Upgrade to SSD & Clean Mountain Lion Install

Joined
Aug 8, 2009
Messages
127
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8
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Location
London
Your Mac's Specs
17" Macbook Pro (2009)
Hi,

I have a 17" 2.8GHz Mid 2009 MBP that I use as my main computer. I travel around Europe as a photographer so using a MBP works just fine for me at home and away.

I work with some huge files in Photoshop CS6 and found my mac was quite slow sometimes and upgraded the ram to 8gb about 6mths ago. I haven’t seen much in the way of speed improvement to be honest, and I'm still getting about half the Pages in's amount in the page out's ... if that makes sense !!

I want to upgrade to Mountain Lion but would like to do a clean install and install a SSD to speed things up.

What’s the best way to do this ?? Is it possible to just install the new drive then use my original SN disc then upgrade to ML ?? Then install my software like Photoshop etc ?

I’m really not sure lol


I use external drives to keep all of my files for work, and only have the OS and apps on my 500gb drive, the occasionally I'll transfer some images from the camera until I get home. I've seen the 256GB Crucial SSD at a reasonable price.

256GB, 2.5-inch Solid State Drive, upgrades for Apple MacBook Pro 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (17-inch DDR3) MC226LL/A Mid-2009 Laptop/Notebook, CT1745494 from Crucial.com

Will I get a noticeable speed improvement with this drive ?

Apologies for the drawn out post with probably stupid questions but It suddenly dawned on me that I should get some advice from experts lol

Cheers

J
 
Joined
Mar 9, 2011
Messages
751
Reaction score
4
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Your Mac's Specs
mbp 15 2009, mbp 13 2010
I believer you have the snow leopard disc, you can upgrade to ML.
1. get an external enclosure, putting the ssd drive in it and clone the internal drive with CCC
carbon copy clone and test for the ssd externally with reboot when chime sounds press option key. if okay, sweep ssd with internal drive.
2. install your ML on SSD should do the job.
After all this is done, your mbp should be blazing fast, you did the right thing to upgrade the RAM.
 

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