So I scored a cheap Macbook Pro from mid 2012 on auction. I've been regretting selling the one I had years ago, so I was pleased to find one for a good price is very fair condition. It already had its original hard drive replaced with an SSD, ad the old hard drive put in an adapter where the optical drive used to be. I managed to snatch up the package on my way to a work trip over a couple of days, and I prepared for this by bringing screwdrivers and two better SSDs to put into it. One Samsung 870 Evo 250GB for the system drive, and an oddball HP Enterprise (rebranded Samsung) 960GB drive to use as general storage in the optical drive bay.
Once I arrived at the hotel room I threw a towel on the desk, pulled out the tools and drives, and set to work. Swapping the drives was very easy. Just a matter of undoing some easy to access screws. This machine did however have another small problem, that is seemingly very common with unibody Macs of this era. Loose display hinges. It presents itself as the display being a bit floppy back and forth. This is due to the hinge screws coming slightly undone on the display side. This was also an easy fix, as it turned out. I just had to unplug all the wires going to the display, undo the screws holding the hinges to the main body, pop it off, and then slide the plastic hinge cover to one side and get access to the hinge screws. It's really surprising how servicable these things are!

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I then put it all back together and put it into online recovery mode (with a key-combo tip by 82mhz)
Since I'm at a hotel, the wifi is annoying with a captive portal and crap, so I decidded to, for the first time try internet sharing from the Macbook Air, to bridge the wifi to ethernet. This worked flawlessly and the MBP installed without any problems.

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