Chosen Solution
My battery died, and I was advised by @danj that I may have an SMC issue on the logic board too. So I bought a 2nd hand almost identical A1502 mid 2014 retina MBP with a broken screen so. The only difference is the new one has 16GB ram, and 128GB SSD. Mine has 8gb RAM and 256 SSD So the plan is to swap my screen in and swap my ssd. Obviously I would love to keep all the data on my 256 SSD and bring it over to the new one. (I have a time machine backup too, but it’s from a week or so before.. so it’s not the end of the world if I need to but I’d prefer everything to just move across) Will there be any issue doing this? Or is it a simple straight swap Thanks in advance for any advice.
This is not that bad! First, have you connected the broken system to an external display to check it out? You’ll also need an external keyboard and mouse (either USB or Bluetooth) so you can run the system with the lid closed. I would check the battery to see if it’s got more life than yours. So let’s say your system is better then the other (case and battery). So you’ll want to swap over the logic board (leave the SSD’s alone for now). MacBook Pro 13" Retina Display Mid 2014 Logic Board Replacement. With the spare logic board in your system check that everything is working, if it is then, after shutting down your system and disconnecting the battery carefully swap over the SSD MacBook Pro 13" Retina Display Mid 2014 SSD Replacement. Reconnect the battery and check your system - Done! Lets say the broken systems case & battery is better, then I would first swap over your systems display (again leave the SSD alone for now) MacBook Pro 13" Retina Display Mid 2014 Display Assembly Replacement. Check it out if working shut down the system and disconnecting the battery carefully swap over the SSD MacBook Pro 13" Retina Display Mid 2014 SSD Replacement. Reconnect the battery and check your system - Done! A few last notes: As we can swap over the SSD’s you should be fine. I would still make a full backup of my system! Using TimeMachine on a fresh external drive (just in case). You also will want to make sure both systems are running the same macOS releases! This is important if yours is running a newer version as Apple has done a few revs to APFS now and systems which have HFS+ won’t have the needed firmware update to boot from the APFS drive.
