Need advice with old 15" MacBook Pro

[Eric5273]

I've acquired an old 15" MacBook Pro (for free) that is in perfect condition (looks brand new), however the hard drive is failing, so it hangs and freezes and needs to be rebooted quite often. The Genius Bar tech confirmed it is a bad hard drive.

Apple no longer services these old machines -- this is the last MacBook Pro to come with a regular non-island keyboard, and is prior to the unibody design. This one was purchased new in 2008 by a family member.

The specs are Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz processor & 4 GB RAM.

I was thinking it may be worth it to replace the old hard drive with a cheap solid state drive. I have all the old OS X discs and also an upgrade disc to Snow Leopard, which then will allow me to upgrade to whatever the most current OS is that this machine is capable of running.

Is this worth bothering with, or is this machine going to be useless? It also could use a new battery too.

If it is worth fixing up, any advise on which hard drive would fit in this, and also where is the best place to get a cheap replacement battery? I don't need a lot of hard drive space, so anything 128 GB or higher would be sufficient.

 

[elf69]

I got one of these but 17 inch version.

I have 4GB Ram and SSD running El Capitan. Your too will run El Capitan.
I using it for work right now (but hate the keyboard, keep missing letters unless you hit them really firm)
I prefer the newer island keys

I too bought a battery for my 17" but dont get cheap one like I did, it crap an hour at most on battery.
I use it at work desk so always plugged in anyway.

I say yes if free then it is worth it!

Do you have another mac?
If so I found best way to install El Cap was via target mode as my other mac had el cap downloaded from app store.
Just connect with firewire and and install that way.
If not then you need create a USB boot drive.