Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

How to install an SSD to MacBook Pro (Early 2011)

WRXiceman said:
So, here I am. Sitting here with my new SSD and everything copied over to it. The old HDD has been removed and the SSD is ready to replace it, BUT I can't do that because I don't have one specific screwdriver. Now I have to wait until tomorrow to finish the job :(
So frustrating :(
Click to expand...

Sure. You can use a pair of pliers to grab the outside of the nubs and unscrew them that way. Just be careful and it will work. It may scuff them up a little on the outside, but it won't matter.
 
When I cloned to my new SSD, I didn't realize that the recovery partition wouldn't be copied. Also, I had a permission issue on my downloads folder. If you want a recovery partition, you can reinstall Lion to to get it.
 
bozz2006 said:
When I cloned to my new SSD, I didn't realize that the recovery partition wouldn't be copied. Also, I had a permission issue on my downloads folder. If you want a recovery partition, you can reinstall Lion to to get it.
Click to expand...

Do I need a recovery partition?
I was thinking that I could use the old HDD as a backup for if anything went wrong.
 
Lion internet recovery is a great. I used Lion recovery to do a clean install on my SSD and it worked flawlessly and was actually rather fast considering the size of the file and I was on wifi it only took like 90 minutes. Once I transferred all my files over I wiped the drive and put in back in the enclosure and am now using it for an external HDD and use it for time machine back ups which has been working great. I would highly recommend using your old HDD as a backup it will be handy trust me I had to use it to restore my corrupted SSD from it!
 
WRXiceman said:
Do I need a recovery partition?
I was thinking that I could use the old HDD as a backup for if anything went wrong.
Click to expand...

Even better, since you have a 2011 model, it has Lion Recovery built right into the EFI (firmware) of the Macbook. So you can place a bare SSD in and boot to recovery in EFI and restore from there if you need to.

The only real need to have the Lion Recovery partition on the drive on 2011 machines is it is required should you decide to enable Filevault2.
 
Just completed it all.
So far so good.
Boot time on HDD was 52.7 seconds.
Boot time on SSD is 17.6 seconds.

When I just restarted it, the trackpad wasn't responding. Anyone know what would have caused that?

PS I held the power button down to shut it off and now it seems ok :)
 
Anthony81586 said:
I'm certainly considering doing an SSD swap. Let me know how the improved performance is.
Click to expand...

The actual process was a lot simpler that I thought it would be.
And so far, everything is extremely fast. As you can see in my post above, it booted up in 17.6 seconds. Opening programs and apps is pretty much instantaneous
 
WRXiceman said:
The actual process was a lot simpler that I thought it would be.
And so far, everything is extremely fast. As you can see in my post above, it booted up in 17.6 seconds. Opening programs and apps is pretty much instantaneous
Click to expand...

Wow that's impressive! I am excited to get home today, I have a brand new set up 4GB sticks of RAM waiting. Once I get that in and an SSD, I will prolly Skip the next refresh!

I'm definitely noticing some sluggishness with my system though and worried it might not be hard drive related. Depending on what the genius bar tells me this weekend will be my deciding factor.

Congrats on the easy swap and top performance!
 
Anthony81586 said:
Wow that's impressive! I am excited to get home today, I have a brand new set up 4GB sticks of RAM waiting. Once I get that in and an SSD, I will prolly Skip the next refresh!

I'm definitely noticing some sluggishness with my system though and worried it might not be hard drive related. Depending on what the genius bar tells me this weekend will be my deciding factor.

Congrats on the easy swap and top performance!
Click to expand...

You won't be disappointed the difference with the SSD is mind blowing. Everything just opens so fast. Programs like adobe cs5 and final cut pro that used to take a minute and now instant I love. I also put it 8GB of RAM and couldn't be happy. I couldn't care less about the refresh now that I have my super fast MBP.
 
I did notice that before I swapped the drives round, when I performed the carbon copy using CCC, I only had about 200mb of free RAM out of the 4Gb.
Next pay day I will be buying 8Gb of RAM for my MacBook Pro :)
 
WRXiceman said:
I did notice that before I swapped the drives round, when I performed the carbon copy using CCC, I only had about 200mb of free RAM out of the 4Gb.
Next pay day I will be buying 8Gb of RAM for my MacBook Pro :)
Click to expand...

Open Activity Monitor and go to the System Memory* tab and look for Page Outs and Swap used. "Free RAM" is not all free RAM, as "Inactive RAM" is also free RAM.
 
WRXiceman said:
The actual process was a lot simpler that I thought it would be.
And so far, everything is extremely fast. As you can see in my post above, it booted up in 17.6 seconds. Opening programs and apps is pretty much instantaneous
Click to expand...

Wow that's impressive! I am excited to get home today, I have a brand new set up 4GB sticks of RAM waiting. Once I get that in and an SSD, I will prolly Skip the next refresh!

I'm definitely noticing some sluggishness with my system though and worried it might not be hard drive related. Depending on what the genius bar tells me this weekend will be my deciding factor.

Congrats on the easy swap and top performance!
 
Anthony81586 said:
Wow that's impressive! I am excited to get home today, I have a brand new set up 4GB sticks of RAM waiting. Once I get that in and an SSD, I will prolly Skip the next refresh!

I'm definitely noticing some sluggishness with my system though and worried it might not be hard drive related. Depending on what the genius bar tells me this weekend will be my deciding factor.

Congrats on the easy swap and top performance!
Click to expand...

What kind of sluggishness are you experiencing?
 
WRXiceman said:
I did notice that before I swapped the drives round, when I performed the carbon copy using CCC, I only had about 200mb of free RAM out of the 4Gb.
Next pay day I will be buying 8Gb of RAM for my MacBook Pro :)
Click to expand...

Go to crucial it's under $50 for 8GB shipped
 
bozz2006 said:
What kind of sluggishness are you experiencing?
Click to expand...

Initially it was just general boot up, sometimes wouldn't go past the grey screen. Others it would make it to the home screen and I couldn't click anything, or apps would continuously "hop" without launching. I'm fairly certain it was a hard drive issue. Ran the verify disk plus repair which fixed an issue that was discovered but I'm still skeptical. The general sluggishness has all but gone away but there has been a couple of manual reboots that we're needed.

Not exactly sure though. Any insight?
 
Medic278 said:
You won't be disappointed the difference with the SSD is mind blowing. Everything just opens so fast. Programs like adobe cs5 and final cut pro that used to take a minute and now instant I love. I also put it 8GB of RAM and couldn't be happy. I couldn't care less about the refresh now that I have my super fast MBP.
Click to expand...

With SSD did you have to limit your page-outs to 0? I ask this because from my understanding with SSD, it can be rewritten only so many time before the performance degrades. Am I way off on this?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back