Ssd Fitting To Macbook Pro

[The Dark Knight]

Just purchased a 256GB SSD for my MacBook Pro (should be delivered tomorrow). I've also purchased a 16GB flash drive to use as a boot drive for OSX Mavericks as I need to put the OS onto the SSD before restoring from my Time Machine Backup. I purchased a 2TB Seagate backup plus at the weekend for Time Machine use and to put any memory hungry files onto.

The old HDD is 320GB but measly read and write speeds hitting 74MB/s at the moment. The new SSD is good for 300MB/s write and 550MB/s read which will see huge speed improvements and I am already packing 8GB of RAM.

I've found a brilliant tutorial video on YouTube that shows exactly what I need to do but the only thing I am lacking now is a TORX T6 screwdriver. I've taken a look at the scews on the side of the HDD which need to be removed and put onto the SSD and they are ridiculously small. Will find one somewhere...

Looking forward to getting this sorted as current boot time to password screen was clocked at 1 minute 40 seconds! DOH!

[The Dark Knight]

Finally got this all sorted and installed and oh my god what a difference! Best investment I've made for my computer. The boot up time has dropped from 1 minute 40 seconds to 12 seconds :)

Everything opens very quickly indeed and I remembered to enable TRIM which is crucial for SSD's. I cannot recommend this enough. A brand new MacBook Pro with a HDD would not be anywhere near this quick. Disk tester showed the write time as hitting 330Mb/s and read time as 505Mb/s

[Stoney871]

Good result.

I run a PC with a hybrid primary drive and it runs very well on just that.

Planning a SSD upgrade to my gaming laptop soon.

[bensambrook]

I installed a 240gb SSD into my 2011 MacBook Pro and like you it boots in around 12 seconds and is super super fast. The best thing the SSD was only £80, best upgrade I've done.

[Stoney871]

The prices have dropped drastically in the last 12 - 18 months.

Definitely a far more attractive upgrade than it was when they cost a bomb.

[The Dark Knight]

Yes, happy days are here again lol! The 2TB Seagate HDD cost £70 and the SSD 256GB cost £83 from Crucial. No brand new computer with a HDD could touch this speed. I am packing 8GB of RAM too which is fine.

Not worried about it being 'only' 256GB now that I have the 2TB HDD. In any case, I still have 189GB free on the SSD as I moved large video files that I hardly use to the HDD.

[The Dark Knight]

I think my HDD must have been on it's way out to take so long to boot up. Although it was never this fast even in it's younger days.

Just as a test today to see the difference (sad I know) I decided to see how much I could get done in under 2 minutes. The old HDD took 1 minute 40 seconds to get to log on screen. Easily another 20 seconds from password entry until it had settled down so I could use Firefox etc. without it spitting feathers lol

So I fired it up, put password in, used Firefox to visit sky news briefly, opened mail to find one junk email which I deleted quickly, opened iTunes and played 5 seconds of 1 song, closed all programs and shut the computer down. All in 1 minute and 50 seconds!

Unreal!

[Hassen]

The best value for money upgrade for a computer is the SSD drive. Nicely done in making the jump. This is how computers are meant to run, at blistering speed.

I have a 3-4 year old Vaio that had a 500Gb HDD. I ditched my dvd drive, installed a caddy and loaded a 128Gb SSD drive just for running windows and programs. Also used a Crucial SSD drive as it was cheaper than other brands e.g Samsung. Kept the 500Gb HDD for all other media. The difference in speed is very impressive. Like you said, I boot up the laptop in under 45sec and resuming from sleep/hibernate is even quicker.

Highly recommend it to anyone who has a computer these days. Just remember to have a decent amount of ram to get the most out of it :)