Looking to replace HD in new uMBP.

[Ice Dragon]

All right, so I have heard good things about the Samsung SSDs in the uMBPs. Good is fine, but I want great. I am looking to replace my regular 250 GB at 5400 rpm with an OCZ Vertex SSD (since I've heard it is great).

Question is: Who can replace it seemlessly and do it A. For not too high a price and B. Without voiding my warranty?

 

[MikhailT]

All right, so I have heard good things about the Samsung SSDs in the uMBPs. Good is fine, but I want great. I am looking to replace my regular 250 GB at 5400 rpm with an OCZ Vertex SSD (since I've heard it is great).

Question is: Who can replace it seemlessly and do it A. For not too high a price and B. Without voiding my warranty?

You can do it yourself, it is very easy in the new uMBP, as simple as replacing your memory.

Vertex is awesome, the new firmwares coming out will be supporting GC that'll restore performance of the SSD when the computer is idling as well as another firmware for the W7 users that'll include TRIM. OCZ is constantly pushing Vertex to the limits with newer firmwares and features.

But it isn't without issues, you should be safe mostly since it is a new uMBP.

If you can wait, I suggest waiting for the next generation of SSD controllers that should be coming out within 6 months.

 

[NikFinn]

Question is: Who can replace it seemlessly and do it A. For not too high a price and B. Without voiding my warranty?

You can. You need a Phillps #00 screw driver for the screws on the bottom case and a Torx T6 for bracket on the hard drive. Shouldn't cost you more than $10ish at your local Lowes/Home Depot. Just check youtube for videos on how to do it. Makes it extremely easy as you can pause and rewatch. It's not all that difficult in the first place, but videos can help if you're unsure of your skills.

 

[Ice Dragon]

Other options

All right thanks, I appreciate the quick responses.

What other SSDs are available that are recommended? I want to be overly cautious seeing as how I am spending quite a lot of cash.

 

[NikFinn]

All right thanks, I appreciate the quick responses.

What other SSDs are available that are recommended? I want to be overly cautious seeing as how I am spending quite a lot of cash.

I've never used an Intel one before, but I have heard they are some of the best on the market.

 

[prodigee]

The Intel X25's are the best and fastest on the market, and have been proven to work flawlessly with MBP's. I have used them and these things fly. If I were you I would get an Intel because of how they just work with Macs and because of how fast they are.

That is just my $.02.

 

[MikhailT]

The Intel X25's are the best and fastest on the market, and have been proven to work flawlessly with MBP's. I have used them and these things fly. If I were you I would get an Intel because of how they just work with Macs and because of how fast they are.

That is just my $.02.

In random performance, Intel may be the fastest but they aren't in seq performance. Their write speed is still limited to 80MBps. Not that it's a bad thing but it's not the fastest. It's the smoothest and stable SSD on the market.

For macs, if you don't care about write speed, go with Intel X25M Gen2, they are just awesome.

 

[Ice Dragon]

Thanks.

Once again much appreciated. Smooth and stable are two adjectives I want to see in addition to speed.

Now I am looking at video guides and it all seems... simple enough however I am still a bit skeptical. So... for even a n00b such as myself, I'm 100% covered?

 

[NikFinn]

Once again much appreciated. Smooth and stable are two adjectives I want to see in addition to speed.

Now I am looking at video guides and it all seems... simple enough however I am still a bit skeptical. So... for even a n00b such as myself, I'm 100% covered?

I'm not sure if you're 100% covered, but if you can work a screwdriver you can do it.

 

[rgarjr]

the only damage i can think of you can cause is stripping out the phillips screw. It's very easy to swap out drives on the unibodies.

 

[tenderidol]

Once again much appreciated. Smooth and stable are two adjectives I want to see in addition to speed.

Now I am looking at video guides and it all seems... simple enough however I am still a bit skeptical. So... for even a n00b such as myself, I'm 100% covered?

Replacing an HD is one of the easiest things that you can do on a MBP. Watch videos few times to make yourself familiar with the process. You just need to remove 10 screws (3 of them are longer, so remember their location), remove the back cover, remove the black bar over the HD (two screws), lift the HD, disconnect the SATA cable, remove 4 torx screws that suspend the HD and install them to the new HD, and do everything in reverse with the new HD. That's all

As for the SSDs, I've been using a 160GB Intel X25 G2 and it's been great! I am sure the Samsung drives would be OK as well.

 

[Ice Dragon]

Yeah the Samsung isn't bad or anything however if I am going to spend the extra money to upgrade, it makes sense to look for the best and the cheapest.

The Intel one mentioned I believe I saw for $200-$300 for 80 GB at NewEgg whereas it would be $450 for 128 GB Samsung.

Edit: It is around $600+ for a 160 GB Intel SSD at NewEgg though I'd rather pay $750 for a 256 GB Samsung

 

[prodigee]

Yeah the Samsung isn't bad or anything however if I am going to spend the extra money to upgrade, it makes sense to look for the best and the cheapest.

The Intel one mentioned I believe I saw for $200-$300 for 80 GB at NewEgg whereas it would be $450 for 128 GB Samsung.

Edit: It is around $600+ for a 160 GB Intel SSD at NewEgg though I'd rather pay $750 for a 256 GB Samsung

While the Samsung SSD's are good, the reason the price difference is so large is because of the performance difference. I still say go with an Intel drive, because it is well known that the firmwares have no issues with OS X, I personally have not heard of anyone using the Samsung drives in a MBP, but that is just me.

 

[Ice Dragon]

All right, thanks again for everyone's input.

It would appear the best way to go is Intel 160 GB as many have said. 80 is rather low, though I'll wait obviously for the price to drop on the 160.

 

[MikhailT]

Yeah the Samsung isn't bad or anything however if I am going to spend the extra money to upgrade, it makes sense to look for the best and the cheapest.

The Intel one mentioned I believe I saw for $200-$300 for 80 GB at NewEgg whereas it would be $450 for 128 GB Samsung.

Edit: It is around $600+ for a 160 GB Intel SSD at NewEgg though I'd rather pay $750 for a 256 GB Samsung

$500 for retail G2 160gb at Amazon
MacMall has it for 470$

It's not worth 600-800$ for an SSD at all. I understand 200-400$ but not more than that.

The reason is that those SSD will continue to get faster and bigger and cheaper, it's worth saving money just by waiting.

It used to be 700$ for the 80GB Intel and that's still last August (08). Now its less than $250. Imagine what it's like a full year from now. Intel is working on smaller process NANDs and many other fabs as well but they aren't selling those NANDs just yet, some kind of issue is pushing it back. But those NANDs will cut the price since it is on smaller process, faster, lower power and so on.

Intel was going to sell 320gb g2 drive but the drive is too expensive, it would cost 1000$ and Intel doesn't think they'll sell enough of it to justify the cost of marketing it. The move to smaller process could cut the price down to 500-700$ for the 320gb and it will contain the brand new Intel SSD controller. That's a year from now on.


You can go for the agility or vertex 120gb for 300$ and save the money for next year's SSD.

 

[prodigee]

The only reason I suggest against getting a different brand than the Intel SSD's is that the Intel's are really the only ones that have consistently worked in OSX with no firmware issues or any of that. Which is one reason why pretty much everyone on these forums that has an SSD has an Intel, that and the speed of them can not be matched.

 

[MikhailT]

The only reason I suggest against getting a different brand than the Intel SSD's is that the Intel's are really the only ones that have consistently worked in OSX with no firmware issues or any of that. Which is one reason why pretty much everyone on these forums that has an SSD has an Intel, that and the speed of them can not be matched.

Not many people have issues with Vertex either with the new unibodies and last time I checked, I saw many members with them as well including me. I am fully happy with my Vertex but that's only because I don't use bootcamp and the bootcamp is an issue only in pre-unibodies.

Also Intel isn't perfect, they had firmware issues in the beginning as well and there are some users having issues with Intel with the recent EFI 1.7 update. The consistency isn't there, Intel just happens to be the most experienced one on the market. OCZ has the best user community around their SSDs on the market and they tend to support their SSD better than majority of other companies.

 

[tenderidol]

Also Intel isn't perfect...

Yeap. The first Intel SSD I received didn't even finish installing Snow Leopard. It gave an error and dropped its size to 8MB after that... The replacement drive has been fine so far.

 

[Ice Dragon]

All right so now it just appears to be speed and cost. I'll work around any technical issues since I don't want a standard HDD.

 

[yaroldb]

+1 on the OCZ Vertez. I have one (60gb) and it runs like a champ. No problems at all and the thing is super fast. It's the single best upgrade I've ever made to any computer. I got one for about $150 (mail in rebates). I knew the Intel was faster, but in real world ussage, the difference is not that big. I have a friend with one on his uMBP and next to mine, they act the same. Yes, he boots about 5 seconds faster. I think either way, you'll be blown away by how fast these things are. Also, I removed my superdrive and installed my factory 250gb HD in it's place. I have the speed and storage. I think I used the superdrive once or twice since I've had my Macbook Pro (Feb '09). It is not my only Mac, I have an iMac at home so I use that superdrive when needed.

Good luck... Swaping the harddrive is way easy. You'd have to be really trying to mess things up.

 

[jfyrfytr25]

Once again much appreciated. Smooth and stable are two adjectives I want to see in addition to speed.

Now I am looking at video guides and it all seems... simple enough however I am still a bit skeptical. So... for even a n00b such as myself, I'm 100% covered?

i'm not sure what you mean by "100% covered". If you mean that if you break something it is covered under warranty, then NO!!!

Apple has long taken the position of consumers can swap certain components such as HDD and RAM and they even go as far as giving you instructions on how inside your owners manual. However, they have also said that if the consumer damages anything while performing said upgrade/swap, the damages will not be covered under applecare and they will have to pay for any repairs resulting from the self help.

 

[Ice Dragon]

When I say 100% covered I basically mean the difference between being careful and EXTREMELY careful. The guides make it look easy and I seem to be given assurance here, and I just want to be absolutely sure before I attempt this.

I was wondering if a service can do this professionally however I do want to try this myself just so I can say I did it as well you know.

 

[Ruahrc]

I use a Samsung SSD (Corsair P256). It works great. Maybe not quite as fast as the Intels in some areas, but it is faster than the X25 in others. I went with the Samsung because I wanted the 256GB storage at a better cost vs. the more expensive Intels with less storage.

If you go to an Apple authorized 3rd party repair shop (usually a local computer store) they can most likely do the installation for you. And so long as it is done at an authorized shop installation will be covered by warranty. However, usually for a shop to do such a repair, they will likely require you to buy the drive through them, and they will probably charge a much higher price than what you could get if you bought it online, plus the labor cost of having it installed. They will probably charge you at least MSRP for the drive, and likely $50 or more for the install labor, more if you have them install the OS onto the disk. If you later experience problems with the drive though you should be able to get it serviced under warranty via that shop.

If you do it yourself, the computer is still under warranty but the drive is not. If the drive fails on you later on you have to take it out and have the manufacturer fix it under warranty. But if later on the CD drive stops working (or some other unrelated problem), you can take your computer to Apple and get it fixed under warranty. I did the install of my SSD myself and there were no problems (cause it's dead easy). Then my CD drive stopped reading recently and I took it to the Apple retail store. I did not need to replace the original hard drive back in nor did they give me a hard time about the self-install (i.e. blaming the faulty CD drive on a botched HD swap). If you do it correctly it will be obvious if you screwed something up like slipped up with the screwdriver and gouged out the motherboard or something.

I guess if you're really paranoid about it you could take photos of the installation to prove there was no damage done by you during the install. I didn't go this far but I did take a photo of the SSD so I had a record of the serial number in case I ever needed it without having to open the computer up again.

Just my experience.

Ruahrc

 

[prodigee]

Back on topic, I was not aware of how well the OCZ worked with the uMBP's I heard of a few people having issues, but I guess I should have done my research on them. My bad. I know many people that have the OCZ drives in PC's and love them, but I hadn't really done my research on how well they worked in Macs.

@Ice Dragon, what you should really worry about is cost and performance, and what suits you best.

 

[Ice Dragon]

All the authorized resellers seem rather far away from me in terms of driving distance. I'll definitely attempt something at some point but I'm not so sure I should do it right out of the box.

Who do any of you recommend that is reputable? (if this was a $500 Compaq PC, I'd bite the bullet and take the loss but a $2,000.00+ 17" uMBP is tricky no matter how easy it might seem).