Got rid of my Crucial C300 and added an OCZ Vertex 3 instead. It worked without drama. I still did replace the SATA cable which I ordered from ifixit.com as it arrived a few days after I swapped the SSDs. Not sure whether it now makes a difference but I'm too lazy to swap back to the C300. The Vertex 3 is just soooooo much faster. 🙂
After resetting the PRAM, the MBP now boots up in no time at all. I haven't seen a beach ball, no freezing, no problems waking up from sleep, no nothing. It just works. As it should... Most frustrating experience ever with a MBP.
Oh, and no. 10.6.8 didn't fix anything for me. There was no change after the upgrade with the C300.
Details:
OCZ-VERTEX3:
Capacity: 240.06 GB (240,057,409,536 bytes)
Model: OCZ-VERTEX3
Revision: 2.06
Hardware Overview:
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro8,3
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.3 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 8 GB