finally, remove the SATA cables to be able to install the new hard drive and then simply reverse the order on the new disk.

Since the machine was acting up, I didn't want to clone and restore the disk as the new one is significantly smaller anyways. I backed up all of my critical data onto an external hard disk and installed Snow Leopard clean and fresh on the new solid-state drive.

Once the operating system is installed, the critical files and applications can be copied back onto the new disk. What joy! The new SSD drive operates significantly, almost 5 to 10 times way faster than the old one.

But I ran into a problem.

Once I copied the iWork folder back to the applications folder, pages, keynote and numbers wouldn't open. They simply failed with an error stating that they needed to be reinstalled from the disk. The version I've been using was iWork '09. It is now 2011. I've purged my desk and cupboards several times but I have no idea where my disks are.

So after a bit of research, I found the files that needed to be copied from the old hard disk which, luckily has not yet failed. The files are listed below to help anyone who ends up in the same situation.

These first ones are the critical files that *must* be in the correct locations in order for the applications to run.

  • Macintosh HD:Library:Preferences:com.apple.iWork09.Installer.plist
  • Macintosh HD:Library:Preferences:com.apple.iWork09.plist
  • Macintosh HD:Library:Application Support:iWork '09
  • Macintosh HD:Applications:iWork '09

These second ones only need to be copied if you had extensive changes to the default preferences. They are created automatically with the default values if they are not already in existence.

  • Macintosh HD:Users::Library:Preferences:com.apple.iWork.Keynote.plist
  • Macintosh HD:Users::Library:Preferences:com.apple.iWork.Numbers.plist
  • Macintosh HD:Users::Library:Preferences:com.apple.iWork.Keynote.plist

Finally, this file is only in place if you originally installed the software using the downloadable trial from Apple. It is not necessary to have the applications run, but I've included it for the sake of completeness.

  • Macintosh HD:Library:Receipts:iWork09Trial.pkg

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Source by Ben Inkster