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Installing a Solid State Disk (SSD) in a Macbook???

Winter Charm

Winter Charm

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 31, 2008
804
270
Ok. So i want to install a solid state disk in my macbook that i will buy as soon as it's updated.

Toshiba and Samsung will be releasing their 256GB SSD's about that time as well... so i will not be hindered by storage space.

Does anyone know the procedure for installing an SSD in a macbook?
Has anyone tried this?
What kind port will the SSD have? and will it work (can i install OSX on it?)
And what of using a SSD with bootcamp?

Thanks everyone that responds (no matter how mean the comments get)


I'm very new to macbooks... (about a year ago i didnt even know that apple was making laptops.
[dont call me stupid - i DID know what an iMac was.]


EDIT: I would like people to clarify some of my cencerns... they are above and numbered. To keep things simple i would like to know about things assuming that it's all present day!
 
you want help installing a drive that isn't out yet, into a computer that doesn't exist yet? ... umm ...
 
i have a 64Gb Samsung SSD installed in my laptop. i installed it the same way i would for any laptop drive. in my case, i put my original drive in an external case, cloned it to the new SSD drive, and then went with the SSD. took all of a couple hours with most of the time, just data transferring.

RE: Bootcamp. i did NOT use that as I am using parallels.

FYI, my macbook is sweet now!
 
SSD drives are standard SATA or PATA connections (for the MacBook it'd be SATA). Performance isn't always that much better than regular drives, such as the case with the SSD drives found in the "netbooks" like the Asus Eee. However the new Intel SSD drive is smokin'. Not familiar with the new Toshiba and Samsung; I'll have to check those out.
 
polaris20 said:
However the new Intel SSD drive is smokin'. Not familiar with the new Toshiba and Samsung; I'll have to check those out.
Click to expand...

Well the Intel SSD is MLC and the Samsung is SLC.

I'll be waiting for the SLCs from Intel.
 
alphaod said:
Well the Intel SSD is MLC and the Samsung is SLC.

I'll be waiting for the SLCs from Intel.
Click to expand...

i didn't realize that Intel came out with a SSD.... but i just read up on them. cool stuff.

i chose my Samsung SSD because it was SATA II, SLC, and 64Gb.... and i got it off of ebay for $400 at the "Buy it now price".

lately i've been doing tons of file I/O intensive stuff on my work laptop.... might need to pick up an Intel SSD for that ;)
 
alphaod said:
Well the Intel SSD is MLC and the Samsung is SLC.

I'll be waiting for the SLCs from Intel.
Click to expand...

True, but Intel uses a different controller from the makers of the poorly performing MLC drives (OCZ, for example). So this MLC has good write speeds and expected lifetime. The Anandtech review is pretty informative. All the benchmarks have it performing as good or better than SLC drives.
 
alphaod said:
Well the Intel SSD is MLC and the Samsung is SLC.

I'll be waiting for the SLCs from Intel.
Click to expand...

Intel's MLC drive is faster than Samsung's SLC, and for most speed is the only concern, since SSDs are more reliable than HDDs anyway. So I would say it's the best one right now, although Intel's Extreme series will likely be even better. And way more expensive :).
 
No Luck Here

I tried a Patriot SSD v2 in my 2GHz MacBook Core Duo (MA255LL/A). The OS 10.4 installer and its Disk Utility could not see the SSD.
I'm not sure if the problem is the OS (is 10.5 needed?) or my old model of MacBook.
I used my OS 10.5 Mac Pro to successfully format & install OS 10.4 on the SSD, but my MacBook boot picker still cannot see it.
 
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