Hard Drives; adding an ssd or replacing hdd with ssd altogether? Which is best?

I have a mid 2010 unibody 13 inch macbook 7,1 a1342 and Ive been replacing and upgrading lately and I have a couple questions regarding hard drives.

I read that for my macbook using a sata 2.0 ssd is best because my macbook can't utilize the speeds of a sata 3.0 ssd for some technical reason. I currently have 8gb RAM(that i upgraded to a couple years ago) and the original hdd that came with the macbook. I am wondering if it makes a difference, and if so how much of a difference, if I add a sata 2.0 ssd in place of my cd drive or if I just replace my hdd with a new sata 2.0 ssd? Ive read that by using the sata 2.0 ssd I can achieve read/write speeds of upwards of 3gb/s . I have simply been unable to find any information on whether or not adding or replacing is a better idea and why.

I am quite comfortable in performing any repairs and/or upgrades myself as Ive been doing it with success since Ive had this macbook. So whether one is more involved than another is of no difference to me. I am simply looking for the most speed, while maintaining stability. Any and all input is greatly appreciated. Furthermore, if anyone has any suggestions as to which make/model of ssd is the best quality for the money would also be helpful, as I am quite poor at the moment. My computer is an integral part of my livelihood and so improving its abilities helps me the most.

Thank you very much.

You won't find a new 2.5" SSD in anything but SATA3. So save your money, check your country's popular online tech sales website, and get whatever is cheap and will suit your needs.

SATA is a backward compatible technology, so a SATA 3 drive will work with a device that only supports SATA 2. That said, your HDD right now is probably yielding you around 80 MB/s read/write speeds, a SATA 2 SSD will bump that up to around 150 MB/s. The question is whether it's worth investing in that on a machine that is 8 years old. The new MBP's have PCIe SSDs that get up to 1.5 GB/s or more in performance.

matthewolsen said:

...if I add a sata 2.0 ssd in place of my cd drive or if I just replace my hdd with a new sata 2.0 ssd?

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If you install an SSD in your MacBook...for best performance...you would want to install it in the current HD bay...since the transfer speeds of the HD bay are faster than the optical drive bay. Then you can also purchase the proper bracket to install your current HD into the optical drive bay (if desired).

As far as cost. Definitely something to consider. Don't go "nuts-o" and buy a costly 1 terabyte SSD for an 8 year old computer. I have seen rather low cost SSD and small capacity SSD drives at a local electronics store (I think something like $29 for a 128gig SSD).

HTH,

- Nick

Raz0rEdge said:

SATA is a backward compatible technology, so a SATA 3 drive will work with a device that only supports SATA 2. That said, your HDD right now is probably yielding you around 80 MB/s read/write speeds, a SATA 2 SSD will bump that up to around 150 MB/s. The question is whether it's worth investing in that on a machine that is 8 years old. The new MBP's have PCIe SSDs that get up to 1.5 GB/s or more in performance.

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Agreed and I'd add couple of things...

While the transfer rate is an important indicator for the performance, the response time is more important in my view. HDDs generally have 3-5 ms response time, while the SSDs have 0.1-0.3 ms response time. In another word, the SSDs are ten times faster or more, than HDDs as far as response time is concerned. The PCI x4 NVMe drives are even faster, or flashdrive as Apple calls them, around 0.02 - 0.05 ms.

I do invest in older machines with latest technologies that can be installed. For example, add a 512 GB Samsung SSD to a MBP for a year or so and use it for backup purposes afterward. It may cost more than a hard drive, but I make up the difference afterward by doing so. And yes, I've even added a 1 TB SSD and no, not from Apple or OWC... ;D