MacBook Pro upgrade YES/NO ?

[ThomasLentati]

Hi MRs, I have a late 2011 MBP @2.4Ghz i5 and 16GB RAM.
I was wonderring (because now there is a new MBP thats faster) if I should upgrade from my 750GB Hd to a 128 OCZ Vertex 4 and put my old HD in the optical drive. I want my MBP to keep up with the new ones. So yeah should I do it or not? And if I do can I sell the optical drive after replacing it with my HD?

Thanks,

Thomas

 

[kate-willbury]

i doubt anyone would care to buy the optical drive.

and it all depends on your needs. how are we supposed to know if you need to upgrade or not? it just sounds like you WANT to. well if you want to, then do it. since you provide no usage case at all for anyone to even discuss, who cares what other people think.

 

[user418]

Yes, the upgrade would be a good decision in my opinion. You'll find many folks here on MR have done exactly what you are considering. The SSD will give you a faster boot time and your programs will also open faster. Other added benefits would be the increased storage available to you and the fact that the SSD has no moving parts.

I wouldn't sell the OD just yet as you are still under warranty. If you need to take your MBP in for service you'll need to put the OD back in or you may have issues with getting Apple to work on it. That also applies if you later purchase Apple Care and need service.

My opinion is based on comparison with the 2012 non retina MBP's which are really an upgrade of the 2011 MBP's.

 

[Blue604]

No point to do that. The screen will still be older generation.

 

[maflynn]

Going to SSD will provide substantial improvements to the performance of the Mac, so I do recommend it. Utilizing the optical bay is also a good move as well.

 

[Ccrew]

No point to do that. The screen will still be older generation.

No it won't. What's the new generation of 13" that his is outdated? The 13" upgrade was nothing but an incremental. Screen is the same.

Only thing I'd say is make the jump to 240/256 though on the SSD. 128's don't really leave a huge amount of wiggle, and while putting your user data on the optibay drive you'll still get the best performance with the apps on the SSD

 

[maflynn]

No point to do that. The screen will still be older generation.

The point is, by adding an SSD, his machine performs much better.

Not everyone is buying a retina MBP, in fact many people are buying the regular MBP w/o retina and are content.

 

[iLikeTurtles!]

From my experience, solid state drives make a big difference. Your MacBook is not out of date. They are designed to last for several years, not one year.

 

[ThomasLentati]

Going to SSD will provide substantial improvements to the performance of the Mac, so I do recommend it. Utilizing the optical bay is also a good move as well.

Yes, the upgrade would be a good decision in my opinion. You'll find many folks here on MR have done exactly what you are considering. The SSD will give you a faster boot time and your programs will also open faster. Other added benefits would be the increased storage available to you and the fact that the SSD has no moving parts.

I wouldn't sell the OD just yet as you are still under warranty. If you need to take your MBP in for service you'll need to put the OD back in or you may have issues with getting Apple to work on it. That also applies if you later purchase Apple Care and need service.

My opinion is based on comparison with the 2012 non retina MBP's which are really an upgrade of the 2011 MBP's.

Tanks for replying guys but do you know the diffrences between the Vertex 3 and the 4? Some say the 3 is faster?

Thanks,

Thomas

 

[denness544]

Damn I wasn't thinking about the warranty issues with upgrading. Everyone kept pushing for non-retina MBP for upgradeability but never a mention of warranty.

So do you guys just leave your original hard drive as-is and put it back in the MBP when you take it back to the Apple store for repairs? I was planning on getting an SSD and using it as my main bootup drive then wiping the original and using that as a secondary media storage hard drive. If I went this route then I wouldn't be able to put the original harddrive back in to use as a main would I?

 

[blkprlz]

I wouldn't sell the OD just yet as you are still under warranty. If you need to take your MBP in for service you'll need to put the OD back in or you may have issues with getting Apple to work on it. That also applies if you later purchase Apple Care and need service.

+1 on that noise!

 

[user418]

Damn I wasn't thinking about the warranty issues with upgrading. Everyone kept pushing for non-retina MBP for upgradeability but never a mention of warranty.

So do you guys just leave your original hard drive as-is and put it back in the MBP when you take it back to the Apple store for repairs? I was planning on getting an SSD and using it as my main bootup drive then wiping the original and using that as a secondary media storage hard drive. If I went this route then I wouldn't be able to put the original harddrive back in to use as a main would I?

You could always clone the SSD back to the HDD. Then put both the HDD and ODD back in place prior to taking in for repairs. Hard drives are so cheap now that I would suggest you check out Newegg or Amazon and pick up an extra drive or two.

Here's a recent Seagate on Newegg.

 

[Ajtrek]

Damn I wasn't thinking about the warranty issues with upgrading. Everyone kept pushing for non-retina MBP for upgradeability but never a mention of warranty.

So do you guys just leave your original hard drive as-is and put it back in the MBP when you take it back to the Apple store for repairs? I was planning on getting an SSD and using it as my main bootup drive then wiping the original and using that as a secondary media storage hard drive. If I went this route then I wouldn't be able to put the original harddrive back in to use as a main would I?

I recently upgraded by Early 2011 MBP 17" to a OCZ Vertex 4 512Gb SSD. Before I did the upgrade I spoke with Apple Tech Support since I have the ACPP. I was told that replacing the stock HD with an SSD does not affect the warranty or ACPP. As long as the computer recognizes the SSD (check under "About This MAC") and is properly booting to the OS (which is why you want to do a "clean" install with the upgrade) any other issues are probably related to other software or hardware. However, those issues would have been present even before you did the upgrade. I have changed HD's on Windows and OSX machines many times before (always with a clean install) and have never encountered problems that could be attributed to the upgrade. But don't take my word for it....call Apple Tech Support and ask them yourself and see what they say...just don't tell them you've already switched out the HD for an SSD.

PS
I left my orginal drive in tact and just placed it in a USB case. Makes it a lot easier to transfer a file since I didn't want to use Time Machine (TM) Migration assistant. Also TM will wipe out the old backups after a while especially if you change the name on the SSD. But that's another post