Upgrade advice for MacBook Pro

Sirs,

I have recently retired and have decided to put some juice into my mid 2012 MacBook Pro 13", could you please advise as to the best SSD Hard Drive upgrade and Maximum RAM upgrade please?

Many thanks,

Al

Your Mid MacBook Pro 2012 13" model can accept up to 16 GB of memory:

Maximum Memory 16 GB (Actual) 8 GB (Apple)
Memory Slots 2 - 204-pin PC3-12800 (1600 MHz) DDR3 SO-DIMM

As for a SSD upgrade, we recommend the SSDs sold by Mac Sales (OWC)
They also sell the memory for your MBP.

www.macsales.com

Just wanted to mention…DON'T put any "juice" into your MacBook Pro!!! Liquid spills with Apple laptops is all too common (sad stories here all the time)!

- Nick

p.s. Just kidding. I know what you mean. The phrase "juice & MacBook Pro" puts shivers down my spine!

Thanks for the tips, but I'm in the UK, so macsales are out unfortunately.

Ozalid said:

Thanks for the tips, but I'm in the UK, so macsales are out unfortunately.

Click to expand...

Then go with Crucial UK.

- Nick

so what is the best upgrade for the HDD looking at maybe 1Tb (also in the UK), I have upgraded the memory to 16Gb using crucial and it what a difference when using Lightroom

Not sure if you're considering SSD or not, but using an SSD in a MacBook Pro, using one with a regular drive is a frustrating affair. The speed bump is, insane. Far more than bumping ram for me. I did it on my previous MacBook Pro before I got the retina, (an OWC drive) and WOW.

In Australia I find OWC still the best and fasest way to purchase. They beat local Mac dealers hands down on prices and delivery within seven days.

OK, so its going to be £300 ($430) to upgrade to 16Gb/1TB, I have watched lots of YouTube vids on how to do the hardware, a child could do it, what is bothering me is that I cant find a similar idiots guide to preparing the software/OS transfer.

I use time machine to do regular backups to a portable hard drive, but I'm not clear at all about the procedure necessary transferring to SSD and would be grateful for any advice, as I always say, could you explain it to me as if I was 12 please.

Kindest regards,
Al

These two links should be helpful for data transfer (from our friends at OWC and Apple):

http://eshop.macsales.com/articles/how-to-transfer-your-data-from-your-old-drive-to-a-new-drive
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204350

To facilitate this process…the old HD (once removed) needs to be installed in an external hard drive case/housing & plugged into the computer containing the new SSD.

By the way…are you saying that you're upgrading to 16gig of ram and a 1 terabyte SSD for £300 ($430)? If so…wow…the price of 1 terabyte SSD's have really come down! On top of this…prices in the UK are usually a good bit higher than here in the US. So $430 for these two upgrades seems pretty reasonable.

- Nick

OWC is great. The Mercury extreme drive I got came fast and still works today. Excellent SSD drives.

And, a 1TB SSD drive for how much?? It's been a while since I've looked, but last I remember it was over a grand Canadian dollars (which at the time was at parity with US)

Edit: just looked. WOW have prices dropped on SSD!!

Groovetube said:

Edit: just looked.

Click to expand...

Me too (OWC).

Groovetube said:

WOW have prices dropped on SSD!!

Click to expand...

They sure have. Even on larger SSD's (1 terabyte)…which used to command a big premium.

- Nick

Just for your amusement, when I worked for Wang Laboratories (pioneers in computer science) around 25 years ago, I Gb of RAM would be around $100,000.

Ozalid said:

Just for your amusement, when I worked for Wang Laboratories (pioneers in computer science) around 25 years ago, I Gb of RAM would be around $100,000.

Click to expand...

Don't get us started…too many "old-timers" around here with these sort of stories!

Yes…$100,000 for 1gig of ram around 1990 is pretty mind-boggling! 1gig of ram was almost unheard of in 1990…when the average Apple computer came with 1 meg of ram (and upgrades weren't cheap)!

- Nick

Ozalid said:

OK, so its going to be £300 ($430) to upgrade to 16Gb/1TB,
Al

Click to expand...

Not sure how much a hard drive would cost but I paid about £130 for 16gb ram from Crucial for my 15" MBP. The difference was startling. And then it died but no matter.

badshoehabit said:

Not sure how much a hard drive would cost but I paid about £130 for 16gb ram from Crucial for my 15" MBP. The difference was startling. And then it died but no matter.

Click to expand...

16Gb Ram is £56 and the 1TB Drive is £254, so to be pedantic £310.00, still fairly reasonable in my opinion. But stuff only gets cheaper doesn't it?

Just to finish this thread off and to say thanks for all the contributions, both funny and useful!

I installed 16Gb Ram from Crucial, which made a small difference, maybe more than I realised and just recently after getting a 'Black Friday' offer from Crucial on the CT750MX300SSD 750Mb drive at £126, decided to take the plunge on the SSD upgrade.

As recommended by Crucial I did a 'clean' install of OSX, importing my data after, which was a piece of cake and now my beloved old MacBook is full of p1ss and vinegar, ready to take whatever I throw at it and more, its such a pleasure to use I cant keep off it.

So thanks again to all and I hope you all have a Great Christmas and a crash-free New Year!

Kind regards, Al

Well look at this, just came across this old thread and I'm pleased to say that I'm sitting here three years later on the same macBook Pro which has performed faultlessly for the past three years since doing the upgrades and I had forgotten how helpful folks had been to me with my upgrade questions. However, the reason why I'm back here is that my Mac has suddenly and intermittently started to go to my login screen when I am in the middle of something, its not a biggie but it is a minor pain in the ***, I'm on the latest everything and cant recall if this started on the latest Mojave 10.14.5 upgrade, does anyone have any (printable) suggestions please?

Kind regards,
Al

Can you be a bit more specific about what "when I am in the middle of something" means? I ask because I have set my machine up to go to sleep after a time and when I tap the key to wake it up again, the login appears (I have that set, too). But when I want to watch a long video (movie), I have to remember to un-set all that because "in the middle of" the movie, the timer goes off, it goes to sleep, login screen, etc.

So, what is the "something" that you are in the middle of? And what did you install or change right before the problem started?

MacInWin said:

Can you be a bit more specific about what "when I am in the middle of something" means? I ask because I have set my machine up to go to sleep after a time and when I tap the key to wake it up again, the login appears (I have that set, too). But when I want to watch a long video (movie), I have to remember to un-set all that because "in the middle of" the movie, the timer goes off, it goes to sleep, login screen, etc.

So, what is the "something" that you are in the middle of? And what did you install or change right before the problem started?

Click to expand...

Good questions, well I have just been on ebay and it repeatedly went to my login screen, I cant say I have noticed that it does it during a particular task, its just an intermittent thing and I wondered if it was a known issue?

BTW, I have run Onyx a couple of times to no avail, its really getting on my nerves now, I just enter my system password and it goes back to where I was no problem, its nothing to do with the screen saver or sleep mode, but something is triggering it.