Upgraded HDD to SSD drive and unusuably slow

[robhilken]

Hi,
I have a late 2007 Macbook Pro, the first intel model.

I replaced the HDD with a new Kingston SSD - Kingston SSDNow UV400 120GB 2.5inch SATA III SSD

The install process took 3 days and even though it boots eventually now it is impossible to use as it is so slow. There is obviously something wrong.

I have the old hard drive in a caddy in the superdrive bay and I can still boot to that, and I ran a Disk Utility check and found no errors.

Could the SSD drive be incompatible? Is there a better drive to buy that will work?

Any suggestions or pointers gratefully received!

Best,

Rob

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Welcome to Mac-Forums..

Grab the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test and run it on your SSD. Even though the SSD is a SATA III drive, your 2007 MBP only supports SATA 1..it's not until late 2008 that SATA 2 came to the MBP. So you are looking at a max speed of 1.5 Gb/s or 187 MB/s. So see how close Blackmagic says you are to that speed and we can start from there..

 

[robhilken]

For some reason I can't install Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, it just crashes immediately when I open it. I'm running 10.6.8 so it should work.

Is there another good disk speed test I can use?

Thanks,
Rob

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Please click on the Apple logo on the top left, then chose About This Mac and tell us all the details on the pop-up that appears..

 

[harryb2448]

Seems the SATA III Kingston is not backwards compatible with SATA being four times the speed. For mine I think it will have to be taken out and returned for a SATA II 3Gb/ps drive.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

SATA III is backward compatible all the way down to SATA, so that should be fine. I have a SATA III SSD in my iMac that only supports SATA II and Blackmagic reports speeds consistent with SATA II..

 

[ferrarr]

It looks like the Kingston SSD is not compatible with SATA, only SATA II, https://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/consumer/suv400s3.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Good catch Bob..from a technical perspective it should be backward compatible..but they are likely using a SATA controller that doesn't support it for cost reasons..that will surely explain the unreliable performance..amazing that it's even working to begin with..

 

[harryb2448]

Not true Ashwin particularlyu of Kingston and Samsung EVO's on anything earlier than 2009.

 

[robhilken]

OK thanks for the info, I'll likely have to get a new SSD and use this somewhere else then.

For info my mac info is:

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro3,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP31.0070.B07
SMC Version (system): 1.16f11
Serial Number (system): W8726020X92
Hardware UUID: 00000000-0000-1000-8000-001B639B9564
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

 

[robhilken]

Can you recommend a good and inexpensive SSD drive that will work?

 

[chscag]

Good and inexpensive are sometimes mutually exclusive. But, we recommend going to OWC (www.macsales.com) or crucial.com and look over what they have. You should be able to find something that will work for you.

 

[pm-r]

Can you recommend a good and inexpensive SSD drive that will work?

I've had and used both an old OCZ Vertex 3 which worked quite well but started to eventually act a bit flaky but did work, but I replaced a year or so ago with a Crucial BX200 SSD with my 2007 MBPro. It's still working well.

I mainly added the SSD originally to get better battery usage as the SATA Bus speed is so limited as already mentioned.

PS: I've never liked or had good luck with Kingston products with my Macs, and besides they were usually always overpriced as well.




- Patrick
======