Black Macbook faster than custom 2009 MBP??

[617media]

Some of you might remember some of the posts I was making before. Well, I finally got the balls to order a Hitachi travelstar 500GB and 2 x 2GB ddr3 crucial ram. I first cloned over the hard drive from my black macbook to the Hitachi 500gb and installed it, along with the RAM what seemed to be flawlessly. Then booted from the newly cloned HD and everything seemed to perfect.

Everything is still fine but I can't help notice a difference. Someone please explain to me: how the hell could my new 13" MBP with 2GB MORE RAM, along with a 7200rpm HD have more "beachball" time than my black macbook?

It is very fast, it's just that there is a lot more freezing than with the black macbook and render times in FCP, PS etc don't seem noticeable.

Is there anything I can do via software updates, tweaks etc? Seems like I spent money for no reason. If the Unibody mBP was not sleeker, nicer to type with, LED screen and only cost me $700 mint, I would of definitely stuck with the black MB.

I didn't get ripped did I? $700 for the MBP 13" 2009 barely used snow leopard, then put $200 worth of upgrades into it?

Sold the black macbook for $950 (minus shipping costs)

 

[aslocum]

cloning a harddrive is most time not a good idea. you have different hardware in the mbp etc... this will result in errors and maybe even in freezes and slowdown.

better is a time machine backup and a clean install. then restore from the backup. i would try that if im you

 

[617media]

so you think that might be it? because it's getting ridiculous, I can't use a computer that freezes up this much.

I think you might be right though.


How would you recommend I go about this then? I'm assuming there is a way to wipe the 500GB MBP.

Then do I just install a fresh copy of Snow Leapord, run migration assistant either through an external time machine backup or directly through firewire?

Thank you in advance

 

[cluthz]

The MBP an MB does not have the same hardware, thus you should not clone the hard drive!
Rather do a backup from time machine.
With a clone you'll copy drivers and settings and everything, the MB did not have same chipset, not same graphics, etc.
This might remove some of the beach balling.

 

[Bill Gates]

Some of the MacBooks from that era had SATA problems that caused incompatibilities with some drives, resulting in degraded performance. For some people, downgrading the firmware helped, and for others the latest firmware update helped too. I wonder if this could be the case. Someone else who owns a similar computer will have to chime in. Definitely start with a fresh install though before you do anything too involved with diagnosing the slowdowns.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

Do a fresh install. I guarantee it will perform much better than it does right now. Only clone the HD if you plan on cloning it back to the same computer or for off-site backups.

 

[alphaod]

Try an Archive and Install; that would fix any driver issues.

 

[saxondale.]

Is it the mid-2009 mbp?

they don't like you using other hard drives. The 1.6 > 1.7 firmware update has been known to cause this very problem. I installed a 640gb 5400rpm hdd into mine, which caused it to beachball all the time and cause the audio to skip. Even after reformating, it didn't change anything.

Go into your system profiler, click on hardware and see what 'Boot ROM Version' you're running. If i'm not mistaken, Boot ROM Version: MBP53.00AC.B03 is the 1.7 firmware. There are threads about downgrading, and it's worked for a lot of people apart from me

 

[617media]

yeah it says:

Boot ROM Version: MBP55.00AC.B03

can anyone link me to one of these threads? Cause I would really, really prefer not to have to do a clean install and run time machine cause it's a huge pain in the ass and will take a long time

 

[617media]

bump

 

[jrusch]

I have a black MacBook 2.4ghz, 4gb ram, with a 500gb 5400 western digital hard drive.

Yesterday I purchased a used 2009 MBP 13" 2.26ghz, 2gb ram. I removed the 500gb drive from my black MB and installed it in the MBP.

To my surprise, Snow Leopard booted up and all my applications seem to be working fine. The System Preferences panels have been updated with the new options for the trackpad and the keyboard lights.

The MBP seems to be just as fast as the black MB was, so far I haven't had any problems. VMWare Fusion seems a bit sluggish, but I think that is a memory issue.

I contacted AppleCare and asked them if it was ok that I did it this way instead of doing a clean install of Snow Leopard and I was told that if everything was working then it should be fine. But now I wonder if the MBP would be faster if I did do the clean install...

I will be selling my black MB and I was planning on asking $950 for it. Where did you sell yours at?