Goodbye optical, hello SSD?

[Teclis]

I have managed to get my hands on a ridiculously cheap Crucial m4 256GB SSD. For some time now, I have wanted to replace the optical drive in my 4 year old MBP with more storage as I rarely use the optical drive and could use the extra disc space.

My question is this; I know an SSD on a relatively old machine like this is a little overkill. I know it will increace perfomance, but i don't know how much the isnternal components will be able to utilize the speeds of the SSD.
-Should I sell the drive (the box is sealed, so I can get a fairly good price for it) and buy an ordinary 7200rpm hard drive and save a little more than 100$ or should I just go for it and install the SSD?

 

[omar4578]

I have managed to get my hands on a ridiculously cheap Crucial m4 256GB SSD. For some time now, I have wanted to replace the optical drive in my 4 year old MBP with more storage as I rarely use the optical drive and could use the extra disc space.

My question is this; I know an SSD on a relatively old machine like this is a little overkill. I know it will increace perfomance, but i don't know how much the isnternal components will be able to utilize the speeds of the SSD.
-Should I sell the drive (the box is sealed, so I can get a fairly good price for it) and buy an ordinary 7200rpm hard drive and save a little more than 100$ or should I just go for it and install the SSD?

my personal opinion is to go for it, if 100 dollars isnt a lot to you then keep the ssd and install it, the difference will be much better.

as far as how the internals would take advantage of an ssd on a 4 yr old machine, idk.

 

[nikhsub1]

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Keep the SSD. I replaced two regular hard drives in two different MBPs - one a brand new 17" and a 4 year old 17". Both got 512gb Crucial M4s. The 4 year old machine feels every bit as fast as the brand new machine when doing normal tasks. Sure the newer machine can render faster but if you mostly perform regular computing tasks the SSD is the single best upgrade there is IMO.