Macbook Pro Upgrades

Hello,
I was hoping someone could help me out with a recommendation for a upgrade to a SSD and possibly a RAM upgrade from 4gb to 8gb. I was going to get them from apple, but then I found out how ridiculous there prices were. I was thinking around 250gb for the SSD. Its a late 2011 15 inch macbook pro. I want one of the best ones you can get for the money, but no more than 400 dollars.

Thank you!!

ram is pretty inexpensive and 250gb ssd drive you can pick up for both about $400 US more or less.
Samsung, Kingston, Crucial are pretty good for ram, keep on an eye on newegg store , they sell crucial M4 ssd for that capacity for $300 or less, also samsung and intel sell good ssd.
OWC has pretty good ssd, it is high priced though. Keep an eye on ebay also look for samsung 830 series, you are going for 6gb/sec type, it is the fastest in the market.

Hello Phil,

Late 2011 MBP15. You can upgrade the RAM up to 16GB. Crucial, Corsair and OWC make decent kits. If you are in the US then go for OWC. Past memory upgrades have been Crucial. Will be using Corsair for the first time shortly in a MBP17 late 2011.

SSD. I would go for a Samsung 830 range. They are more reliable and heard good reports on stability and use on MACs. I bought a 830 512GB last Friday. Plan to put into a MBP17.

Also, if you are going for SSD. Make sure you optimise your OSX install for it. Search Google for some good guides.

I think that I will get an 8GB RAM kit from Crucial (seems like a great deal) Amazon.com: 8GB Kit (4GBx2) Upgrade for a Apple MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2011) System (DDR3 PC3-10600, NON-ECC, ): Computers & Accessories

and a 256GB samsung 830.
Amazon.com: Samsung 830 - Series MZ-7PC256N/AM 256 GB 2.5 Inch SATA III MLC Internal SSD Laptop Kit with Norton Ghost 15: Electronics

I saw online that there were a lot of trays to make the SSD fit into different computers, but the 830 should fit right into the MBP without any additions, right?

Does anyone have any recommendations for software to clone your harddrive? I hear the norton ghost 15 is not that good. I was thinking about the carbon copy cloner, which is free.

Also, can I make my old HDD into a portable harddrive? Do I have to buy anything to make that possible? I'd love to have a 512GB HDD for free or really cheap.

Thanks so much.