SSD for mid-2009 MacBook Pro

Stretch · Aug 17, 2012

iggibar said:
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.

This should only cause issues on older machines. If you have 2010 or new, leave the HDD where it is in the factory location, and put the SSD in the optical bay.

iggibar · Aug 17, 2012

Xterror said:
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.

It's actually a Crucial M225 128gb ssd. The ssd information is on the other side for some reason, so I decided to put an Apple sticker on the side that is shown

Stretch said:
This should only cause issues on older machines. If you have 2010 or new, leave the HDD where it is in the factory location, and put the SSD in the optical bay.

Hibernating issues are still going on in 2011 MBP models. I don't consider those to be old machines. You can look up issues on Apple's own forum. However, you can get around this this problem by completely disabling hibernation through terminal. I will say this though, from reading the many issues I've come across, I do get the feeling that there could be other reasons why people are having hibernating issues.

Stretch · Aug 17, 2012

iggibar said:
It's actually a Crucial M225 128gb ssd. The ssd information is on the other side for some reason, so I decided to put an Apple sticker on the side that is shown

Hibernating issues are still going on in 2011 MBP models. I don't consider those to be old machines. You can look up issues on Apple's own forum. However, you can get around this this problem by completely disabling hibernation through terminal. I will say this though, from reading the many issues I've come across, I do get the feeling that there could be other reasons why people are having hibernating issues.

Early 2011 MBP here. Haven't noticed any hibernation issues, but I also disabled the "deep sleep" option that saves the RAM to the drive, which may be why I haven't had any issues.

anynamewilldo · Aug 17, 2012

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.

Yeah, I know, but word from OWC is that 6G SSD performance and reliability when in the optical bay configuration is suspect, as noted below:

OWC said:
MacBook Pro 13" models: Apple does not support the use of 6Gb/s drives in the optical bay. While we have observed a high rate of success using SATA 3.0 6Gb/s drives in Apple 13" bays where 6Gb/s link is present, some systems may not operate properly with this setup. For guaranteed reliability/compatibility, we suggest 6Gb/s drives be used in the main drive bay only, and 3Gb/s hard drives or SSDs be used in the optical bay when a two-drive configuration is desired. We cannot guarantee proper or successful 6Gb/s drive operation in the Apple MacBook Pro 13" optical bay.

And, FWIW, laptop hard drives survived just fine long before the motion sensor came along.

iggibar · Aug 18, 2012

anynamewilldo said:
Yeah, I know, but word from OWC is that 6G SSD performance and reliability when in the optical bay configuration is suspect, as noted below:

We're not talking about 6G drives. We've been pretty much talking about SATA2, not SATA3 drives.

And, FWIW, laptop hard drives survived just fine long before the motion sensor came along.

Impossible. They might have seemed fine at the time, but aren't if you could actually go back in time to compare. First, HDDs have never been more reliable than they are now. Second, those old laptops were made of multiple metal parts held together by a plastic shell. That was flimsy, and could take the shock from sudden hard placements/slight drops. The MBP's optibay hdd/ssd setup attaches the drive directly to a sold aluminum frame(unibody). Any slight shock that the body feels, the hdd will feel. That's why it's bad, not because the HDD doesn't know how to respond to sudden motions, but because it gets put into that situation more than needed.

Xterror · Aug 22, 2012

So I got my 16gb ram, 64gb SSD and optical caddy. I put the SSD in the HD bay and the stock HHD in the optical. Everything seems to work fine, however I noticed my HDD says it's read only to me. I have not done anything to that HHD, that was the main drive before I put in the SSD so it has Mountain Lion and all my other files. Do I have to erase it before I can use it as my storage drive? I would like to avoid deleting all my stuff from in there that I need.

Thanks

kcollins · Aug 24, 2012

I know that when I made my switch to SSD on my mid-2009 15" MBP (3.06GHz Core 2 Duo, 8GB RAM), I made sure my time machine backup was up-to-date before I powered down for the install, and simply restored it from Time Machine to "install" everything on the SSD. That worked pretty well for me..

I can say that my MBP still absolutely smokes my mid-2011 27" iMac (Core i5 3.1GHz, 12GB ram)... I guess I should say that it smokes it in general usability, I'm sure some processor intensive tasks would give the win to the Core i5, but that SSD made this MBP just stupid-fast.

I can't wait to put an SSD in my iMac soon...

Btw, I got the SVP100S2512G Kingston 512GB (SATA 2) for mine... It was a perfect fit, and I didn't even lose space (had a 500GB 7200rpm disk before)...