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Upgrade 2009 MBA

J

jonomo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 28, 2005
197
0
Hello,
I picked up an older MBA (2009 as far as I can tell) 2.13ghz with 128GB SSD. I found it sorta sitting around the office and took ownership of it.

I'm interested in upgrading it without breaking the bank. I just want some increased speed and performance. I've been looking around and it seems like an SSD upgrade is the only way to go. I was looking at the OWC 60GB SDD swap for $159.

I noticed there are some other brands out there like Runcore, Kingspec, Supertalent and all sorts of other weird brands I've never heard of. Read speed = 80mb/sec and write speed of 40mb/sec. Not sure if these are reliable.

Anyone got any good advice and experience they can pass along? I would like to keep the price under US$200.
Cheers,
J
 
I think that the SSD you've identified will make a good candidate for improving your speed. The OWC Mercury Auro Pro 1.8″ is preferable due to its optimal garbage collection (SandForce controller), it will make the drive perform well over time, this is normally done with TRIM instructions in the OS.

However since TRIM is not available on OS X without a kernel extension hack it's nice to have a good garbage collection in the drive it self.

I do not know if the other drives you mentioned have good garbage collection or if they require the TRIM hack.

Anyway... maybe you should try to stretch for the 120 GB model? <120 GB models tend to have lower performance due to the lower amount of NAND chips (less chips that can be used for parallelizing the data transfer).
 
bolen said:
I think that the SSD you've identified will make a good candidate for improving your speed. The OWC Mercury Auro Pro 1.8″ is preferable due to its optimal garbage collection (SandForce controller), it will make the drive perform well over time, this is normally done with TRIM instructions in the OS.

However since TRIM is not available on OS X without a kernel extension hack it's nice to have a good garbage collection in the drive it self.

I do not know if the other drives you mentioned have good garbage collection or if they require the TRIM hack.

Anyway... maybe you should try to stretch for the 120 GB model? <120 GB models tend to have lower performance due to the lower amount of NAND chips (less chips that can be used for parallelizing the data transfer).
Click to expand...

I've read a few forums from 2009 that Kingspec does not work. I'm wondering if anyone has had experience with it recently.
 
jonomo said:
...
I'm interested in upgrading it without breaking the bank. I just want some increased speed and performance. I've been looking around and it seems like an SSD upgrade is the only way to go. I was looking at the OWC 60GB SDD swap for $159.
...
Click to expand...
The question are...
  • How much of a speed increase will you actually see?
  • Will 60GB be enough for what you use the Air for?
 
I put a 120GB OWC SSD in my mid-2009 Air more than a year ago, and it's absolutely brilliant. This little guy is still an absolute speed demon with the SSD in it, and after more than a year of heavy usage (full-time CS student and developer on the side), it's still just as fast as the day I put it in. Despite what others on here may say, the 9400M Airs are still wonderful machines if you give them a chance. Enjoy your new Air :)
 
Bear said:
The question are...
  • How much of a speed increase will you actually see?
  • Will 60GB be enough for what you use the Air for?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how much of an increase I'll see. I've seen videos and such but the real proof will be when it's upgraded and actually in my hands.

60GB should be enough because I use Google docs for everything and I have a main computer for all my media, a Macbook Pro.
 
jonomo said:
I've read a few forums from 2009 that Kingspec does not work. I'm wondering if anyone has had experience with it recently.
Click to expand...

I bought a kingspec 1.8" zif drive for my 2008 first gen air and had to send it back because it kept producing file system errors that could not be recovered from (ie. required a reinstall/re-clone from the backup). Now I have a photofast SSD installed that's free from problems and has garbage collection as well. But you probably need a sata drive if I'm not mistaken, so I don't know how kingspec stacks up in that department.
 
chambone said:
I bought a kingspec 1.8" zif drive for my 2008 first gen air and had to send it back because it kept producing file system errors that could not be recovered from (ie. required a reinstall/re-clone from the backup). Now I have a photofast SSD installed that's free from problems and has garbage collection as well. But you probably need a sata drive if I'm not mistaken, so I don't know how kingspec stacks up in that department.
Click to expand...

Uhmm looks like Kingspec is out of the question...

I found a dealer in Singapore selling the OWC for US$280, which I guess isn't too much of a markup.. but it still seems too expensive for me to upgrade.... I think I'd rather save up for a newer machine... till then I'll just have to make due...
 
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