Hi all! I have a question regarding installing SSDs on various year models of MBPs

[Benway]

Hi all!
I have a question regarding installing SSD's.
Is it possible to install a Solid State Drive on any 15" macbook pro from the years 2007 - 2012 ?
or is there a difference in physical dimensions of hard drives or the fittings for harddrives between these year-models of macbooks?
[ I am considering putting TWO ssd's by replacing both the super-drive/DVD drive using an optibay kit, and replacing the actual HDD drive itself].

Is there any particular recommended SSD's for macbook pros?
[or for any of these specific years, if different fittings are required?]
...................................

My reason for asking :
I was thinking of buying an older Macbook Pro, or whatever I can get dirt cheap,
as my kind of "Rough-and-Tumble" macbook which I can take out-and-about without too much fear of things going wrong with it,
as a kind of supplement to my new expensive mbook pro.

I have no idea what year model I will buy.
Anywhere between 2007-2012,
but whatever is dirt cheap
which means it will probably be 2007-2010.

[I will also be installing between 8gb-16gb of Ram of course, which has nothing to do with the Q's above ]

 

[newdeal]

...

I am not sure however I do know that the 2010 macbook pro had sats2 and the 2011s have sata3 which allow them to use all the speed of the current gen ssds. I am not sure about older than 2010 but the battery life of the older models is worse and worse with each generation so 2010 should be the oldest

 

[tran.man48]

As long as any of the macbooks you are considering are unibody aluminum chassis macbooks, you shouldn't run into any issues regarding physical size, etc. They should all use the same type of optibay adapter.

Like newdeal said, the older macbooks (pre-2011, I think) will not have sata-3 to take full advantage of the SSD's performance.

As for SSD brands, a lot of people on here including myself, use the Samsung 830 SSD. Other good brands are the Crucial M4 and some of the OCZ Vertex line.

 

[Benway]

Thanks newdeal and tran.man48

Battery life is not a huge issue. Anywhere I take it [such as my tech college which is going to be it's regular journey] I would mostly be plugging it in.
I use my iPad for anything that needs battery life and long public transport Reading and typing and low-battery consumption tasks, pad does that stuff fine.
And leave my newer prized new mbook at home because it is my desktop-replacement

So, SATA drives and connections are backwards compatible, kind of like USB?
By analogy : putting a SATA 3 drive into a SATA 2 connection ; is like putting a USB 3.0 into a USB 2.0 connection?
[^^^ Just stopped being lazy and googled that myself. YES IT IS backwards compatible ]

And maybe it's a good idea for me to double check with opti-bay regarding compatibility of their adapters with both DVD superdrive replacement with an SSD, and spinning hard-disk replacement with SSD [I'm probably planning to have 2 SSDs in both my lappies].

So I will probably do that, and report back when I have done so.
Might be the way to go for anybody else considering doing this.
It's a very simple surgery, watch vids on youtube!

Thanks again you two, I appreciate your advice