I posted a feeler for this machine a couple of weeks ago, it’s super clean, 4GB, 250GB HDD, 2.4GHz CPU/320M GPU. It’s run great over the nearly 4 years since we bought it brand new, battery in good shape with 91.1% health with 299 cycles.
Recently it’s been chugging along a little slow, I was thinking maybe the OEM HDD was getting janky (another reason I didn’t think it was prudent to sell “as is”), lots of beach balling (my wife is mellow, she only mentioned it a couple of times, but it was driving _me_ crazy and it’s not even my machine
)
Anyway, the going price was a little low given the replacement cost of a new-er-ish machine, plus the hassle of selling, shipping, payment, buying a replacement machine, potentially inheriting problems (where this machine has a known, near perfect history).
So my other plan - which is where I went - was to swap out the 250GB HDD for a ~250GB SSD, and upgrade the RAM from 4GB to 8GB.
I went with Crucial products for both, the new MX100 series SSD (256GB) and their *8GB RAM upgrade - great warranties with 3 on the SSD and lifetime on the RAM (better SSD warranties on some “pro” products, but plenty for the price of the MX series).
* Side note: the ’10 MBP and MB (white) 13” machines won’t clock down faster RAM - I found this out after I tried my 1333 OEM RAM from my 15” MBP (that caused startup issues and led me to find plenty of sources indicating it’s an issue). You can mix a 1333MHz DIMM with a 1066 and the machine will clock them to the slower speed.
Simple install: philips screws, remove bottom panel, snap RAM out and new RAM in, test, GTG. The SSD was a snap too, I swapped the internal out for the SSD, just a few screws to remove the bracket, small Torx to remove the shock mounts and move them to the SSD, one SATA cable.
I moved the HDD to an external USB interface from Sabrent, pretty nice, it’ll handle 2.5 and 3.5” IDE or SATA, and has an external power supply for drives that need it.
Booted from the external (old internal HDD) via Power+Option into the recovery partition, fired up Disk Utility, partitioned the SSD, set it for GUID for booting.
Then I used DU to simple restore from the external HDD with the SSD as the target. ~2.5 hours later, the original drive was perfectly imaged over to the new SSD. Removed external and boot. Done.
Figured it would be interesting for folks who are considering selling vs. upgrading, or would like to upgrade but might be worried about the effort. This machine still has plenty of processing power for how it’s used, currently running perfect on 10.9.4. I also used [free] Trim Enabler to, well, enable Trim How does it run? See below
A couple of folks in my feeler thread asked me to follow up, so that’s another reason I started this thread.
Spectacular. Starts in 1/5th the time, you can click on apps and they bounce _once_ and they’re loaded. Click on Word, Excel, Safari, iTunes ... and they open in a second, no lag.
Easily worth it ... was about and hour of actual effort, even including the ordering The machine is better than before, if I decide to still sell it, the updates are easily worked into the price, if the machine goes another 2 years that would make 6 years for the original purchase price of $1049 (IIRC) + $190 for a couple of updates to extend the usefulness out an additional 2 years (or longer!)
Once I’m happy with the transfer, I’ll reformat the 250GB HDD and drop it into a nice little case I have for an extra “project” drive.
Now of course, I’m having SSD envy When I can score a good deal, I’ll pull the 500GB HDD in my ’11 15” MBP and put in a 1TB Crucial M550.
Recently it’s been chugging along a little slow, I was thinking maybe the OEM HDD was getting janky (another reason I didn’t think it was prudent to sell “as is”), lots of beach balling (my wife is mellow, she only mentioned it a couple of times, but it was driving _me_ crazy and it’s not even my machine
)Anyway, the going price was a little low given the replacement cost of a new-er-ish machine, plus the hassle of selling, shipping, payment, buying a replacement machine, potentially inheriting problems (where this machine has a known, near perfect history).
So my other plan - which is where I went - was to swap out the 250GB HDD for a ~250GB SSD, and upgrade the RAM from 4GB to 8GB.
I went with Crucial products for both, the new MX100 series SSD (256GB) and their *8GB RAM upgrade - great warranties with 3 on the SSD and lifetime on the RAM (better SSD warranties on some “pro” products, but plenty for the price of the MX series).
* Side note: the ’10 MBP and MB (white) 13” machines won’t clock down faster RAM - I found this out after I tried my 1333 OEM RAM from my 15” MBP (that caused startup issues and led me to find plenty of sources indicating it’s an issue). You can mix a 1333MHz DIMM with a 1066 and the machine will clock them to the slower speed.
Simple install: philips screws, remove bottom panel, snap RAM out and new RAM in, test, GTG. The SSD was a snap too, I swapped the internal out for the SSD, just a few screws to remove the bracket, small Torx to remove the shock mounts and move them to the SSD, one SATA cable.
I moved the HDD to an external USB interface from Sabrent, pretty nice, it’ll handle 2.5 and 3.5” IDE or SATA, and has an external power supply for drives that need it.
Booted from the external (old internal HDD) via Power+Option into the recovery partition, fired up Disk Utility, partitioned the SSD, set it for GUID for booting.
Then I used DU to simple restore from the external HDD with the SSD as the target. ~2.5 hours later, the original drive was perfectly imaged over to the new SSD. Removed external and boot. Done.
Figured it would be interesting for folks who are considering selling vs. upgrading, or would like to upgrade but might be worried about the effort. This machine still has plenty of processing power for how it’s used, currently running perfect on 10.9.4. I also used [free] Trim Enabler to, well, enable Trim
How does it run? See below A couple of folks in my feeler thread asked me to follow up, so that’s another reason I started this thread.
Spectacular. Starts in 1/5th the time, you can click on apps and they bounce _once_ and they’re loaded. Click on Word, Excel, Safari, iTunes ... and they open in a second, no lag.
Easily worth it ... was about and hour of actual effort, even including the ordering
The machine is better than before, if I decide to still sell it, the updates are easily worked into the price, if the machine goes another 2 years that would make 6 years for the original purchase price of $1049 (IIRC) + $190 for a couple of updates to extend the usefulness out an additional 2 years (or longer!)Once I’m happy with the transfer, I’ll reformat the 250GB HDD and drop it into a nice little case I have for an extra “project” drive.
Now of course, I’m having SSD envy
When I can score a good deal, I’ll pull the 500GB HDD in my ’11 15” MBP and put in a 1TB Crucial M550.