Macbook pro third-party SSD upgrade advice?

[badfish123]

Hi guys,

I just ordered a new Macbook pro 15'' 2.2 ghz and decided to choose a 500gb 7200rpm HDD for now, just until I save enough money for a SSD.

Because I am new to the mac and am inexperienced with computers in general, I could really use some advice or direction on which third-party SSD to choose.

With the SSD, i am going to be considering the following factors: (duh...)

-Reliability/Does it become worse over time
-Speed
-Space
-Price

In addition to regular school/college work, I plan on using my MBP for gaming, watching movies, and possibly light movie editing for my film class. I also tend to store lots of games/movies on my computer.

Could you guys please give me a list of brands to check out? I would be extremely grateful. Please excuse my inexperience.

 

[ColeHarris]

Well I'm no expert on drives but I chose this one for my 2011 17in MBP, I did allot of research and it seamed to be the fastest and best built drive for its price (and it came with a tool kit!):

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/DDMBSSD240/

From what I read OWC mercury drives are some of the best out their but Intel and Crucial make excellent drives as well.

Hope that helps

 

[JodyK]

As mentioned above OWC is great. Honestly you can't go wrong there. I rolled the dice and got the Crucial 256GB SSD (fastest SSD out with proper OS support and hardware). I bought it to future proof myself as it runs at 6GB speeds. I mean roll the dice because when I got it a few months back the MBP had no 6GB transfer support and I was banking that with Sandy Bridge it was coming.

It appears the new 2011 MBP which I just bought does support it and it looks like OSX Lion will have trim support so my gamble may pay off!

 

[aznguyen316]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1104610/

I hope my thread can answer some questions. Feel free to post in there and I'll get back to you =) includes some videos.

 

[puffo25]

2 SSD on my MacBook Pro? Any potential issue?

Hi, I have a brand new MacBook Pro model 9,2 and happy with it. I want to speed up the hard disc usage and considering replace the internal HD with a new SSD.

My question is the following: rather than just get 1 SSD to replace the original Apple HD, if I buy 2 SSD and put 1 to replace the original HD and the second to replace the DVD using an optibay, is still is useful if I need a lot of storage? Also 2 SSD will consume more battery than 1?

Thanks in advance.
Andrea

 

[davidlv]

Hi, I have a brand new MacBook Pro model 9,2 and happy with it. I want to speed up the hard disc usage and considering replace the internal HD with a new SSD.
My question is the following: rather than just get 1 SSD to replace the original Apple HD, if I buy 2 SSD and put 1 to replace the original HD and the second to replace the DVD using an optibay, is still is useful if I need a lot of storage? Also 2 SSD will consume more battery than 1?
Thanks in advance.
Andrea

Rather than post in a 2-year old thread, why not look in the SSD Buying Guide sticky at the top of the list? Two years is a long time in terms of the progress that has been made in the SSD market. Even a Google search for "best SSD drives" would be likely to answer your questions.
In short there are several drives considered at the top of the performance list, including the SanDisk Extreme II, the Plextor M5P Extreme, the Samsung 840 Pro, and others. Of course having 2 drives installed will use up battery power faster than one, but again read some reviews of the popular drives, there is a surprising difference in the power consumption across the field.
Most review sites cover that aspect well, you just have to do some research.

 

[alex0002]

Perhaps this one would have been a better place to start:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1177020/

In any case, I can't see too many reasons to use 2 x SSD instead of one, unless you already installed one and you wanted to expand your storage.

1 x 250GB SSD will cost less than 2 x 120GB.
1 x 500GB SSD will cost less than 2 x 250GB.
1 x 960GB/1TB SSD will cost less than 2 x 500GB.

Not only that, but with many SSDs on the market, the larger SSDs in the range have a larger number of NAND packages that can be accessed in parallel. This means that the larger SSDs in the range are often faster than the smaller ones.

In most cases, I'd expect 2 x SSD will consume more battery than one (2 x SATA interfaces and other duplicated functions).

 

[maflynn]

[MOD NOTE]
Please use the existing sticky linked above.