Macbook Pro 15" SSD

[Yakuza]

Hi guys, long time no post

I have a Late 2006 MBP (A1150, if i am not mistaken) and he is resting. Now i am thinking of reviving him for some light work, i will not need to install programs (at least not many nor heavy), and besides of buying a replacement battery i was thinking of also buying na SSD.

I am still considering if i'll ditch the hhd+optical drive, or if i'll keep the hdd.

On my reviving strategy i wanted to go lighter, so removing the hdd+optical drive is the way to go, as i do not need a lot of space despite de fact that i'll be getting W10 in there also (remember light programs)

I have seen some 120GB from Kingston V300 and a HyperX and i have been Reading about the installation process and there is something that i do not understand, because they talk about a TRIM ( i dont know if it is somekind of system), and the Reading and writing speeds that this laptop can do only so much although the ssd disk is capable of more.

All of you that made the some of installation, or the ones that know their business, is there any type of specific ssd for this laptop, will any of them will do?

Any and every help would be appreciated.

Thank you

 

[Weaselboy]

That MacBook has a SATA I interface, so it is limited to 1.5 Gbps and will not be able to take full advantage of the new SATA III SSD speeds. Thing is SATA is backwards compatible, so any new SATA III SSD will work just fine, only not at peak speeds. You will still notice a big difference in day to day usage, because even at SATA I speeds the SSD can move data faster than a hard drive. Also, an SSD has far faster seek speeds, so you benefit from that.

Both those Kingstons you mentioned use a Sandforce controller, and IMO those are not the most reliable controllers. I would get either a Samsung EVO 850 or a Crucial MX200.... those are about the best bang for the buck right now.

TRIM is just an operating system command sent to the SSD to tell it what storage cells are no longer in use, so it is beneficial to enable TRIM if you can. That MacBook can run Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and that OS X version can have TRIM enabled by a third party tool called TRIM Enabler (get the older version that works with Snow Leopard).

 

[MrAverigeUser]

Even with use of a SATA I the SSD should perform much faster than a classic HDD, or not?

I estimate the SSD will though be 2-3 times faster (about 120-150 MB/s Write and Read) than even the fastest HDD - that´s still a lot of acceleration…
and the benefit of acceleration from HDD-speed even if "only" up to SATA I speed is more important than that of the step from SATA I to SATA II (both with SSD) - the more the SATA connection is faster, the LESS of REAL LIFE benefit - as the extreme high speeds are much rarly needed than the "basic" speed acceleration from slow HDD to SATA I .People forget this often although you can compare this with a bicycle, a normal car and a porsche:The Porsche is several times faster, but you can rarely use its superior capabilities in comparison to the normal car. By contrary, the difference between the
bicycle and the normal car is very important as you more often and more in terms of real-life benefit from using the superiority of the normal car over the bicycle… AND: if someday necessary so , one has only to swap the SSD into the next MBP - BTW... I recommend to stay then with the last upgradable MBP, as the 2011 or better 2012 ones…and not buy the MBPs of later generations (look at my signature) …

 

[throAU]

Even with use of a SATA I the SSD should perform much faster than a classic HDD, or not?

I estimate the SSD will though be 2-3 times faster as the HDD - that´s still a lot.
And if someday necessary so , one has only to swap the SSD into the next buy - I recommend to stay then with the last upgradable MBP, as the 2011 or better 2012 ones...

Definitely will be much, much faster in general use than a HDD.

SSDs are much faster in peak transfer speed than an older hard disk, and much quicker than the SATA1 bus can handle, but the main reason they are so much quicker in "typical" use is nothing to do with that.

They're so much more responsive due to seek time - there's no mechanical movement of the head to seek different bits of data on the disk. To illustrate: worst case scenario, if a hard disk is seeking all over the disk randomly reading multiple files at a time, or fragmented files, it will drop to maybe 1-2 megabytes per second (they're good for roughly 150 random IOs per second at 4kb per IO - and that's a really fast hard drive). An SSD will not drop in performance on random seeks like that - it will still get up to 150 meg per second. I.e., 100x faster, for worst case vs. HDD.

The difference between a spinning disk and even a "slow" SSD in that machine will be night and day. It won't even be close.

 

[MrAverigeUser]

Definitely will be much, much faster in general use than a HDD.

SSDs are much faster in peak transfer speed than an older hard disk, and much quicker than the SATA1 bus can handle, but the main reason they are so much quicker in "typical" use is nothing to do with that.

They're so much more responsive due to seek time - there's no mechanical movement of the head to seek different bits of data on the disk. To illustrate: worst case scenario, if a hard disk is seeking all over the disk randomly reading multiple files at a time, or fragmented files, it will drop to maybe 1-2 megabytes per second (they're good for roughly 150 random IOs per second at 4kb per IO - and that's a really fast hard drive). An SSD will not drop in performance on random seeks like that.

The difference between a spinning disk and even a "slow" SSD in that machine will be night and day. It won't even be close.

We all three are talking about the same thing.
Weaselboy explained that even with SATA I it´s getting faster and gave advice about TRIM and to better chose Samsung or Crucial
I was only referring to the "bottom-line" results of compared HDD and SSD.. and why even the "bottle-neck" of a SATA I-connection does not alter much in real life work.
And you explained precisely the technical reasons for these very important differences.

cheers

 

[Spudlicious]

That MacBook has a SATA I interface, so it is limited to 1.5 Gbps and will not be able to take full advantage of the new SATA III SSD speeds. Thing is SATA is backwards compatible, so any new SATA III SSD will work just fine, only not at peak speeds. You will still notice a big difference in day to day usage, because even at SATA I speeds the SSD can move data faster than a hard drive. Also, an SSD has far faster seek speeds, so you benefit from that.

Both those Kingstons you mentioned use a Sandforce controller, and IMO those are not the most reliable controllers. I would get either a Samsung EVO 850 or a Crucial MX200.... those are about the best bang for the buck right now.

TRIM is just an operating system command sent to the SSD to tell it what storage cells are no longer in use, so it is beneficial to enable TRIM if you can. That MacBook can run Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and that OS X version can have TRIM enabled by a third party tool called TRIM Enabler (get the older version that works with Snow Leopard).

Gotta say that's a darned informative and useful post.