Any known good SSDs for Macbook Pro 4,1 (2008?)

[austinpike]

Trying to help a buddy get a little more life out of his 15" 2.4 core2duo by putting in an SSD. Problem is it always errors out after 5-10 minutes when doing a clean Mavericks install from USB. (tried Yosemite also, same result.)

I've got a handful of drives I've collected - a Crucial M500, Seagate 600, and Kingston V300 (all 240GB) - none of them work. However, a 120GB Kingston V300 gets through the install and seems to work fine (but he would much prefer a larger drive.)

All of them are SATA 3, which I understand won't run any more than SATA 1 speeds, but that's fine. Would I have any better luck with a SATA 2 drive? (pretty impossible to find at this point, and obviously cheaper is better for this vintage machine.) This laptop has the Intel SATA controller, which I thought was less problematic than the nvidia one.

I also have an Intel 530 (240GB) booting another machine I could pull, but I would have to clone it off to another drive first, so I would rather not do that unless there is some reason to think it might work better.

 

[snaky69]

Trying to help a buddy get a little more life out of his 15" 2.4 core2duo by putting in an SSD. Problem is it always errors out after 5-10 minutes when doing a clean Mavericks install from USB. (tried Yosemite also, same result.)

I've got a handful of drives I've collected - a Crucial M500, Seagate 600, and Kingston V300 (all 240GB) - none of them work. However, a 120GB Kingston V300 gets through the install and seems to work fine (but he would much prefer a larger drive.)

All of them are SATA 3, which I understand won't run any more than SATA 1 speeds, but that's fine. Would I have any better luck with a SATA 2 drive? (pretty impossible to find at this point, and obviously cheaper is better for this vintage machine.) This laptop has the Intel SATA controller, which I thought was less problematic than the nvidia one.

I also have an Intel 530 (240GB) booting another machine I could pull, but I would have to clone it off to another drive first, so I would rather not do that unless there is some reason to think it might work better.

You're stuck at SATA I speeds, so get whatever fits your budget and has decent reviews and warranty.

You can go ahead a buy SATA II and III, they should lower their speeds accordingly as they are backward compatible. Perhaps you've been unlucky with the ones you have. I'd try Intel, Samsung.

 

[giribt]

I am recently seeing SSHD drives. There are exactly not like SSD but 70-80% of the performance of SSD based on what I notice. Google it out and check more.

 

[iBoss101]

I have the same MacBook.
I use an Intel SSD 320 series.
It was once infected with the 8mb bug, but you can fix that easily.
Try one out, they're pretty cheap.
EDIT:
Not cheap like junk, but inexpensive.
They're great speeds too.

 

[JTToft]

I have the same MacBook.
I use an Intel SSD 320 series.
It was once infected with the 8mb bug, but you can fix that easily.
Try one out, they're pretty cheap.
EDIT:
Not cheap like junk, but inexpensive.
They're great speeds too.

- Do you have a link for where they can be purchased inexpensively? All of the ones I've found are about twice the price of current drives.

OP, it's possible your machine has a fault with its internal SATA connection. It seems odd that so many drives wouldn't work.

 

[BrettApple]

Hello thread revival. Anyway, in my experience any cheap SSD should do fine. I've been grabbing up a lot of SanDisk SSD Plus 240GB drives that have been on sale at Best Buy for $65 lately. Works fine in all the various year 2007-2012 Macs I've put them in. Or Crucial MX100/200 or BX 100/200, used lots of them too. The Samsung 850's are nice and I put them in the newer SATA III Macs that are important, but not worth the extra cost for older ones.

And it does sound like the SATA cable was having an issue with that many install problems, that or the install media was corrupt.

 

[iBoss101]

- Do you have a link for where they can be purchased inexpensively? All of the ones I've found are about twice the price of current drives.

OP, it's possible your machine has a fault with its internal SATA connection. It seems odd that so many drives wouldn't work.

Here are some links.....
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-320-S...604629?hash=item43ebb96515:g:xlUAAOSwBnVW8y3Z

and also
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-SSD-3...839798?hash=item25b889f8b6:g:DnMAAOSwYlJW6LRc