SSD is it worth it?

I currently have a 512 G HD that came with my 15" MBP back in May 2012. I have been following the pricing on the SSDs and noticed that the prices have been coming down over the last couple of months. My question is, would it be worth it to drop in a newer SSD to replace my current one?

I am running about 350G of data on my current one so it is not out of play yet, but I am putting quite a bit of new material on now (I teach) and some of it is in larger video files. But would it be worth it to expand to a larger drive and get the speed bump from the SSDs?

Replacing a spinning drive with a SSD will result in a good speed boost. However, unless you're prepared to buy one that's large enough to meet your needs, you might want to wait a bit more until prices come down on those.

Smalltowntech said:

My question is, would it be worth it to drop in a newer SSD to replace my current one?

I am running about 350G of data on my current one so it is not out of play yet, but I am putting quite a bit of new material on now (I teach) and some of it is in larger video files. But would it be worth it to expand to a larger drive and get the speed bump from the SSDs?

Click to expand...

If your goal is to migrate that 350gig of data to a new SSD + have extra pace for future needs. I'm not sure of your budget...but have you priced 500+gig SSD's'? They're still not cheap.

But of course if the prices aren't a deterrent...an SSD is much faster than a traditional spinning HD.

- Nick

Hello Smalltowntech,

the answer is yes, yes and yes. And here is why:

My macbook pro mid 2009 was still working great with a 500GB HDD. However I was hearing from a lot of people how by upgrading to SSD would be the best upgrade you could ever do to your computer.
I watched a couple of youtube videos on how to take my macbook pro 13" apart, access the HDD and replace it with an SSD. The video was quite simple and whilst I was at it, I replaced my 4GB Ram with 8GB Ram. At the bottom I will also add my black magic speed tests.

So this is what I did, I bought an SSD from crucial on amazon for about 150 UK pounds. I then ordered the tool kit for it which was roughly 15 pounds. I'm pretty sure all of this is cheaper in the US. We pay european prices over here

Either way, I also watched a video on youtube on how to mirror the HDD to my SSD. I followed the steps on youtube and used Disk Utility which is a program on your mac. After it copied everything in about an hour, I shutdown my macbook completely and disconnected it from the power supply.

followed the youtube video on my iPad and replaced the HDD with the SSD.

Thats it.

My boot time went from 70 seconds to 15 seconds. Everything you do now just feels super fast and it is the best upgrade I made to my 4 year old Macbook. Even if you macbook is just a year old, it will be faster, a lot faster than you are use to.

Now that I have SSD which is outshining laptops with HDD, I will keep my macbook for another 3 years at least because I was toying with the idea of getting a new macbook pro with SSD. The update cost me roughly 175 pounds for a massive speed boost which I am very happy about.

I hope this helps,

Sorry, forgot to upload the Blackmagic speed test. Here you go

Saw the Crucial 960 GB SSD on Amazon a couple days ago for $540. If I was ready to upgrade from a HD in a MBP, think I'd go for it. Don't know about 1 TB SSDs coming much below that over the next few months.

At the same time, if you haven't got a backup in place, I'd spend the cash on that first.