Apple MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2009) advice

[artois]

Hi
for almost a year I feel like my mac is legging, it takes a lot of time to boot and a lot of time for softwares to open..
Now I'm really frustrated because I Don't know whether it will be a good idea to invest in a new ssd drive on an "old machine".
will i get such a big difference in performance?
(i'm have been using this mac mostly for djing)
thanks guys

 

[JTToft]

Oh yes, it will make all the difference in the world.

The thing is that because you only have SATA II on that machine, you won't be able to take full advantage of the speed of modern SSDs. But this allows you to buy a cheaper lower-performing SSD without it having any impact on your actual performance.

Top recommended drives for SATA II machines are the Samsung 850 EVO and Crucial BX100. For the latter, I recommend getting at least the 250GB version, as the 120GB one is slower in write speeds than your SATA interface.

 

[davehutch]

I fitted a Seagate Momentus XT (Hybrid) drive to mine a few years ago and it's very good.
Also dirt cheap compared to a full SSD

They "learn" what you use the most and put it into an 8GB section of SSD built in. It also spins at 7200rpm compared to the original drive's 5400rpm.
Boot up and common app startup is much much faster than it used to be

 

[sprezz]

Hi
for almost a year I feel like my mac is legging, it takes a lot of time to boot and a lot of time for softwares to open..
Now I'm really frustrated because I Don't know whether it will be a good idea to invest in a new ssd drive on an "old machine".
will i get such a big difference in performance?
(i'm have been using this mac mostly for djing)
thanks guys

i just got the 2015 rmbp 13 and decommissioned my 2009 17 incher core2duo with the purchase. let me tell you, NIGHT AND DAY. seriously, photoshop, lightroom, mail with 30000 emails opens up virtually instantly, takes 5 seconds to boot and my drive is 66% filled with data. blackmagic still scores 1.2GB rw/s, excellent, also running multiple VMs is a blast.

that's my experience between the two.

 

[davehutch]

That is excellent news! I'm considering doing the same thing. Did you buy the base config or add a few "specials"?
My 17" is the 2.93GHz with 8GB RAM and the hybrid drive, so I can't do any more with it really, although to be fair, for a 6 year old laptop, it still flies along nicely, unless I'm loading up some 23MB RAW files in Lightroom.
I doubt a 6 year old Windows laptop would have made it this far without being thrown out of the window!

 

[artois]

Oh yes, it will make all the difference in the world.

The thing is that because you only have SATA II on that machine, you won't be able to take full advantage of the speed of modern SSDs. But this allows you to buy a cheaper lower-performing SSD without it having any impact on your actual performance.

Top recommended drives for SATA II machines are the Samsung 850 EVO and Crucial BX100. For the latter, I recommend getting at least the 250GB version, as the 120GB one is slower in write speeds than your SATA interface.

Thank you very much for a great advice! samsong is a bit pricey so I think I will go with the crucial 250GB.