SSD for mid-2009 MacBook Pro

I recently put an OWC SSD in my 2010 iMac, and the performance boost (which I wasn't even looking for - I just wanted a silent iMac!) is ridiculous. I was considering upgrading my MacBook Pro and going for a 2012 MBA, but I'm considering saving myself ~£1k for another year or two, and just buying an SSD to put in my MBP.

It's an extremely clean MBP, with almost nothing on it media-wise. I only use it for programming, and occasionally web development when on the move, so I don't need more than 80GB (though I will probably get a 128GB+ drive to be safe). I'll be running a clean install of ML with very few third party apps: Photoshop (Student), Coda 2, Spotify, Dropbox, XAMPP, and Netbeans. Quite honestly, that'll be it.

I took the back off my MBP yesterday to have a quick look for temperature sensors on the HD. I couldn't see anything obvious, but I didn't take the drive out. Is there any problem with straight up replacing the Apple HD with a Crucial M4, or OWC 3G SSD? I couldn't replace my iMac HD because of the temp sensor issue - I put the SSD in as an additional drive. I don't want to use third party software to control my fans - it just seems...risky.

MBP specs: 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB memory, 512MB graphics.

What do you guys think? A good idea? A waste of money? Do I need a standard 2.5" SSD? Crucial M4 suitable? My main concern is the old processor - will it cause a huge bottleneck?

I'd appreciate any advice.

Andy

andy9l said:

I recently put an OWC SSD in my 2010 iMac, and the performance boost (which I wasn't even looking for - I just wanted a silent iMac!) is ridiculous. I was considering upgrading my MacBook Pro and going for a 2012 MBA, but I'm considering saving myself ~£1k for another year or two, and just buying an SSD to put in my MBP.

It's an extremely clean MBP, with almost nothing on it media-wise. I only use it for programming, and occasionally web development when on the move, so I don't need more than 80GB (though I will probably get a 128GB+ drive to be safe). I'll be running a clean install of ML with very few third party apps: Photoshop (Student), Coda 2, Spotify, Dropbox, XAMPP, and Netbeans. Quite honestly, that'll be it.

I took the back off my MBP yesterday to have a quick look for temperature sensors on the HD. I couldn't see anything obvious, but I didn't take the drive out. Is there any problem with straight up replacing the Apple HD with a Crucial M4, or OWC 3G SSD? I couldn't replace my iMac HD because of the temp sensor issue - I put the SSD in as an additional drive. I don't want to use third party software to control my fans - it just seems...risky.

MBP specs: 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB memory, 512MB graphics.

What do you guys think? A good idea? A waste of money? Do I need a standard 2.5" SSD? Crucial M4 suitable? My main concern is the old processor - will it cause a huge bottleneck?

I'd appreciate any advice.

Andy

Click to expand...

To make life easier your mbp apple hd can be cloned with Carbon copy clone and using the ssd as external drive, go with M4 drive and 2.5 inches ssd.
then swap the drives after testing ssd externally ok.
Another choice will be if you have time machine back up, you can boot up with ssd as internal drive and move your time machine back up to the ssd, then you are in business.

andy9l said:

I recently put an OWC SSD in my 2010 iMac, and the performance boost (which I wasn't even looking for - I just wanted a silent iMac!) is ridiculous. I was considering upgrading my MacBook Pro and going for a 2012 MBA, but I'm considering saving myself ~£1k for another year or two, and just buying an SSD to put in my MBP.

It's an extremely clean MBP, with almost nothing on it media-wise. I only use it for programming, and occasionally web development when on the move, so I don't need more than 80GB (though I will probably get a 128GB+ drive to be safe). I'll be running a clean install of ML with very few third party apps: Photoshop (Student), Coda 2, Spotify, Dropbox, XAMPP, and Netbeans. Quite honestly, that'll be it.

I took the back off my MBP yesterday to have a quick look for temperature sensors on the HD. I couldn't see anything obvious, but I didn't take the drive out. Is there any problem with straight up replacing the Apple HD with a Crucial M4, or OWC 3G SSD? I couldn't replace my iMac HD because of the temp sensor issue - I put the SSD in as an additional drive. I don't want to use third party software to control my fans - it just seems...risky.

MBP specs: 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB memory, 512MB graphics.

What do you guys think? A good idea? A waste of money? Do I need a standard 2.5" SSD? Crucial M4 suitable? My main concern is the old processor - will it cause a huge bottleneck?

I'd appreciate any advice.

Andy

Click to expand...

The Crucial M4 is a 6G SATA3 ssd. Your computer has SATA1.5/2 connections. Technically, you can use a SATA3 ssd on a SATA2 connection, but it will get bottlenecked to the max SATA2 speed. Plus, lots of people have been having issues with earlier MBPs running SATA3 ssds on SATA2 connections.

Another thing that is very important when considering the purchase of an SSD is that performance decreases the more space is taken up. Where an HDD can run fine being almost filled up, an SSD needs as much space as possible to shift blocks around to maintain speed and order. With the stuff you mentioned earlier, I would not use 128gb. 240gb minimum is what I would recommend.
If you are a fan of Crucial, they do make very fine SSDs, this is what I would recommend. Crucial M225. I love this Crucial SSD!

I have a 240gb OWC Mercury Extreme Pro paired up to the Crucial M225 128gb via data doubler on my MBP, and it(M225) performs REAL GOOD! I bought them both used on ebay, and they both have 100% health(I took a chance and they both worked in my favor) I have Windows7 installed on the M225, and consistently get write speeds of ~240/250, and read speeds of ~200. I ONLY use Windows7 for gaming, so the space is not that big of a problem.

The OWC is obviously really good as well, as you might already know. I have OSX-ML on my 240gb OWC. The most data written on it comes from iTunes and iPhoto. Everything else is pretty basic, normal apps that everyone has. With that said, I now only have 164gb free of 239(after format)...if that helps you judge anything. Also, the more space you have on an SSD, the longer its life will be. This is because it's common for blocks to get damaged during writing/reading. The SSD blocks that certain block so that it is not used anymore to maintain speeds. This causes SSD space to very gradually decrease. If you have a 64gb ssd and a 128gb ssd, from this block error protection, the 128gb should automatically have double the life...if all other areas aren't taken into account.

I would like to point something out that was mentioned ^^
HDDs and SDDs do not write files onto each other the same way. They group blocks and packets differently from one another. Because of this, cloning an HDD to write onto an SSD is A BAD IDEA. Any sort of backup from an HDD to an SDD is a bad idea. You are basically forcing the ssd to copy data and write it in pattern that it does not recognize as readily as it would if it wrote all that data on its own fresh from the start. Two main problems this brings up is decreased SSD life, and decreased speeds because the SSD has been forced to write data in areas of the flash chips that it is not well suited to utilize its speed capabilities. The best analogy of this is an expert typist to a hunt-n-peck typer. You're forcing the typist to hunt-n-peck something he already knows how to do very efficiently...maybe by duct-taping all but 1 finger on each hand.
Start with a new OS install.

ycl1688 said:

To make life easier your mbp apple hd can be cloned with Carbon copy clone and using the ssd as external drive, go with M4 drive and 2.5 inches ssd.
then swap the drives after testing ssd externally ok.
Another choice will be if you have time machine back up, you can boot up with ssd as internal drive and move your time machine back up to the ssd, then you are in business.

Click to expand...

I won't need to clone - I have <250mb of my own files on the MBP, which I can copy to my iMac, then copy back to my MBP using FireWire. I do this every time a new OS comes out anyway - start completely afresh.

iggibar said:

The Crucial M4 is a 6G SATA3 ssd. Your computer has SATA1.5/2 connections. Technically, you can use a SATA3 ssd on a SATA2 connection, but it will get bottlenecked to the max SATA2 speed. Plus, lots of people have been having issues with earlier MBPs running SATA3 ssds on SATA2 connections.

Click to expand...

Yep, I was aware of the SATA II limitations - was the same for my iMac, so I got the OWC 3G drive since that's SATA II. I have just been reading about the problems with the Crucial M4 in MacBooks - it looks extremely unstable on pre-SATA III Macs...

iggibar said:

Another thing that is very important when considering the purchase of an SSD is that performance decreases the more space is taken up. Where an HDD can run fine being almost filled up, an SSD needs as much space as possible to shift blocks around to maintain speed and order. With the stuff you mentioned earlier, I would not use 128gb. 240gb minimum is what I would recommend.

Click to expand...

But my iMac (which has more than my laptop on it) is currently at 9.7GB used of a 240GB OWC SSD. I seriously doubt I'll need more than 128GB for my laptop. OS X ML is ~8GB, and all those apps come to about 2GB, then <250MB of my own data. All of my media is on my iMac 1TB original internal HD. My SSDs will just contain small work files/documents (most <200kb website files), the OS, and the apps.

iggibar said:

If you are a fan of Crucial, they do make very fine SSDs, this is what I would recommend. Crucial M225. I love this Crucial SSD!

Click to expand...

Not a fan, never used them before - only reason I know of them is because of their huge online advertising campaign on various Mac related websites.

iggibar said:

Start with a new OS install

Click to expand...

Yes, I would always be starting from scratch on my MBP after a new SSD - clean install of ML, then install apps from CD + App store, then copy data across FireWire.

Yeah, I was in a similar situation when I was first looking for the first big SSD purchase. I thought it would be a good idea to future proof(for the short time anyways) my ssd by choosing the SATA3 versions, but the problems are unbearable. SATA2 works just fine for me.

If you think 128gb is really as much as you need, the guy(on ebay) that I bought mine from still has some more available. It's refurbished. It's an awesome ssd for $70 with 100% health. I'm happy I chose it over the others.
I just took some quick pics of these if it might help in any way to compare.


This is my MBP's M225 score on windows:


It's a good drive.

Oh God, you should never have shown me these tracking applications - I'm going to be as paranoid as I am with my MBP battery health! When that bar hits 99%, it'll bring a tear to your eye!

Thanks for the heads-up, I'm still researching...

I have a MBP 13" late 2011 model. I'm pretty sure mine is Sata3, would I have the heat issues if I change to an SSD that you mention? I was given a 64gb intel SSD that i was going to use to replace my 5400rpm 500gb on my mbp and setup the 500gb as external storage, but after reading this I see that 64gb is too little. I'm very interested now in a 240gb+ SSD now but wanted to get more info on making sure my MBP is compatible. This is my first forums I look at, will be doing some more research as well since I'm new to mac.

I guess I can ask this too since I see some very knowledgeable people replying on here. Can I setup that 64gb ssd as an external with windows 7, for the few times I need a windows OS and boot my MBP from that external drive into windows 7?

Thanks!

Xterror said:

I have a MBP 13" late 2011 model. I'm pretty sure mine is Sata3, would I have the heat issues if I change to an SSD that you mention? I was given a 64gb intel SSD that i was going to use to replace my 5400rpm 500gb on my mbp and setup the 500gb as external storage, but after reading this I see that 64gb is too little. I'm very interested now in a 240gb+ SSD now but wanted to get more info on making sure my MBP is compatible. This is my first forums I look at, will be doing some more research as well since I'm new to mac.

I guess I can ask this too since I see some very knowledgeable people replying on here. Can I setup that 64gb ssd as an external with windows 7, for the few times I need a windows OS and boot my MBP from that external drive into windows 7?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Correct! The 2011 MBP lineup was the first year MBP that featured SATA3. You shouldn't have ANY problems with an SSD causing heat. It's the hods that are a heat issue. Unfortunately, bootcamp will not allow you to install windows via a usb powered HDD or SSD. One way to go around this is to install the ssd into the optical drive via an OWC OptiBay. I have this in my MBP, and it looks like this when you have an ssd installed:

Ah I see, so you'll have to take your optical drive out, which I never use, to setup a 2nd SSD?

Also on a different subject, I see apple only offers 8gb max for ram upgade for $200 lol. I was about to order from newegg for under $50, but I see a 16gb apple corsair memory kit too for 100$ what are the chances my MBP will recognize the 16gb?

Xterror said:

Ah I see, so you'll have to take your optical drive out, which I never use, to setup a 2nd SSD?

Click to expand...

Yes. You can either buy an optical disc enclosure, or just buy a new usb disc reader/write.

Also on a different subject, I see apple only offers 8gb max for ram upgade for $200 lol. I was about to order from newegg for under $50, but I see a 16gb apple corsair memory kit too for 100$ what are the chances my MBP will recognize the 16gb?

Click to expand...

Your 13" MBP can read up to 16gb of 1333MHz of DDR3 ram in pairs of 8gb sticks.

I would reccomend either one of these:
Crucial 16GB 1333MHz
G-Skill 16GB 1333MHz
Patriot 16GB 1333MHz


They're all going to work well. I was also going to recommend OWC's ram, but their site is off-line right now.

So those memories you recommended don't say apple, but they're still 100% compatible? Is the extra 15$ for something like this

Newegg.com - G.SKILL 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Memory for Apple Model FA-1333C9D-16GSQ

Just because it says for apple, but same as non apple approved?

Xterror said:

So those memories you recommended don't say apple, but they're still 100% compatible? Is the extra 15$ for something like this

Newegg.com - G.SKILL 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Memory for Apple Model FA-1333C9D-16GSQ

Just because it says for apple, but same as non apple approved?

Click to expand...

Don't waste your money on that. There's nothing special about Apple's lineup of computers that would require special ram.

iggibar said:

Don't waste your money on that. There's nothing special about Apple's lineup of computers that would require special ram.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the great help! i'll order one of the 16gb you linked me. I'm also going to order this Caddy for the X25-E Extreme SATA SSD 64gb I was given. I think it's too small, but i'll see if I can somehow manage to put osx ML, Adobe Lightroom, CodeBlocks, Eclipse and few more programs, and use the stock 500gb for storage of everything else. Do you think it's possible?

Thanks again for all your help!

I guess thread-jacking is okay on these forums. Rare.

andy9l said:

I guess thread-jacking is okay on these forums. Rare.

Click to expand...

I apologize, I thought your questioned were answered. I had an SSD question on MBP so I figured I'd ask where people were already asking very similar questions so there doesn't have to be 100 threads asking the same.

I just thought I would chime in here.

I have a MBP13m2012, to which I have installed 16GB of RAM from OWC, an OWC data doubler (optical drive replacement caddy) and an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 480GB SSD. I moved the stock 750GB hard drive to the the optical drive bay and installed the SSD in the primary drive bay. Overall, it runs very fast and I like it

I have Windows 7 installed, running under Virtual Box (free software from Oracle), running off the SSD. It runs pretty fast too. I have the VM set up for 8GB of RAM, leaving 8GB of RAM for everything else when I am running Windows.

Additional details - I am running Firevault2 on both drives and it seems to be pretty speedy. The stock hard drive is limited in use. I have about 500GB of music on it, as well as a 100GB encrypted disk partition for stuff at work (so, encrypted disk image on an encrypted drive). I only mount that drive when I need to listen to music or use the work disk image, or if I want to make a quick "off disk backup" of something on the SSD (until I can make a more proper backup using an external drive).

Finally, I have a couple of small RAM disks set up to improve performance with respect to temporary files. See below for more info:

anynamewilldo said:

I just thought I would chime in here.

I have a MBP13m2012, to which I have installed 16GB of RAM from OWC, an OWC data doubler (optical drive replacement caddy) and an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 480GB SSD. I moved the stock 750GB hard drive to the the optical drive bay and installed the SSD in the primary drive bay. Overall, it runs very fast and I like it

I have Windows 7 installed, running under Virtual Box (free software from Oracle), running off the SSD. It runs pretty fast too. I have the VM set up for 8GB of RAM, leaving 8GB of RAM for everything else when I am running Windows.

Additional details - I am running Firevault2 on both drives and it seems to be pretty speedy. The stock hard drive is limited in use. I have about 500GB of music on it, as well as a 100GB encrypted disk partition for stuff at work (so, encrypted disk image on an encrypted drive). I only mount that drive when I need to listen to music or use the work disk image, or if I want to make a quick "off disk backup" of something on the SSD (until I can make a more proper backup using an external drive).

Finally, I have a couple of small RAM disks set up to improve performance with respect to temporary files. See below for more info:

Code:

/dev/disk3     256Mi  6.1Mi  250Mi     3%      1565    63969    2%   /private/tmp
/dev/disk4      64Mi  1.5Mi   62Mi     3%       389    15993    2%   /private/var/run

Click to expand...

Keep in mind, the MBP has a built-in gyroscope to sense when there is possible movement that can potentially cause damage to an HDD. It works by automatically sending a signal to the hdd to go into the "park" position before the sensors on a regular hdd could even pick it up on its own. This only works in the stock hdd bay. This is why I would not place an HDD in the optibay.

And, sorry for thread jacking.

iggibar said:

Keep in mind, the MBP has a built-in gyroscope to sense when there is possible movement that can potentially cause damage to an HDD. It works by automatically sending a signal to the hdd to go into the "park" position before the sensors on a regular hdd could even pick it up on its own. This only works in the stock hdd bay. This is why I would not place an HDD in the optibay.

And, sorry for thread jacking.

Click to expand...

Good to know, When my caddy comes next week i'll put the 64gb SSD on that and leave the HDD where it is.

Xterror said:

Good to know, When my caddy comes next week i'll put the 64gb SSD on that and leave the HDD where it is.

Click to expand...

Sounds like a good idea at first, but utilizing the optibay for your primary OS causes issues with sleeping/waking/hibernating. You can test it out, and see if the placement causes you any issues. It didn't really cause me too many issues, but I was using drive that was already known to cause issues.

iggibar said:

Click to expand...

is that Apple drive in your caddy a SSD or HDD? I would guess a SSD since you just suggested not to put a HDD. Thanx Just trying to learn as much as I can before I decide what to do once my product comes in.