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skeevs

macrumors newbie
Dec 25, 2014
3
0
I am curious to see what you use as a solution. IMO, this was one of the better laptops that Apple produced.

I've finally got this upgrade working good! Ended up with :
- Corsair 8GB memory 1067mhz
- Optibay (clone/oem)
- Intel 320 80gb SSD

Actually I noticed quite a significant improvement with just the 8gb memory alone. Chrome wouldn't hang or show the ball. And, I just updated to Yosemite, it does feel a bit slower during boot up.
 

Stuart in Oz

macrumors 6502
Jan 16, 2008
307
70
Sydney, Australia
I spent yesterday upgrading my father's Late 2008 Aluminium Macbook.

As you'd expect, swapping 2Gb of RAM for 8GB made a decent difference to general snapiness, especially when working with multiple browser pages and/or apps open at once (which he does a lot - 30 different race fields, email and a racing radio webcast all running at once on race days).

I cloned his original 150GB HDD onto a Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD and that made booting, app launching and general system usage lightning quick.

Total cost was only A$275 ($145 for the SSD, $106 for the RAM and $24 for two 2.5" external drive enclosures to let me clone the HDD to the SSD using the USB3 ports on my personal MBP rather than the USB2 on his machine).

Finally I upgraded it from Snow Leopard to Yosemite. Yosemite runs beautifully quickly on the machine, no slow-down at all. Boot time is under 15 seconds.

He's chuffed and the machine should meet all his needs for probably another three years.
 

joe4444

macrumors newbie
Feb 14, 2015
11
0
SSD in HDD spot or in optical bay?

I'm glad to see some people are still responding to this thread (at least as of a month ago) even though it started in 2013 :)

My girlfriend has the Aluminum MacBook5,1 with stock 160GB HDD. A couple weeks ago the drive crashed, and I started looking into upgrade options. I happen to have a spare 500GB SSHD, but rather than simply swap the drives I think the better option is the OWC Data Doubler with a 256GB SSD as the main drive and the 500GB SSHD as a Time Machine backup. Neither of us wants to go through the trouble of recovering data in the event of another drive failure or corrupted OS or whatever happened. Plus, her internal optical drive has been broken for months, and our local Apple techs (closest Apple Store is 4 hours away) said that fixing it would take 2 weeks and cost $200. She only occasionally imports music CDs and rarely watches DVDs, so no thanks.

So, my question is how should I configure these drives? 256GB SSD in the standard drive position or in the optical bay?

As I understand it, the optical bay does not have the sudden motion sensor (SMS) that is in the standard drive position, so if I configured the drives for maximum speed (SSD in the standard position to get SATA 2 speed) then the HDD in the optical bay spot would lose SMS protection (and it might generate too much heat?).

However, if I put the SSD in the optical bay spot as BrettApple showed in his photo, then it may drop from SATA 3 speed to SATA 1 speed. Would the desired drastic speed benefit of SSD be lost if the SSD is throttled to SATA 1 speed?

She doesn't run anything like Photoshop but for many months before the crash had experienced lots of heartache when running Pages and Safari at the same time. I did a lot of troubleshooting but could not pinpoint anything hogging the CPU, and even after she trashed 30 GB of iTunes movies to make 50 GB total free space there was no change in the sluggishness. My White MacBook with 30 tabs in Chrome, several Excel spreadsheets, and a few Word docs open all at once was outperforming her laptop. I have a feeling that was partly due to her having only 2GB RAM (I may upgrade her to 8GB later if the SSD doesn't give a good boost) as well as upgrading to Mountain Lion. It could have also been partly caused by that old HDD with some corrupted OS files. Or maybe a combination of all of those factors.

So long story short, SSD in the optical bay? Pros and cons? Is there anything I'm not considering that I should?

Thanks!
 

coevolve

macrumors newbie
Oct 18, 2014
14
0
So, my question is how should I configure these drives? 256GB SSD in the standard drive position or in the optical bay? I have a feeling that was partly due to her having only 2GB RAM (I may upgrade her to 8GB later if the SSD doesn't give a good boost). So long story short, SSD in the optical bay? Pros and cons? Is there anything I'm not considering that I should?
Thanks!

I would use SSD in standard hard drive position and use the doubler to install the old formatted HDD in the optical bay. The latter would be seldom used just to store large files permanently. Backing up both drives would be important to avoid disappointment. Nice fresh clean installs would be best. However, you need more ram as 2GB is not enough to enjoy the machine using varied / interesting software today.

Below is what I did in order and the response:

1) Upgraded to 8GB ram (amazing upgrade, but the computer was a little sluggish for some things)
2) Upgraded to native trim-support SSD and placed old hard drive in optical bay with data doubler (laptop is as good as new running yosemite)

Note: Because I ordered the Angelbird wrk for mac SSD I do not need to worry about the drive becoming slower than HDD over time. It has native trim support. I know other people in terrible situations with their SSDs. I highly recommend the only affordable native trim-supported SSD (i.e., Angelbird) unless you want to hack or disable your computer's security (not advisable).

I started with the RAM and then four months later did the SSD upgrade. If I had the money, I would have done both at the same time as both are really needed to make sure this laptop works well for the next 5 years.
 

joe4444

macrumors newbie
Feb 14, 2015
11
0
coevolve, I understand your concern about security, but is native TRIM support really necessary with Mavericks? I think she will be happy to stick with OS X 10.9, which is where she was for the last 6 months or so.

Even if she decides to upgrade to Yosemite, she is such an infrequent software installer that I would not worry about her acquiring a hacked KEXT. Plus, she almost never strays from the App Store.

That said, if she does want Yosemite, I think there may be a compromise to the non-native TRIM problem. Could she simply activate Trim Enabler once a month briefly (for a few minutes? hours? 1 day?) to avoid performance degradation? That would avoid any potential problems such as having TRIM active all the time, one day updating OS X, and then being unable to reboot because the update enabled KEXT signing again.

Based on a performance review of the Crucial MX100 SSD (link below), it looks like activating TRIM "manually" brought performance back to "new" again. The only questionable part of that is exactly how they sent the TRIM command, and if it was a one-time deal or remained active throughout the "after TRIM" test. I could be wrong, but I'm imagining they did this: Manually activate TRIM, wait several minutes for TRIM to clean up the drive, repeat benchmark test.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/crucial-mx100_6.html
 

coevolve

macrumors newbie
Oct 18, 2014
14
0
coevolve, I understand your concern about security, but is native TRIM support really necessary with Mavericks? I think she will be happy to stick with OS X 10.9, which is where she was for the last 6 months or so.

Even if she decides to upgrade to Yosemite, she is such an infrequent software installer that I would not worry about her acquiring a hacked KEXT. Plus, she almost never strays from the App Store.

That said, if she does want Yosemite, I think there may be a compromise to the non-native TRIM problem. Could she simply activate Trim Enabler once a month briefly (for a few minutes? hours? 1 day?) to avoid performance degradation? That would avoid any potential problems such as having TRIM active all the time, one day updating OS X, and then being unable to reboot because the update enabled KEXT signing again.

Based on a performance review of the Crucial MX100 SSD (link below), it looks like activating TRIM "manually" brought performance back to "new" again. The only questionable part of that is exactly how they sent the TRIM command, and if it was a one-time deal or remained active throughout the "after TRIM" test. I could be wrong, but I'm imagining they did this: Manually activate TRIM, wait several minutes for TRIM to clean up the drive, repeat benchmark test.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/crucial-mx100_6.html

That seems to make a lot of sense, especially since you already have the Crucial MX100 SSD. I like Yosemite on this machine, but I can see why others may wish to stick with what they are familiar or believe is less buggy. Good luck with the upgrade and hopefully someone else (other than me) will give you some advice as I am just learning mac (I was a PC guy for years).
 

JGMeyer

macrumors newbie
May 9, 2015
1
0
New forum member: Looking for "real" assistance on SSD upgrade

PC guy, new to MACs...

My wife has Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook: 160Gb HDD, 4Mb RAM (thought this was max?). OS is Mac OS X 10.7.5 HD has 5Mb of available space (know this is not ideal, I have tried many things to move files to TimeCapsule, but HD is still full, issue for another post ??)

Bold is not intended to be rude...
I would like someone to please point me in the right direction to use SSD drive in place of existing HDD. I have been unsuccessful cloning so far and confirm 8Gb will actually be used (specs of MacBook show 4Gb is max)

My efforts:
I purchased Crucial CT256MX100SSD1 (256Gb) Watched a few utube videos and read numerous websites. Clone and Install looked easy...

I have no concern on physical install, will replace existing HDD in same bay.

I used Disk Utility to recognize, partition and format new SSD. All looks well. Tried to use Disk Utility to clone existing HDD to new SSD. This is where the errors start... I get the Error 254, Cannot verify source..

I used Disk Utility to check, verify, etc. Everything shows OK. Tried multiple times, same error, I know "insanity" right? Years of hobby PC repair and sometimes it works the 2nd or 3rd time (due to user error).

Tired to boot to Recovery HD to see if I could fix it this way (post suggestion). I am not able to boot into this mode, hold down Command+R, or hold Option. Boots to grey screen and I select English, but never gets to screen to select Disk Utility, just shuts down.

Not sure where to go from here... Please help
 
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Stuart in Oz

macrumors 6502
Jan 16, 2008
307
70
Sydney, Australia
JGMeyer,

I can think of two major issues and one minor issue that might be tripping you up.

Major Issue - Cloning from active system disk with only 5MB of free space
Major Issue - USB 2 connections
Minor Issue - DiskUtility

First, running a major system task from an active system disk that has almost no free space is a high risk activity. I know it shouldn't theoretically make a difference but somehow I've found it often does. Tasks fail to complete, error messages, time-outs... all the issues you're having.

Second, USB2 is a terrible connection for very large data transfers, due to technical factors you can research online if you really want. I've had much trouble in the past trying to clone disks with USB2 - so much I'd never try it again. I *always* use FireWire or USB3.

So, given you have no FireWire or USB3 ports on your machine, my advice is to do what I did with my father's Aluminium Macbook last January:

Beg, buy or borrrow two external enclosures for 2.5" drives and make sure they have US3 ports. Put your new SSD in one, take the old HDD out of your laptop and put it into the other, and then use another computer (that has USB3 ports) to clone the (now externally housed) HDD onto the (externally housed) SSD. Remove SSD from external housing, insert the SSD into the computer and away you go.

This way the old HDD is not running a system when it's cloned, so the lack of spare space doesn't matter AND you avoid any issues with with cloning an active system disk AND you avoid using the problematic USB2 ports on the Aluminum MacBook. As a side bonus the speed difference of USB3 over USB2 will make it a 60 minute process instead of a 12 hour one, even assuming the USB2 transfer succeeds, which they usually don't.

Last thing, I've found DiskUtility to be a less than perfect application for cloning entire drives. I use Carbon Copy Cloner and find it to be excellent, well worth the $40 or whatever. That's an extra however - CCC isn't likely to overcome the above-mentioned issues with free space and USB2.

Good luck!


PS - I put 8GB RAM in mine, so that's definitely not a problem. There may be a firmware update required to make 8GB RAM work (going from my memory here) - check that yours is up to date.

Also, are you partitioning your SSD for any reason? As a last resort you could try formatting the SSD without any partitions, just leaving it as one single big 256GB partition.
 
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JamesRogers

macrumors newbie
Jun 3, 2015
5
0
Sandton, South Africa
Hey Guys. Awesome to see this thread is still seeing some action :)

I have a Late 2008 MacBook Pro (MacBook5,1). It has a 500GB 7200RPM drive and 6GB of RAM (Battling to get a 8GB combo that works). I’m thinking of getting a Samsung 850 EVO 120GB (Think the Pro is overkill for this machine). Has anyone tried the EVO 850 (MGX Controller by Samsung) in this MacBook Pro with the Nvidia MCP79 SATA controller? I know there are issues with some SSD’s running the Sandforce controller that make the drive run at SATA I speeds. This is far from ideal. I can use the SSD in a future machine if need be. I had the Samsung 840 250GB in a previous Early 2011 MacBook Pro with data doubler etc. So thinking of doing same thing here.

This MacBook has a functioning though cracked trackpad and a swollen (functioning for a short time) battery. If things are working as is, should I go go for the SSD now or get the battery and trackpad fixed first? READ: I want an SSD now!

Costs in South African Rand (ZAR):

Generic Battery ZAR845
Trackpad job ZAR1400
Samsung 850 EVO 120GB SSD ZAR1230
Samsung 850 Pro 128GB SSD ZAR1481

Price difference between SSD's is a meal for two basically, a cheap meal for two. Like 5 people at Burger King... Or something... I’m hungry now.

MD101: ZAR13299
 
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spangled

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 22, 2009
20
4
North-East England
OP here. Yes, great to see the love for the late-2008 aluminium MacBook still going.

As well as upgrading to 8GB RAM, I slotted in a 240GB SSD into the optical drive and run all my apps off of that. I'm running the latest version of Yosemite.

I initially kept my 750GB HDD in the main HDD bay but ended up swapping that out for a 1TB SSHD, to store all my media, music, vids etc. I felt the HDD was on its last legs (plus I had 650GB of media) so an upgrade was on the cards.

Works like a charm. Reckon I have another 12 months with this machine until funds allow for a new purchase. I do envy the retina screens on the latest portables.

On a side note: when I originally posted (Oct 2013) a 1TB SSD was £430 here in the UK so I ruled that out on the basis of cost. They're now around £270.
 
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JamesRogers

macrumors newbie
Jun 3, 2015
5
0
Sandton, South Africa
Found out that my local iFixer can't fix the trackpad anymore. If I fix the battery then no worries about the trackpad. Just wondering if I really need to swap out the 500GB 7200RPM drive with a 120GB SSD. Media is all on desktop. Thinking of just saving up for the MD101. What do you think?
 

JamesRogers

macrumors newbie
Jun 3, 2015
5
0
Sandton, South Africa
Found out that my local iFixer can't fix the trackpad anymore. If I fix the battery then no worries about the trackpad. Just wondering if I really need to swap out the 500GB 7200RPM drive with a 120GB SSD. Media is all on desktop. Thinking of just saving up for the MD101. What do you think?
 

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speedbumpnv

macrumors 6502
Jul 2, 2007
253
66
Just yesterday, I took a 2008 MacBook5,1 that someone gave me (he claimed it didn't work) and dropped in 4gb of RAM and a 120gb SSD from OWC and now she runs like a champ.

It did run like crap before. It would take nearly 5 minutes to boot and wouldn't actually shut down without a press and hold on the power button. It was arguably unusable in the condition I received it in. She's a fantastic budget machine now! Not what I would have expected from a nearly 7 year old computer... :D
 
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JamesRogers

macrumors newbie
Jun 3, 2015
5
0
Sandton, South Africa
just wondering if it's worth spending the ZAR1500 on the 850 Pro 128GB. If I do get it then I will have it if I move to a MD101 or some other upgradeable MacBook or Mac Mini. The machine runs really well now, but waking up from dead battery very slow and boot in general is slow. What to do? :/
 

BrettApple

macrumors 65816
Apr 3, 2010
1,137
483
Heart of the midwest
just wondering if it's worth spending the ZAR1500 on the 850 Pro 128GB. If I do get it then I will have it if I move to a MD101 or some other upgradeable MacBook or Mac Mini. The machine runs really well now, but waking up from dead battery very slow and boot in general is slow. What to do? :/

I would just go with the 850 EVO. Really no need to get the Pro. Especially on this model where it caps at SATA 2. Even in a 2012 MBP the EVO will be plenty. Save the cash for something else :)

And to add to the thread, here's an update on my Late 2008 MacBook.

I purchased it originally in October 2008 right when they were released. I then used it until December of 2013 when I sold it to my brother and his family. Since then I've put in a new top case because the keyboard on the original started goofing up. I put a small 120GB SSD and 4GB RAM in it when I sold it to him since I used the OWC SSD, 750GB HDD and 8GB RAM that was in it on a 2010 15" MBP I had for maybe a year. I then moved to my current Late 2013 13" rMBP that I bought in July '14 (right before the refresh, lol.).

I got a call last night saying that it got dropped by one of the kids and that the screen wasn't working. So I had to do something. I picked it up this afternoon and simply removed and reattached the LVDS cable and put it back together. Done! Still ticking. It's taken multiple (like 10+) drops to concrete and it's still working. I can't believe it.

1xui48W.jpg
 

speedbumpnv

macrumors 6502
Jul 2, 2007
253
66
just wondering if it's worth spending the ZAR1500 on the 850 Pro 128GB. If I do get it then I will have it if I move to a MD101 or some other upgradeable MacBook or Mac Mini. The machine runs really well now, but waking up from dead battery very slow and boot in general is slow. What to do? :/


If the machine can't support the faster drive, there isn't really a point in paying extra for it.
I would just go with the 850 EVO. Really no need to get the Pro. Especially on this model where it caps at SATA 2. Even in a 2012 MBP the EVO will be plenty. Save the cash for something else :)

And to add to the thread, here's an update on my Late 2008 MacBook.

I purchased it originally in October 2008 right when they were released. I then used it until December of 2013 when I sold it to my brother and his family. Since then I've put in a new top case because the keyboard on the original started goofing up. I put a small 120GB SSD and 4GB RAM in it when I sold it to him since I used the OWC SSD, 750GB HDD and 8GB RAM that was in it on a 2010 15" MBP I had for maybe a year. I then moved to my current Late 2013 13" rMBP that I bought in July '14 (right before the refresh, lol.).

I got a call last night saying that it got dropped by one of the kids and that the screen wasn't working. So I had to do something. I picked it up this afternoon and simply removed and reattached the LVDS cable and put it back together. Done! Still ticking. It's taken multiple (like 10+) drops to concrete and it's still working. I can't believe it.

:eek: Good thing it doesn't have a mechanical HDD in it...

Is the battery ok? I'd be concerned about damage to a Lithium battery after an impact like that...
 

JamesRogers

macrumors newbie
Jun 3, 2015
5
0
Sandton, South Africa
Well, nerve wracking morning this side. I let the battery die last night while browsing for SSD’s. This morning, it just wouldn’t come on at all. Mains, battery, battery out etc. So I came to the conclusion that that was that. I removed the HDD and RAM and put it on the recycling pile. I had a few minutes spare, so I decided to open it up again and check all the connectors. Removed each one and put it back on again. Switched on without RAM and HDD and it did it’s SOS beeps and the fans spun! I was so excited! I put everything back in again and bah!, no longer working. So I did the same again with the connectors and now it’s on and I’m typing to you on the MacBook! All working! For now I guess, but yeah, so relieved.

I was using a Dell i5 with 4GB running Windows 8.1 Pro. Was torture. My C2D runs better than that Dell.

So yeah, Happy dance all round this side. Might hold off on the SSD for now.:apple: ftw:):cool:

EDIT: Oh, also, btw, there appears to be a knock in the top right corner of the top case. I’m thinking that maybe I bumped last night putting into back-pack, which is odd, seeing as it has a Speck cover on.
 

BrettApple

macrumors 65816
Apr 3, 2010
1,137
483
Heart of the midwest
:eek: Good thing it doesn't have a mechanical HDD in it...

Is the battery ok? I'd be concerned about damage to a Lithium battery after an impact like that...

One of the many reasons I put the SSD there, lol. I'm thinking about getting them a 250GB 850 EVO because they only have 10GB free. They decided to offload all the photos and video from their old and new iPhones and it took quite a storage hit.

Surprisingly it is. I did have to super glue one of the small black locking tabs back on it. It was fine without it but added security where this thing is never hurts. I replaced the OEM battery with an OWC NuPower one in late 2013 because the original started swelling up pushing out the bottom case and up on the trackpad causing it not to click even. It was quite round when I pulled it out. It did go 5 years though. I do have a 10 year old iBook G4 with a working battery that goes for like 4 hours though, that is amazing itself. The NuPower one lasts maybe 3 hours at this point on Yosemite. I don't think I ever got the full 5 hours or whatever Apple came up with even on Leopard/Snow Leopard when it was pretty new. Maybe at half brightness loading a super simple page and not scrolling :)

1KI2oG8l.png
 

east85

macrumors 65816
Jun 24, 2010
1,343
495
Mine is pretty much in mint condition, apart from a few light scratches you can see at an angle in bright light. The work I've put into it since I've bought it in 2012... new clutch cover, had to separate the screen from the body. It was cracking because it's plastic and heat does a number over the years. I've cleaned under the keyboard, got all the dust out of the fan twice, installed an optibay and removed the disc drive, installed a second SSD in it. The original hard drive crapped out on me in 2012 so it's also been replaced by an SSD. Also maxed out the RAM to 8GB. This thing.. well I plan to use it until the day something gives out on the motherboard. The one time it wouldn't do anything upon pressing the power button was just a simple case of the battery terminals needing cleaned. Easy peasy. I love this thing, runs like a champ for a 2008. Click2Plugin is also great as a flash blocking addon for Safari. It will also default to HTML5 which makes browsing much faster and make a huge difference.

I keep the OS and everything on the SSD I used to replace the original HDD, the second SSD is where my DSLR raw files live until I'm done editing them (then it's backed in my unlimited University drive). I still edit on this machine actually. I even invested like $40 into a cord that uses the video output and USB for sound to use an HDTV as a second monitor.
 

speedwaygirl

macrumors member
Apr 30, 2010
68
0
Late to the party, but headed down the same path and it's wonderful. My son is going away to college, so he's taking the 1 year old 11.6" MacBook Air, and I set out to rehab my beloved Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook. It's the base model 2.0, but the memory was upgraded to 4GB years back. Was very excited to see that it can be upgraded to 8GB and waiting for the RAM to get here tomorrow. Picked up a new battery for it since only about 40 minutes on the original. It's running Mavericks on the Samsung 850 EVO 250GB, and I am ecstatic not to be watching the beach ball anymore. That said, the fan seems to be running a LOT since I put the SSD in. The optical drive is still functional and gets used quite often to put audiobooks on the iPhone and iPod. Any suggestions from you experts about the fan? Is there a setting I should change or check? I am very attached to this laptop! The memory, SSD, and battery upgrades have been about $200 total, and it seems a bargain compared to a new machine.....especially since this is really getting the job done even after 7 years! Thanks for such a great thread and for keeping it going for so long! And we call our 08 MacBook the Salvador Dali edition. It took a fall off my desk at the office onto a cement/tiled floor and the only damage was to warp the Ethernet port. It looks quite artistic now! Still works like a champ, though.
 

east85

macrumors 65816
Jun 24, 2010
1,343
495
Late to the party, but headed down the same path and it's wonderful. My son is going away to college, so he's taking the 1 year old 11.6" MacBook Air, and I set out to rehab my beloved Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook. It's the base model 2.0, but the memory was upgraded to 4GB years back. Was very excited to see that it can be upgraded to 8GB and waiting for the RAM to get here tomorrow. Picked up a new battery for it since only about 40 minutes on the original. It's running Mavericks on the Samsung 850 EVO 250GB, and I am ecstatic not to be watching the beach ball anymore. That said, the fan seems to be running a LOT since I put the SSD in. The optical drive is still functional and gets used quite often to put audiobooks on the iPhone and iPod. Any suggestions from you experts about the fan? Is there a setting I should change or check? I am very attached to this laptop! The memory, SSD, and battery upgrades have been about $200 total, and it seems a bargain compared to a new machine.....especially since this is really getting the job done even after 7 years! Thanks for such a great thread and for keeping it going for so long! And we call our 08 MacBook the Salvador Dali edition. It took a fall off my desk at the office onto a cement/tiled floor and the only damage was to warp the Ethernet port. It looks quite artistic now! Still works like a champ, though.

Have you opened it up and cleaned the fan out? I pulled a ton of lint like material from mine the last time it was running hot and now it hardly kicks on at full speed. The only other thing that would make my MacBook hot is flash content, but I don't run flash anymore (click2plugin on Safari). Also I'd download TrimEnabler if you haven't already in order to enable trim on Mavericks with your SSD. I'm on the latest version of Yosemite and Apple finally enabled native Trim support (through Terminal) for non-Apple SSD.
 

pastrychef

macrumors 601
Sep 15, 2006
4,753
1,450
New York City, NY
I decided to get a MacBook 5,1 almost 2 years ago to replace a white MacBook 3,1 because the 3,1 was unable to run Mavericks. I picked up the MacBook from a person selling it on Craig's List for $250 and upgraded to 8GB of RAM (approx $100), Crucial 256GB SSD (approx $120), and new battery (approx $25).

The laptop runs absolutely great. I don't do any heavy lifting on it, mostly web browsing and watch some videos which it handles without any issues. The extra RAM and SSD help to eliminate any beachballing. Honestly, I would not want to run any Mac with less than 8GB now.

One word of warning to anyone looking to get an SSD for this model of MacBook. The MacBook 5,1 uses the MCP79 chipset and some SSD firmwares cause the SSDs to run only in SATA 1 speeds when the MacBook is capable of SATA 2 speeds. I came across this issue with a Toshiba Q series Pro SSD and was forced to purchase another. I went with a Crucial and it has performed like a champ.
 

IDMah

macrumors 6502
May 13, 2011
316
11
Thanks for the info on the SSD..
Sort of related to this thread. But my 2.4 ghz. is getting really hot by the mag safe connector.
it's a new Apple brand adapter.. my 3'rd any ideas what might be causing this??
 
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