SSD Buying Guide

Any benefit of doing a fresh mavericks install?

hyune83 said:

Any benefit of doing a fresh mavericks install?

Click to expand...

Not sure on OSX but on windows, I always do it every 3 months or so... coz Windows always puts and leaves crap everywhere slowing my machine down.

----------

Hi - thanks for this. I did as you suggested. I download CCC and copied the recovery partition (It did it really fast so wasn't sure if it did it right) but I transferred the SSD this morning and installed it from recovery and it did it fine.
I also had a copy of Mavericks on USB stick so I did it again but booting from the stick to do a fresh install of Mavericks.
So far so good and boot up time is now 10s compared to 37s.
I'll be keeping the old hard drive just in case

davidlv said:

Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/) can do that. Install CCC (free trial for 30 days) then; Get a cheap USB enclosure, install your new drive in the MacBook, install the old drive in the USB enclosure (other way around will work too). Boot up holding down the option key, select the old drive, initialize the new SSD using Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities folder) and then start up CCC. Select the Disk Center utility from the pull down "Window" menu and use that to clone your recovery partition to the new drive. Reboot - again hold down the Option key - select the new recovery partition, and use that to install the OS.
There are other ways to do this, but this should work as long as you have web access.

Click to expand...

After reading the above post, I'm slightly confused.

I'm finally getting the Samsung EVO SSD next month and want to clean install Mavericks (fresh install for a fresh drive) and then reload all my data. Do I need to make a Mavericks USB drive first? What's the best way to do this?

slynger said:

After reading the above post, I'm slightly confused.

I'm finally getting the Samsung EVO SSD next month and want to clean install Mavericks (fresh install for a fresh drive) and then reload all my data. Do I need to make a Mavericks USB drive first? What's the best way to do this?

Click to expand...

I think the easiest way may be this - depending on when you bought your machine, Internet Recovery will load Mountain Lion or Mavericks:

http://www.macworld.com/article/2056561/how-to-make-a-bootable-mavericks-install-drive.html

ecschwarz said:

I think the easiest way may be this - depending on when you bought your machine, Internet Recovery will load Mountain Lion or Mavericks:

http://www.macworld.com/article/2056561/how-to-make-a-bootable-mavericks-install-drive.html

Click to expand...

Didn't even know I could do that. Seems quite simple. I assume from there I could just load my drive with CCC to finish the process?

slynger said:

Didn't even know I could do that. Seems quite simple. I assume from there I could just load my drive with CCC to finish the process?

Click to expand...

I take it that you have a clone of your current system on an external hard drive (or do you plan on repurposing your internal drive as an external?) To complete the process, I'd just use Migration Assistant if I had an existing drive with everything on it - CCC might overwrite some files and put things where they don't belong on a new installation. It will also bring things over from a Time Machine backup.

ecschwarz said:

I take it that you have a clone of your current system on an external hard drive (or do you plan on repurposing your internal drive as an external?) To complete the process, I'd just use Migration Assistant if I had an existing drive with everything on it - CCC might overwrite some files and put things where they don't belong on a new installation. It will also bring things over from a Time Machine backup.

Click to expand...

I have an external I use for Time Machine backups. Is Migration Assistant where you pick and choose what transfers over?

I am planning to upgrade my Macbookpro http://support.apple.com/kb/sp621
to 480GB SSD from Crucial.

The question is, will my time machine backup be able to load on the new SSD when installed.

slynger said:

After reading the above post, I'm slightly confused.

I'm finally getting the Samsung EVO SSD next month and want to clean install Mavericks (fresh install for a fresh drive) and then reload all my data. Do I need to make a Mavericks USB drive first? What's the best way to do this?

Click to expand...

I have an "old" iMac booting off a Samsung SSD. It works well. I recorded the steps here:
http://www.mpainesyd.com/filechute/BOOT_OSX_SSD.pdf
Most steps are relevant to your question.

Weaselboy said:

As long as that Time Machine backup was made to a directly attached external drive with Lion 10.7.2 or later, then yes you can option key boot to the disk and restore directly from it to the SSD.

Click to expand...

I have partitioned my Macbookpro HD, will it copy the same structure to the SSD?

Which one?

I'm looking to finally upgrade my late 2011 MBP to an SSD. I was thinking of getting a Crucial M500 480GB drive, but having looked at some benchmarks it apparently isn't that good. So i've also started looking at the M550 512gb which is apparently much better but a lot more expensive.

My question is, is it worth paying more than another 30% for the better M550?

Transcend JetDrive 720 960GB Availability

http://www.transcend-info.com/apple/jetdrive/


I asked Transcend about the availability of the 720 969GB SSD for rMBPs. Their response was: "The TS960GJDM720 tentative date to be activated on Amazon is 5/9. It will definitely be available by Memorial Day holiday and summer break.".

So another option for rMBP owners....larger internal SSDs with the current SSDs becoming available for external storage or backup. You may not need or want an external 2.5" SSD.

Weaselboy said:

I would just get the Samsung EVO. Look at this chart.

These are Amazon prices.

EVO $254
M500 $234
M550 $327

Also take a look at the Seagate 600 for $238.

Give the "Final Words" section here a read.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that. I'm in the UK and theres a bigger difference in price here, around $70 between the Samsung EVO and M500. I have read that the Samsung is faster but the Crucial has power loss protection. Am I really going to notice a great difference in speed in real world use for things like Photoshop and Illustrator CS6 and Aperture?

I currently have an early 2011 13" MBP and I want to upgrade the drive to an SSD. I'm currently looking at the SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW 2.5" 256GB SATA III
http://amzn.com/B009NB8WRU

Is this a good SSD for all around performance? Also, how do I go about formatting the SSD for OSX and installing a fresh copy of Mavericks? I want to start with a clean copy of the OS and then transfer individual files over from the other drive. Also, could the firmware be updated on OSX, or would I have to bootcamp into Windows?

Also, will FileVault cause a significant performance loss from the SSD? I'm debating on whether or not to do a full drive encryption with this one.

Thanks so much.

iDuel said:

Is this a good SSD for all around performance? Also, how do I go about formatting the SSD for OSX and installing a fresh copy of Mavericks? I want to start with a clean copy of the OS and then transfer individual files over from the other drive. Also, could the firmware be updated on OSX, or would I have to bootcamp into Windows?

Click to expand...

I really mean this in the least nasty and condescending way, but a lot of questions like these have been answered numerous times already in this thread. That being said, it's a good SSD and strikes the right balance of speed and price. The easiest way to accomplish everything setup-wise is to make a bootable Mavericks drive (http://www.macworld.com/article/2056561/how-to-make-a-bootable-mavericks-install-drive.html), start up from that and run Disk Utility to erase your new drive (Mac OS Extended, Journaled), and then run the Mavericks installer from there. If you had a newer Mac, you may be able to use Internet Recovery, but I think that yours would reinstall the OS that it came with originally.

As for the firmware question, the easiest way that I've found is to download the iso and burn it to a DVD (CDs and flash drives do not seem to work), boot from the DVD and run it. That's how I've updated mine and I do not have Windows installed. There's a few posts about that further up:

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=18694428&840+evo+firmware#post18694428

iDuel said:

Also, will FileVault cause a significant performance loss from the SSD? I'm debating on whether or not to do a full drive encryption with this one.

Click to expand...

Go ahead and enable it - the drive is so fast that the performance hit of running it should feel negligible.

Finally, this thread will also be really helpful - it's some "light reading" - enjoy! https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1508877/

Weaselboy said:

You notice a very very slight difference when opening a LARGE file in PS for example, but in day to day usage you can't really tell the difference among any of the newer drives.

Click to expand...

Great thanks. Think i'll go with the M500 and save some money towards a new rMBP later this year or next.

ecschwarz said:

-snip-

Click to expand...

Thank you so much for your help. Just to be clear, do I need to do anything with the brand new SSD formatting wise to get it to work with OSX? Would I just format the new SSD as Mac OS Extended Journaled? I read the instructions you gave me concerning the bootable installer drive.

Also, FileVault prevents someone from taking the drive out of my computer and viewing its contents on another computer correct?

iDuel said:

Thank you so much for your help. Just to be clear, do I need to do anything with the brand new SSD formatting wise to get it to work with OSX? Would I just format the new SSD as Mac OS Extended Journaled? I read the instructions you gave me concerning the bootable installer drive.

Click to expand...

Yep - just format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Once you get OS X installed, many recommend installing TRIM Enabler (http://www.cindori.org/software/trimenabler/) or a similar utility to enable TRIM support in OS X. This is a series of commands that help with file deletion on the drive (since SSDs treat this very differently from spinning hard drives). TRIM is enabled on all Apple SSDs (MacBook Air, rMBP, Mac Pro, other Macs with a built-to-order SSD).

iDuel said:

Also, FileVault prevents someone from taking the drive out of my computer and viewing its contents on another computer correct?

Click to expand...

Yes - they'd need the encryption key. It also prevents them from being able to read the drive on your computer if they boot from an external drive or otherwise gain access. If you turn on the Open Firmware Password (I think it's available from any place with the OS X Installer (Internet Recovery, Recovery Partition, bootable flash drive), your machine will require a password to be started from anything other than the internal drive. Between that feature, FileVault, and Find My Mac, you have a pretty nice security suite to keep your Mac safe(r).

ecschwarz said:

-snip-

Click to expand...

Thank you so much for helping me out! I'm going to order the drive off of Amazon hopefully tomorrow, so fingers crossed everything goes well.

Remember in the States Amazon is now collecting sales tax for many states. Alternatives are Newegg, B&H, Adorama,...etc.