Crucial M500 960GB 2.5-inch Internal SSD costs $563.99
In euro that will be 421.94 ex. VAT or 506.33 inc. VAT
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Late 2008 Aluminium MacBook - upgrade or replace?
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Crucial M500 960GB 2.5-inch Internal SSD costs $563.99
In euro that will be 421.94 ex. VAT or 506.33 inc. VAT
I dont think its a waste of money to go with a TB SSD.
it all depends on what you want to do with your machine.
That said, I dont use the superdrive often so i would recommend the SSD HDD combo.
Or go all out and do a RAID? now THAT would be sweet, dual 256 SSD? Just have a solid time machine schedule.
it all depends on what you want to do with your machine.
That said, I dont use the superdrive often so i would recommend the SSD HDD combo.
Or go all out and do a RAID? now THAT would be sweet, dual 256 SSD? Just have a solid time machine schedule.
OP here. Just as an update to this thread (and give a step by step guide in case it's useful to anyone):
I went ahead and installed a 240GB Crucial SSD in the optical drive bay of my late 2008 MacBook last night.
Upon receiving the SSD, I put it into an external enclosure and connected it via USB to my MacBook. I then used Disk Utility to partition and format the SSD correctly. I then downloaded and installed Mavericks on the SSD. I wanted a fresh install of Mavericks rather than a clone of my existing HDD (which wouldn't really have worked anyhow as my existing HDD is 750GB and the SSD is only 240GB).
I then booted up from the external SSD just to check that it worked OK and it did.
I then went ahead and installed the SSD in the optical drive bay. I used a YouTube tutorial to help (I think it was an OWC one). It took about 45 mins. Would have been a lot quicker if it weren't for the fact that a couple of the screws were an absolute headache to loosen.
Then booted up from the SSD that was now in the optical drive bay - which worked fine.
I then moved some data from my HDD to the SSD - mainly applications and movies. But I left photos (100GB) and music (350GB) on the HDD.
So far, everything is working out OK. It took me a little while to correctly figure out how to migrate my Mail app (and all the mail and settings) to the SSD. And likewise to have iTunes and iPhoto apps on the SSD but have the actual photos and music on the HDD. I need to work out how to back up both disks with Time Machine but from what I've briefly read it's fairly easy to set.
I lost a few settings and preferences in the process but nothing calamitous. And as I said earlier, fresh installs were what I was after most of the time. I use Dropbox for all my documents and Delicious for my browser bookmarks so migrating these cloud-based items across was straightforward.
The speed bump is most excellent. When I'm just using applications (mainly Office stuff) and/or web browsing, it's now well zippy. It's only when I access music or photos (which are on the HDD) that I get any noticeable slowness. App launching is superfast and I get no noticeable lag. Boot up times are also fast although I rarely shut down my laptop completely.
Total cost was £145UKP - that includes the cost of the 240GB SSD (£120) plus the external enclosure, optibay data doubler, special screwdriver set (which I didn't actually need - I only needed a small Phillips screwdriver in the end) etc.
I may replace the 750GB HDD (5400rpm) with either a 7200rpm 750GB HDD (approx £50) or a 1TB SSHD (£90), just to increase performance for iTunes and iPhoto. And possibly upgrade RAM from 4GB to 8GB. And maybe a new battery (currently only get 60 mins max if I'm lucky). But that's all for a later date.
Thanks everyone on this thread for their advice, tips and opinions - very much appreciated.
I went ahead and installed a 240GB Crucial SSD in the optical drive bay of my late 2008 MacBook last night.
Upon receiving the SSD, I put it into an external enclosure and connected it via USB to my MacBook. I then used Disk Utility to partition and format the SSD correctly. I then downloaded and installed Mavericks on the SSD. I wanted a fresh install of Mavericks rather than a clone of my existing HDD (which wouldn't really have worked anyhow as my existing HDD is 750GB and the SSD is only 240GB).
I then booted up from the external SSD just to check that it worked OK and it did.
I then went ahead and installed the SSD in the optical drive bay. I used a YouTube tutorial to help (I think it was an OWC one). It took about 45 mins. Would have been a lot quicker if it weren't for the fact that a couple of the screws were an absolute headache to loosen.
Then booted up from the SSD that was now in the optical drive bay - which worked fine.
I then moved some data from my HDD to the SSD - mainly applications and movies. But I left photos (100GB) and music (350GB) on the HDD.
So far, everything is working out OK. It took me a little while to correctly figure out how to migrate my Mail app (and all the mail and settings) to the SSD. And likewise to have iTunes and iPhoto apps on the SSD but have the actual photos and music on the HDD. I need to work out how to back up both disks with Time Machine but from what I've briefly read it's fairly easy to set.
I lost a few settings and preferences in the process but nothing calamitous. And as I said earlier, fresh installs were what I was after most of the time. I use Dropbox for all my documents and Delicious for my browser bookmarks so migrating these cloud-based items across was straightforward.
The speed bump is most excellent. When I'm just using applications (mainly Office stuff) and/or web browsing, it's now well zippy. It's only when I access music or photos (which are on the HDD) that I get any noticeable slowness. App launching is superfast and I get no noticeable lag. Boot up times are also fast although I rarely shut down my laptop completely.
Total cost was £145UKP - that includes the cost of the 240GB SSD (£120) plus the external enclosure, optibay data doubler, special screwdriver set (which I didn't actually need - I only needed a small Phillips screwdriver in the end) etc.
I may replace the 750GB HDD (5400rpm) with either a 7200rpm 750GB HDD (approx £50) or a 1TB SSHD (£90), just to increase performance for iTunes and iPhoto. And possibly upgrade RAM from 4GB to 8GB. And maybe a new battery (currently only get 60 mins max if I'm lucky). But that's all for a later date.
Thanks everyone on this thread for their advice, tips and opinions - very much appreciated.
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I'm also interested in this. I also have a late 2008 macbook pro with 8GB ram and 512 SSD and 1 TB HD. The SSD did make a huge improvement when I installed that a year ago. I went with a big SSD so my most used files would launch instantly plus I can reuse it in another machine or PS4 when I upgrade.
Installed
I have installed it and it works better than Mavericks in my opinion. I have 8GB RAM but not SSD (yet). I picked up a broadcom chipset BTE bluetooth dongle made by Gmyle but cannot get handoff working completely (i.e., I can get the non-bluetooth functions working though such phone calls).
I think there may be a blacklist on models, so if someone could figure out how to delete these from Yosemite my guess is that it should work.
I have installed it and it works better than Mavericks in my opinion. I have 8GB RAM but not SSD (yet). I picked up a broadcom chipset BTE bluetooth dongle made by Gmyle but cannot get handoff working completely (i.e., I can get the non-bluetooth functions working though such phone calls).
I think there may be a blacklist on models, so if someone could figure out how to delete these from Yosemite my guess is that it should work.
How !?
I have Macbook late 2008, Intel SSD, 8 GB RAM, was super fast on Mavericks. And now on Yosemite, it's so slow. Before it was faster even with its 2 cores than MacMini 2011 with 4 cores, now the Mac mini is faster with its HD.
I don't know what to do.
There are no processes really in the background using CPU, it just takes so long for everything - sort files in Finder, open a jpg in Preview..even "Open As..." takes sometimes 10 seconds to show up the list of available programs.
Its almost equally slow no matter if Ai, Ps, Word4Mac, Pages, Sublime, Safari and Chrome + other utilities open, or no programs at all.
I do Repairs Perms regularly..I had a problem with SSD-file system though, 'cos one RAM block stopped working properly and processes crashed all the time, probably a Disk writing process too.
However, I did Repair Disk and now its reported as "all is fine", and put a new Corsair RAM, memory tests confirmed it as ok.
It's a disaster. I was thinking could it be its so bad because of only 2 cores, but now as you say its great on your Yosemite, i don't know why.
Looking at the processes there 212 processes incl. 4 started by me.
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backup twice. wipe. (do a full long format on the ssd, this will refresh the blocks). reinstall all by hand. if the problem persists check the ram again with software. then the ssd.
yosemite doesn't run worse than mavericks really. i have an early 2008 mbp with 6gb ram and yosemite and it's not bad at all. (not my main machine tho.)
I have been thinking of upgrading with a SSD. My Yosemite works faster than Mavericks with 8gb of ram using the stock hard drive. What I have been reading is that Yosemite hampers third party Trim function. This is causing problems for some people depending on how they performed the upgrade. The solution is a series of modifications (some of which are causing debate / concern) or getting the only third party SSD called AngelBird Wrk that presumably provides native Trim support. I do not know if this is your issue (i.e., SSD lacking trim support). See article here on the issue as it could apply to you. By the way please read the comments to the article and some of them are very valuable in what someone could or should be doing regarding trim support.
I'm pretty sure you do not want to do a full long format on your SSD drive. Everything I've ever read said not to do this as it will not help performance of SSD drives, but can actually slow it down. A quick search on google brings up a lot of articles saying not to. You shouldn't have to repair permissions regularly. If your SSD drive is completely full, then that is going to slow any system down. I recently did a quick format on my SSD and reinstalled Yosemite on it because I was switching my SSD from a macbook pro to a mini and it's working great.
I had yosemite installed on my late 2008 macbook pro with a SSD in it. It also had 8GB of ram installed. It worked great on mavericks and equally as good on yosemite. I had trim enabler running on it on mavericks but didn't worry about it once I upgraded to yosemite. If your SSD is giving you problems and is full, you should back it up like the previous person said, but only do a quick format first on the SSD. Then reinstall yosemite on it. I reinstalled it by using a flash drive with no problems. Reinstall all your programs on it first, then with any other data. But don't fill it completely up or it's going to run slow. Get a external case or use a data doubler and put your old hard drive in your macbook too, to hold all your other files. I used a data doubler and it worked great.
i don´t know what you googled but it's a technique that i can confirm works from personal experience.
it's called reconditioning. diglloydTools does it. sometimes multiple runs are better.
yea of course this reduces ssd life. but one or a few rewrites are nothing worth mentioning.
others have also reported that disk utilities "erase free space" works well. i can confirm it.
I have this impression about Yosemite. My late-2009 Macbook seemed faster on Mavericks, and it has 8GB and a 250GB SSD.
SSD with Yosemite
Thnx all for suggestions. SSD has 30 GB free space.
I don't use Trim indeed. But it worked fine in Mavericks even without Trim.
I will try to enable Trim and then do "erase free space", this looks like the fastest method. I am bit reluctant to reinstall Yosemite, since last time i did clean install Mavericks i had to start from the previous OSX versions. I tried to boot couple of times from USB-stick but it didn't work.
For now I deinstalled diverse plugins for sound&documents + booted into Safe Mode, which cleans out the cache. This helped, faster, but still not fast as Mavericks. And to do this every week or so reminds me of using Windows.
Data doubler sounds like a good idea since the CD-Drive doesn't work, but don't you get your fan on all the time? When I took the CD-Drive out, the fan was on all the time on because the contact from CD-Drive was gone!
Thnx all for suggestions. SSD has 30 GB free space.
I don't use Trim indeed. But it worked fine in Mavericks even without Trim.
I will try to enable Trim and then do "erase free space", this looks like the fastest method. I am bit reluctant to reinstall Yosemite, since last time i did clean install Mavericks i had to start from the previous OSX versions. I tried to boot couple of times from USB-stick but it didn't work.
For now I deinstalled diverse plugins for sound&documents + booted into Safe Mode, which cleans out the cache. This helped, faster, but still not fast as Mavericks. And to do this every week or so reminds me of using Windows.
Data doubler sounds like a good idea since the CD-Drive doesn't work, but don't you get your fan on all the time? When I took the CD-Drive out, the fan was on all the time on because the contact from CD-Drive was gone!
here's my list of settings to make 1st Alu Macbook faster on Yosemite
Here is a list of what i did to make Macbook 2008 with SSD&8GB RAM run fast again on Yosemite:
1) Disable transparency
2) Disable & remove various plugins & not used extensions with Clean My Mac
3) Disable Dashboard in Mission Control center
-- This is probably the main point
-- I used Dashboard from time to time, I but don't use Mission Control at all. it's much faster for me to start programs hitting Spotlight and typing first 2 letter of programs then hit enter. So i guess I will have to say goodbye to good old Dashboard.
-- It appears that Window Server was too busy when Dashboard was set to "Overlay". Switching between windows and sorting within Finder was significantly slower.
-- However, Dashboard setting turned on should not have anything to do how windows outside of Dashboard are handled, so i consider it as bad side-effect of Yosemite or even a bug. Disabling it is a work-around.
Additional settings
4) I also have a custom TRIM enabled (dangerous if you boot Yosemite into Safe mode). I am not really sure if this made the system response faster. It is better for SSD though.
5) Internal Macbook screen is turned off when working on external display.
6) I also performed "Erase Free Space" after i switched the TRIM support on.
7) NOATIME is on. Used to reduce number of write actions on the disk.
p.s. I don't use iCloud so i don't have eventual internal syncs. I use G-Drive which is paused when not actively used and then it doesn't sync.
My first impression is that with these settings the system became as responsive as it was on Mavericks. Did not yet do heavy load-test (Aperture, Ps, Safari, Mail, G-Drive,..) though.
Here is a list of what i did to make Macbook 2008 with SSD&8GB RAM run fast again on Yosemite:
1) Disable transparency
2) Disable & remove various plugins & not used extensions with Clean My Mac
3) Disable Dashboard in Mission Control center
-- This is probably the main point
-- I used Dashboard from time to time, I but don't use Mission Control at all. it's much faster for me to start programs hitting Spotlight and typing first 2 letter of programs then hit enter. So i guess I will have to say goodbye to good old Dashboard.
-- It appears that Window Server was too busy when Dashboard was set to "Overlay". Switching between windows and sorting within Finder was significantly slower.
-- However, Dashboard setting turned on should not have anything to do how windows outside of Dashboard are handled, so i consider it as bad side-effect of Yosemite or even a bug. Disabling it is a work-around.
Additional settings
4) I also have a custom TRIM enabled (dangerous if you boot Yosemite into Safe mode). I am not really sure if this made the system response faster. It is better for SSD though.
5) Internal Macbook screen is turned off when working on external display.
6) I also performed "Erase Free Space" after i switched the TRIM support on.
7) NOATIME is on. Used to reduce number of write actions on the disk.
p.s. I don't use iCloud so i don't have eventual internal syncs. I use G-Drive which is paused when not actively used and then it doesn't sync.
My first impression is that with these settings the system became as responsive as it was on Mavericks. Did not yet do heavy load-test (Aperture, Ps, Safari, Mail, G-Drive,..) though.
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I just got a 128gb Angelbird Wrk SSD from Austria and a cheap optibay adapter. Will not install until 1 January. Will let you know how this goes. The devices are ~6g but my hope is that they will work at the lower MacPro speeds and I can use them elsewhere in the future.
The drive is backwards compatible with SATA 2 (3Gbps). It will work fine. There are only a select few SSDs that have issues with backwards compatibility, and those are usually older drives that have issues with SATA2 to SATA 1 not S3 to S2.
I am curious to see what you use as a solution. IMO, this was one of the better laptops that Apple produced.
That's fine enough. I have i think next-gen Intel series 320 with 160GB - sata2 / 3GB.
Thank you. Finished installing the new SSD and I am getting SATA 2 read speeds and have native trim support as expected. I must admit that the 8 GB RAM upgrade (wish we could do 16GB of RAM) really helped my late 2008 Aluminium MacBook. However, combined with this 128 GB SSD I am very happy. I decided to do a fresh install as the SSD is small and I only wanted critical software to be there. I think I will be keeping this baby for a few years to come for sure. I am now experimenting with a small RAM Disk to see if my internet browsing and rendering videos can be made to work faster. Not sure it will make a difference, but in theory it should.